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Beyond a Steel Sky - sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky from Revolution Software

jac8awol

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 2, 2018
Messages
408
A Bioware / Mass Effect Andromeda level of crap execution. It's so fucking bad I am speechless.

20:05 - 20:30



28:58 - 29:10



Hmm... Looks horrendous. I especially like 29:02 when the ghost bottle starts flying around. I think I need a haunted whiskey myself after that. Grand saviour of adventure games this most certainly will not be.
 

WallaceChambers

Learned
Joined
Jul 29, 2019
Messages
311
I'm not gonna spoil myself by watching anything I havent already seen in previews but the Apple Arcade version looks significantly shittier than what they showed of the PC version.
MLHNV7d.jpg

UJHc5IC.jpg
 
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ValeVelKal

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2011
Messages
1,604
So I tried to play BASS1 and I got bored slightly after escaping from the initial area (the moment where the guy trying to catch you gets gunned down)

Does the game picks up after that ?
 
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Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,404
Location
Djibouti
The funny thing is each time I say bad things about BASS, it immediately invites a good number of negative ratings, but also each time nobody ever tries to come actually come to its defence. Or better yet, when I try to actively ask for the game's supposed brilliant aspects, I either get no response, or 'b-but teh graphix!'

To this day I still have no idea what people see in this game. And at this rate I will probably never learn.
 

Venser

Erudite
Joined
Aug 8, 2015
Messages
1,765
Location
dm6
I played it for the first time in 2013 so nostalgia didn't play a role. I loved the humor, the setting was cool and all the puzzles were logical and there was no pixel hunting.
 

WallaceChambers

Learned
Joined
Jul 29, 2019
Messages
311
I also played BaSS for the first time (fairly) recently and it certainly has some issues (the plot motivations get somewhat muddled in the games closing 3rd) there's also a lot that's good about it. The puzzles are logical, the dynamic between Joey & Foster is fun and they have some genuinely entertaining banter, the simple interface has endured to this day and yeah the art is fantastic. Furthermore people who clicked with BaSS would be hard pressed to find something exactly like it's unique mix of dystopian sci-fi and absurd humor. It's pretty unique in that regard which would only lead people who ended up liking that mixture to continue to appreciate BaSS over time.

I wouldn't put it up there with the best of LucasArts or even Broken Sword 1 & 2 but I still really enjoyed playing through it.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
BASS is great, the puzzles are from unremarkable compared with Day Of The Tentacle to fun to solve compared with basically anything else while the writing is about absolute best, in the vein of Space Quest or Future Wars when it comes to tone with a serious story and absurd humour, which is perfectly fine. Also yes the graphics are part of why the dystopian part works that well.
 

m_s0

Arcane
Joined
Jun 18, 2009
Messages
1,289
A Bioware / Mass Effect Andromeda level of crap execution. It's so fucking bad I am speechless.

Hmm... Looks horrendous. I especially like 29:02 when the ghost bottle starts flying around. I think I need a haunted whiskey myself after that. Grand saviour of adventure games this most certainly will not be.
Nice controller interface there - takes half a minute to use an item, i.e. what would've been maybe 2 mouse clicks tops. How have we regressed this much vs standard interaction/UI design principles of 25 years ago?

Main takeaway here is they forced a point and click game into a TPP action/adventure format, and the two do not like one another at all. Looks downright unpleasant to play.

Also, horrendous framing and blocking - it genuinely seems like they did not think this aspect of the game through to the point where the need to consider framing/blocking in a 3D game manifested itself to them. And then they proceeded to make the game somehow still oblivious to that need. It's like banging your head against a wall for years and still not realizing there's a wall in front of you. "Game is roughly in frame - good enough."

Wow.
 
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AngryKobold

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2012
Messages
534
I have watched the entire playthrough of Apple version on YT. Now I want to share my pain with you.

Think of a game that tries to be BASS 2, but lacks literally anything that made BASS memorable: music, aesthetics, feel of a dystopia mixed with black comedy. The only thing the game shares with original BASS is a small number of characters and some names. It's also done so poorly it seems to be a half- finished product.
That's "Beyond a Steel Sky".

