Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)

It's pretty distinctly awful. Contrivance smelled from a mile away. The voice direction is trying hard to hook the player in, but the camp sticks out like a sore thumb instead of endearing one to its world. The dramatic beats slipped past my every cognitive reward path so as to somehow all get absorbed without leaving a mark - empty calories, that still leave undigested. Every render is an appealing, if not particularly memorable environment, courtesy of a promising art direction too often suffocated by a need to repeatedly depict a frustratingly one-note concrete jungle (Even our bereft of life real-world architecture is more diverse!) The eponymous steel is used more as a literal and figurative impermeable aesthetic building block of the city, than a recurring motif that informs and deepens its character, subtly... actually, don't get me started on subtlety. This game holds a grudge against suspense, tension and uncertainty... the helmsmen of every story's ship. It runs a freight train, nay, a bullet train through codified conventions of dialogue and narrative. It would rather shoot wonder in the foot as it slips past the cracks of its sterile world than let it breathe, than let anything simmer for more than a second before being explained away, or worse, simply gestured to. There are downright bucketloads of clumsy expository dialogue, and more than a few swigs of everyone's favourite vintage brew - character inconsistency... that is, if they even come out the oven fully baked. It is unrepentantly itself, what it is is shallow and ill-conceived from square-one, and that is most of what frustrates the experience.

Why engage with BASS, then, I hear you ask, along with some snickers at my expense? First of all, stop that. Second of all, Joey, of course! Joey is your robot sidekick and a real stick in the mud, whose belligerent crankiness at his personality being swapped in and out of different "shells" is responsible for most of the funny jokes. It is incredibly ironic that the literal android's word economy is more robust than any of the humans'. How such a character slipped past the designers, who brought you such innovations as repeating even benign information to the player like a parrot, with every third word emphasized through capitalization seemingly so as to not trigger the undeveloped object permanence of a hypothetical infantile mind, is beyond me. But whatever alternate sci-fi adventure classic Joey came from, his presence is game-changing, and moves the needle on this game, for me, well past mediocrity. Go Joey!

Artistic Value: Overall, the graphics are the classic pixelated art of old adventures. What stands out is the comic drawing in the intro and the rusty feel of the city in which the game takes place, with a couple of beautifully drawn buildings-cluttered backgrounds. The style of the futuristic city feels very unique. Towards the end of the game the change in style damages the game, even if we consider that the player has moved from the upper city levels into subterranean levels, the latter scenes are much more boring. The music is very good and very appropriate to the setting, and the sound effects are on point. The voice acting is not that good though, even with the great dialogue writing. The ambience at the start of the game instigates a sense of wonder and urgency, very appropriate to the story. Also, sprite animation is better than your average point-and-click game. Rating = 7/10 for great.

Gameplay: Fortunately, this game is from when game designers and gamers figured out that you just need two mouse buttons to interact with/on everything in the game world, which removes the tedious of having to use a command-bar with 15 verbs plus a full inventory. Almost at the very beginning of your adventure you get a robotic companion which helps for interesting puzzles and comedic moments. The puzzles are logical and make you explore some of the dystopian-futuristic setting, but you get very few hints from the other characters through dialogue (except from your robo-friend). All in all, the difficulty is perfect if you're a seasoned adventurer or if you don't mind trying every possibility to "get-that-THING-that-you-need". That said, the puzzles are more about thinking than pixel hunting. Unfortunately, as with the scenery, the game lowers the quality in this regard towards the end of the game, having puzzles being more far-fetched and with less hints. I've found one point in the game where you can get irredeemably stuck, and it is very frustrating if you don't like having to use a walkthrough guide (like me), so make sure to save often in different files just in case. Rating = 6/10 for good.

Fun Factor: The underlying story is a derivation from the usual Man vs. Sentient Machine. But the story progression takes place in the first and last 10%'s of the game, the other 80% you're just progressing through the world wondering what the hell is going on. Although I have to admit that the sense of mystery and suspense is achieved throughout the whole game. The replay value here is zero as with most of adventure games. The game brings some originality in the form of having a helping companion (back then it was original for point-and-click games), and making the NPCs have a routine of working and resting (which you have to cleverly exploit in order to advance). By far the most interesting character is the robot companion Joey, but you'll only have him by your side 60% of the game (a bad game-design decision to me). Rating = 7/10 for great.

Final Verdict: Starts off very strong but the finish is dull. Rating = 6.7/10 for Great.