Game Info: BENEATH A STEEL SKY

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Review By Kada

Robert Foster is a young man, trapped in a dark futuristic city built on the height, hunted by federal agents and wanted for a crime he didn't commit. Just recently he was living a peaceful life outside the polluted megacity, together with a group of friendly outcasts not wanted inside the city. They were all happy as it was, until one day, when a federal helicopter full of agents suddenly comes to arrest him. He is brought back inside the city along with his robotic friend, Joey, when something goes wrong and the helicopter crashes into the ground. Robert manages to escape inside a factory, but the agents are already after him. It is all up to you now, as you must help him escape the city and to find out about his past.

Beneath a Steel Sky is a great graphic adventure game, perhaps one of the best ever. It is ofcourse similiar to the LucasArts ones (as always, when dealing with this genre of games). You move around your character with the mouse pointer and click on items to gather them for later usage. A mouse is ofcourse recommended, although the game CAN be played with a joypad. Along the way you must also interact with the many citizens inside the city to get useful information. An extra cool feature in this game is the Revolution Virtual Theatre system. The citizens walk around the city, living their own lives. This means that sometimes you need to look for a person you want to interact with, he or she is not fixed to a certain screen or place in the game. Very neat, and certainly increases the realism of the whole game. Beneath is like with darkseed, all backgrounds are made by Dave Gibbons who is a famous comic book drawer (like h.r. giger with darkseed)

The graphical part of B.A.S.S. is a true beauty in the eyes. Handpainted, atmospheric backdrops with futuristic themes remind a little of the 1982 movie 'Blade Runner' and looks totally awesome on the computer screen. The floppy version of B.A.S.S. almost had no ingame sound at all, except for a few sound effects here and there. The CD32 version features GREAT ingame music throughout the whole game, and full speech for all characters. The speech is ofcourse very cool, although I find it a little annoying at some stages (all characters speak with scottish accent and doesn't really fit the game as a whole that good...). Still a very cool feature though!

B.A.S.S. is truely one of the best games of this genre. It has a really interresting plot, involving lots of surprises and many dark secrets. The game is ofcourse filled with a lot of humour and jokes too, mostly delivered by your moody robotic follower Joey, who doesn't seem to be able to speak a word without being sarcastic in some way or another. The game is developed by Revolution Software, and this is their second title if I remember correctly. They had released Lure of the Temptress a few years earlier, which in many ways are similiar to B.A.S.S. They would later on release the popular PC titles Broken Sword and Broken Sword 2, and appearently there is a third part in the Broken Sword series on the way.