In terms of content it gives an impression of sequel produced by "soulless" corporation after acquisition of a popular IP. You know, *that* kind of sequel. No provocative content, sticking to a safe generic look, gameplay simplified for wide audience, etc. Not quite an offensive cash grab, just a bland imitation of the original work.

I may be wrong about some minor details due to fast forwarding through the videos, but better don't expect big differences in favor of the game.

I am not going to waste my time on explaining details. Just watch this shit until the end. The final sequence starts at 50:30. This is literally the game explained. The remaining 75% of "Beyond..." was nothing but a filler.



Is it retelling for dumb kids as I predicted :
The game has nothing in common with original. At the same time there's a lot of concepts being reused:
- stranger in unknown futuristic city
- evil uniform guy to be avoided
- getting operational shell for Joey
- tricking the system to get access to further locations in the city
- getting access to the apartment of a complete stranger
- at some point there's mentioned ongoing war against another city, but it's never observed
- interacting with LINK cyberspace
- evil AI commanding murderbots to deal with troublemakers
- destruction of evil AI, supposedly fixing problems of the city
- Joey no longer accompanying the PC after final sequence
- return to the desert

Hard to tell if there was any plan other than nostalgia milking. What may appear as an intention for reboot may be simply a side effect of no creativity and playing it safe.

Presentation:
Same problems as with all other adventure games utilizing presentation known from Alone in the Dark: third person perspective and unrestricted movement in 3D environments. It's not suitable for classic adventure games. Neither are try hard attempts at being "cinematic".

Graphics:
Pathetic. The Apple version looks like a work of the famous artist Prosper. It's the worst looking application of cell shading in a game I have ever seen.

Length:
The game seems to be very short in terms of real gameplay, translated to number of puzzles, characters and locations. The playthrough I watched is 5h long, but the most of time is consumed by "cinematic" presentation. Example: near the end there's a 30 minutes long sequence of walking forward and triggering cutscenes and dialogs.

Puzzles:
- Simple, it's more like Broken Sword than BASS. Problem solving is more often achieved by talking with characters than by using items.
- Backtracking seems to occur rarely and it's explicitly suggested.
- Solution to a problem is always contained in close proximity to a location where the problem appears.

Plot and setting:
- I say the plot feels pointless and forced. Just see the ending and you will know what I mean by "forced" and "pointless". The end sequence states literally:
1. Joey/ Ken remains connected to omnipresent network and waits for Foster to come again someday- 75% of the game is about struggling to get inside the city, while loud "I am Robert Foster" to any network terminal should be enough.
2. All bad things happened because Joey/ Ken has suddenly become autistic- we know from the original BASS what personality it used to have, and Joey in "Beyond..." says AI can't change over time.
- There's something wrong with the presentation, I don't see any motivating premise to get through the game. The kid got kidnapped, but there's no atmosphere of threat, urgency or discovery. It's boring. At the very start you may be intrigued to see reformed Union City and meet the Joey/ Ken. It won't last long.
- There's no danger that may surprise or threaten the player. No deathtraps, monsters, hostile security, etc.
- The city depicted in game is bright and sterile, missing any "darkness". There are subtle suggestions of exploring a cuntland (think of future depicted in "Demolition Man" 1993), but it soooo poor.
- The main reason why Joey/ Ken has started his own oppressive system gets explained, but the reason turns out to be an unbelievable absurd. It's basically not something you expect from a sarcastic AI that once said "It will be my MISSION in LIFE to make the name Ken SYNONYMOUS with DORKS!".

How dystopian is the new dystopia:
- The city is prosperous, most of goods is obtained thanks to a succesful war against another city- state. For unknown reason it's not already established Hobart, but Asio City. ASIO. The BAD GUYS are OPPRESSING ASIO. :D
- Uniforms are going to harass everybody who doesn't pretend to be a happy citizen. Talk about HR department tier of evil.
- There's a score system that determines access to city levels and comfortable apartments. While the precise rules of calculation are unknown, it's associated with pretending to be content in both real life and in social media. Yes, BASS setting has social media now. The most immportant thing in sci- fi. Great fucking job, Revolution.
- Ugly side of the system (loss of social points and the consequences) is never displayed or explored.
- There are 2 cadavers indicating direct murderbot action. I am unimpressed.
- There's a machine converting disturbing images from one's memory to pleasant images. If it's supposed to be an unsettling example of brainwashing, I say it's unconvincing. Could use a long session inside this device after I'm done with this game.
- Children from the Gap are kidnapped to be used as test subjects for the brainwashing machine... for no reason. Said machine is already widely used.

I say it's cartoon network of a dystopia.

Ideological subversion in the plot, writing or aesthetics:
I have not noticed any trace of it. It's just boring. That's... good, for a game in 2020!

Aesthetics:
Anything that could resemble the original game is gone. There's only a pair of old props displayed in the museum. The chimneys no longer emit smoke. The city is a place of holographic bilboards, flying drones and smartphones. Looks... generic. Forget about memorable locations.

Music:
No references to the original theme. Few tracks. Imagine an elevator music being played over and over again during the game. There's original music from BASS cyberspace in one cyberspace sequence. It feels like a mockery.

Cameos:
Rare, noticed only three:
- Joey
- Joey/ Ken
- Piermont (dog lady, ground level)

Writing:
- The black comedy is gone. That's bad, it could still work well with the new "bright" environment. Just show an ugly side of the system and crack a joke about it. Apparently it's way too much for Revolution employees.
- The name Ken seems to never appear in the game. Revolution 2020 didn't bother to read their own fucking script.
- There's a moustache twirling minor villain and a retarded major villain. The reasoning behind their actions is REALLY weak.
- The talk between Robert and Joey is still amusing.
- I find disappointing there's no weird CAPITALIZATION of RANDOM words as it was in the ORIGINAL.

TL; DR:
"Beyond a Steel Sky" is a complete waste of all resources that have been spent on production. It's a failure as a sequel to BASS and as a standalone game. I hope everybody in Revolution Software gets a COVID.
 
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Boleskine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
4,045
LOL at this gameplay vid. To be fair it's an iPad mini 4, but that's still some pretty rough footage.

 

AngryKobold

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2012
Messages
534
So many over- enthusiastic paragraphs about this... thing. I guess that's the real black comedy of "Beyond a Steel Sky".
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,316
Location
Hyperborea
Aesthetically bankrupt. 95% of game devs have no eye for lighting. The block in phase looks better than the final.
 

AngryKobold

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2012
Messages
534
Revolution Software is patching the Apple version all the time since the initial release. Seems they are aware to some extent how bad it is.

1.
I have noticed some graphics upgrade. A "massive" change from "prosper" to "just bad".

2.
The game still suffers from critical performance problems. Lag and big framerate drop visible in any complex location.

See at 16:50 - 17:10 : better graphics, worse lag.



"Why is the game lagging so much" :D

3.
Updates are not just about bugs and minor graphical adjustment. Updates also add astounding new features that were NOT present in release version.

See comments at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUnLM859_Dk

"Game keeps crashing after the outdated firmware cutscene "

"Apple Arcade Gaming I agree the game is good, but I want to play it. They just had an update today which finally added the shadows, but it keeps crashing. Very disappointing"

They added shadows :D. This game has been already delayed before and now, after release, Revolution still struggles with the most basic features! A half- done product for a dozen of dollars. Jesus, imagine somebody still purchasing games in 2020! :D

4.
One of the updates apparently fixed music issues. Remember how I mentioned the "elevator music" playing over and over again? Gone! Now you can appreciate "generic_movie_music.mp3" as it was intended.

There was the same melody, completely out of place, repeated in many scenes:

29:00


45:45


54:20


Now gone:
58:24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BNQ4mPuK8


And watch it, they changed the model placement and camera angle, so the scene looks less awful. I am certain A LOT of original scenes are going to be redone.

Pathetic.
 
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WallaceChambers

Learned
Joined
Jul 29, 2019
Messages
311
The general consensus emerging from the reviews I've read is that the story and puzzles are good but there are many bugs and technical issues. Scores seem to fluctuate in line with how much tolerance each reviewer had for the bugs. Mostly in the 7~8 range with a few outliers going higher or lower.

Seems like this game needed some more time in the oven. Critical reception could've been much better if the game shipped in a more polished state. I dont foresee minding the bugs too much but it'll be a hindrance for casual players, provably.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...urried-adventure-thats-a-bit-too-roughly-hewn

Beyond a Steel Sky review - an unhurried adventure that's a bit too roughly hewn
Union City blues.

Handsome visuals can't quite make up for bugs and a lack of urgency.

It's the insidiousness of Spankles that bothers me at first.

It's a small thing at first, of course. It almost always is. Even before you breach Union City's walls, there's a kiosk giving away free cans of the stuff - actually, there's a lot of vending machines that give away the stuff. "Wow!", you think, dispensing a can for gratis for the first time. "A benevolent government that gives away free refreshments? I'm in!"

And then you'll spot another ad. And then another. The Spankles mascot - a nightmarish hybrid of Ronald McDonald and the terrifying clown from Poltergeist that haunted my early years - leers at you from... well, everywhere. You start pondering why there are advertisements at all given they're issuing cans for free, anyway. Later, you might realise the tagline - "Explodes your mind!" - is a tad sinister. You wonder why they're pushing it so hard. A health scanner will eventually recommend it, and that's when it becomes impossible to ignore the distant alarm bell chiming in the back of your head.

A dystopian cityscape is nothing new, of course. You'll jog gently along, weaving between the unhurried folk with their multicoloured hairdos and futuristic fashions, camera flicked upward to take in the full majesty of this stylish metropolis and its neon lights, and there's a jarring sense of deja vu here. Ryan's Rapture. Comstock's Columbia. Cyberpunk's Nivalis. And now we're in Beyond a Steel Sky's Union City.

The Council wants you to think Union City is a clean, pure place where your comfort is always at the top of its priority list, but it sometimes feels like the buildings don't stretch up as much as they glare down at you, heavy and imposing and watchful. Monopods flick all around you - the omnipresent whoosh as they pass by will buzz and irritate in your ears like digital mosquitoes - but you'll never know who's in them, or where they're going. You start to wonder if the shiny veneer of this beautiful place is precisely that; a veneer - a fake front concealing something altogether darker in the undergrowth.

jpg


It doesn't seem to bother the guy we're playing as, though. This is my first venture with Robert Foster as I didn't play the predecessor, Beneath a Steel Sky, and while he's likeable enough in a superficial, forgettable kind of way, I didn't particularly warm to him, despite his noble mission to locate the missing child, Milo.

It's the same for the eclectic supporting cast, too. They're all fine; nothing terrible, even if their accents occasionally are a little wobbly, but I don't feel any emotional connection to anyone I encounter, either. Like the slow, oddly animated NPCs who idle past you along the piazza - or occasionally on top of your head when the collision mechanics go hilariously wrong - they're all a touch shallow. A touch irritating. A touch over the top.

You'll spend a lot of time in the company of those NPCs, though, whether you want to or not. Building upon its point-and-click foundation, Beyond a Steel Sky's story is character-driven, and your progression is typically gated by one of two things - character interactions or a hacking mini-game. For the latter, this means you'll spend much of the game darting from one character to the other to gather intel, or exploring the environment to glean clues. This can be anything from luring fowl away from truck doors to exploring an apartment to find out more about the man who lived there, and it's to the developers' credit that the tasks you take on are varied and usually, if not quite always, fall short of laborious.

Foster's never in a rush, however, and his lack of urgency doesn't half sap you of yours, too. The hour I spent to-ing and fro-ing outside the city walls felt endless at the time, and while there's a good variety of dialogue options to help you tease information out of the folks nearby, the UI doesn't automatically grey out options you've already taken. This means you might inadvertently initiate a conversation you've already had - ugh - or worse, miss or delay an interaction because even though you've already spoken to say, Pixel, and figured you'd asked everything you could, there are numerous conversations that can be triggered by the same word prompt but there's no way for you to know that without trial and error.

jpg

Worst still, your companions have a tendency to wander off, so initiating conversations can be a lengthy, frustrating affair that will see you trail after them, desperately waiting for the button prompt that lets you converse with them to pop up again. There are certainly worse crimes than this, I know, but given so much of your progress here depends upon character interactions, it's a shame those interactions aren't more polished.

The hacking game, on the other hand, is a neat idea, and one that slides perfectly in to a narrative that requires you to exploit (or circumvent entirely) Union City's borderline obsession of automation and AI. You use it to help the city's AI do your biding - say, inverting the permissions of a door to open when your ID would typically lock you out, perhaps, or changing the route of a cleaning robot to aid in a rescue mission - and while the museum, particularly, outstayed its welcome with this mechanic, I can't deny it's not enjoyable... at least, when I finally figured out what I'm supposed to do, anyway.

Thankfully, Beyond a Steel Sky has a fabulous hint mechanic that drops a new clue every thirty seconds upon your request, starting with gentle tips and evidence that, eventually, become full blow-by-blow instructions. It's a fantastic addition that should ensure you'll never prematurely end a session simply because you don't know what to do next.

And, oh, it's beautiful here. Bright and bold and full of colour, Union City is a stunning backdrop to Foster's story, and while there are perhaps fewer places than you might like to explore - you'll revisit many places instead of visiting new ones - you can't help but gaze up at the art deco motifs in awe. The Cel-shading isn't as novel a style as it once was, of course, but Foster's world is well-crafted and well-realised, ably accompanied by its score and good voice casting.

That said, it's not faultless. NPCs slope by slowly and vacantly. Gang-gangs - the vicious wildlife often preventing you from simple tasks - slide across the ground, never mind the sky. Though admittedly amusing, it's yet another indicator that perhaps another month or two of testing and polishing could've elevated Foster's story from okay to outstanding.

jpg


Sadly, that's not the only technical issue I encountered, either. There were plenty of quirks and glitches in my press build of Beyond a Steel Sky. Dialogue often stuttered or dropped out completely, and there was one instance where despite both the waypoint and Foster himself telling me I had completed the prerequisite investigation, it still wouldn't give me the prompt to progress. Without a convenient save, I ended up losing several hours' progress - which is a lot, given the game only lasts a dozen or so hours - by loading in a significantly older manual save. That time, I was able to proceed without a problem.

Which leads me to conclude that Beyond a Steel Sky is a pretty mixed bag, really. Despite lofty ambition, gorgeous visuals, and an intriguing premise, for every positive, there's a negative, too. I loved Union City but couldn't explore it as much as I wanted. I loved Foster's sassy companion but found most characters a tad shallow, lacking nuance and personality. I loved digging into The Council but found hacking into MINOS a tedious, repetitive experience that rarely innovated.

That said, it's an unhurried, intriguing adventure that will likely attract new fans as well as satisfy existing ones; it's just such a shame it's marred by uneven pacing, questionable UI choices, and just one too many performance issues.

And I'm still having nightmares about the Spankles clown.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/beyond-a-steel-sky-review/

BEYOND A STEEL SKY REVIEW
A LINC to the past.

The 1994 adventure game Beneath A Steel Sky was considered quite good (like 91% good), and to call it fondly remembered would be to mine giant quantities of understatement from the red Australian sands. A collaboration between Revolution Software and comic-book artist Dave Gibbons, Beneath A Steel Sky addressed social divides, consumerism and totalitarian control through pointing, clicking, and solving puzzles. And now, in 2020 of all years, it gets a sequel.

The last time Robert Foster was in Union City it was under the benevolent authority of his pal Joey. Ten years later, he’s dragged back on the trail of a missing child, and rocks up at a vehicle-only entrance to the city (any excuse for a puzzle) to find it’s now under the control of The Council, and that everyone is really happy. They’ve got to be, because their lives hang on their Qdos scores, which quantify their social standing. It’s nudge theory run rampant, as things like turning up for work and taking part in daily votes (you never do this, which is a shame) alter your score, which affects where you can go and how low in the towering arcologies you can live. Industry and recycling are at the top, with the lower levels being a playground for the high-scoring.

Despite the existence of this system in the world, Foster, masquerading as Graham Grundy after taking an ID chip from a dead man in the desert, prefers to work around it by running errands for NPCs, using a hacking device to rearrange electronic information to his advantage, and directly manipulating the system in cyberspace. While you spend much of your time with the cream of society, it’s those at the bottom, or rather the top, who are actually more interesting. Thumb-obsessed murderers and genius hackers lurk among the Monty Python-quoting droids and piles of junk at the tips of the steaming spires, their dimly lit world of furnaces and garbage crushers in stark contrast to the bright, wide plazas they labour to support.

Upside down
Of course, this world of hi-tech Eloi and Morlocks wouldn’t be the same without a dark secret at its heart, and an opening sequence involving screaming kidnapped children makes this very clear. Layers of high crimes and misdemeanours build on each other, the twisted logic at their core like something from a monstrous episode of Black Mirror. While Beneath A Steel Sky showed that a sick society could be saved by a good man (or robot), Beyond sees a utopia exposed and torn down, the nobility and enormity of its characters setting them against one another.

Beyond might as well have been called Beneath Beneath a Steel Sky, such is the enormous shadow it chooses to live in. It burns brightly in spite of this, the lightly cel-shaded art has never looked better, and the update from point-n-click to WASD is a positive choice. The narrative wraps itself around that of the first game, although it doesn’t matter if you haven’t played it (but you should).

The game just cannot help itself, however, from piling reference upon reference. PC Gamer’s 2016 retrospective of the original brought up the northern English slant to the voice acting, jarring for a game supposedly set in Australia. Beyond tackles this with a history lesson stating many of the city’s builders came from Hull—the city in which much of the ‘90s development work took place. There’s a throwaway line in a conversation about an industrialist wearing a nice coat. Then comes a biggie: “Reboots are fine,” says one character, who’s possibly Welsh, “but they’re never a patch on the original”. There’s the entire museum dedicated to the world of the first game. The obsolete LINC terminals are scattered around. A trip into the industrial facilities at the top of the city that evokes Beneath’s cover art. It never stops.

Tech troubles
Beyond a Steel Sky is built on Unreal 4, and mostly runs very nicely. Unfortunately, it’s also possessed of weird graphical glitches such as characters walking into you when you’re in the middle of a conversation (or jumping to shoulder height and walking on the spot—this is earmarked for a fix), your long coat constantly clipping through whatever you’re standing next to, and a whole virtual world level that juddered violently for me whenever the camera moved. The jerking about continued into the real world too, requiring a restart of the game. Unable to jump, Foster gets stuck on absolutely everything, even the outstretched leg of a corpse on the ground. The subtitles are also full of typos, with the occasional errant question mark perhaps attributable to Australian Question Intonation, but not the misplaced apostrophes, multiple spaces between words, and misspellings.

GPU drivers can be updated and subtitles patched, but there are also occasional failures of logic too, odd for a game whose denouement is tied up in paradoxes and reasoning. A social-climbing character completely fails to notice that Foster is wearing a badge that marks him out as exactly the sort of aspirant he wasn’t the last time she spoke to him. Puzzles can plunge into a maddening game of throwing every switch and trying every object with everything in your inventory (though there is an excellent hint system if you’re really stuck). An empty light socket looks very much like every other one. Why is there an electric fence behind the waterfall when there’s no way through? How can Foster hide in lockers but not enter toilet cubicles?

Moments of head-scratching are nothing new in adventure games, of course, and they do nothing to detract from the superb world Revolution has constructed. Is it a patch on the original? Not a patch, but an upgrade. It’s destined to have less cultural impact thanks to the recursion of its influences, and Beneath's innovations having been adopted by the wider industry, but this is surely the best 11 hours you can spend in the Australian desert.

THE VERDICT
81

BEYOND A STEEL SKY
Filled with what made the original game great, this second trip to Union City has been worth the 26-year hiatus.
 

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