TL;DR
Overall game tone, mood, and puzzles got more cartoonish/kid, a lot of dull uncanny valley characters, cheesy cliches, and bugs. All elements feel disconnected from each other. Lack of QA and lots of annoying bugs. I liked graphics, models, level design, and lightning, but it's not enough for a good game. Verdict - Didn’t like it, get it when it’s on 70% sale. If you are looking forTL;DR
Overall game tone, mood, and puzzles got more cartoonish/kid, a lot of dull uncanny valley characters, cheesy cliches, and bugs. All elements feel disconnected from each other. Lack of QA and lots of annoying bugs. I liked graphics, models, level design, and lightning, but it's not enough for a good game. Verdict - Didn’t like it, get it when it’s on 70% sale. If you are looking for a good, smart and stylish cyber-punk adventure, check out oldies or indies like The Red Strings Club
WHY?
Just to get the idea of how relevant is my review could be to your experience.
I’ve played the original “Beneath a Steel Sky” back in the 90s as a kid. It was not even a cd-version, it was a floppy version without voiceover and if I remember correctly, the PC my family had just a pc speaker instead of a fancy “sound blaster” card, so it was mainly just beeping and clicks as a sound.
I’ve replayed the original later though my life and played Broken Sword 1-4 from the same game development company “Revolution” as well as dozens of other quests, point-n-click, adventures, and whatever you call them games, including all the classics from Lucas Arts and Sierra of course.
When I found out about the sequel called “Beyond A Steel Sky”, I was very excited, as good cyber-punk never grows old on me. I knew that it was already available through Apple arcade, but decided to wait, as I didn’t want to be affiliated with Apple’s “new gaming service” in any way. Well, fast-forward to me buying the game when the sale started on Steam.
If you are not familiar with the original - then just a couple of words about the setting. The game is set in a dystopian future, the player assumes the role of Robert Foster, who was stranded in a wasteland known as "the Gap" as a child and adopted by a group of locals, gradually adjusting to his life in the wilderness. After many years, armed security officers arrive, killing the locals and taking Robert back to Union City. He escapes and soon uncovers the corruption which lies at the heart of society. The sequel takes place ten years later after Rob’s peaceful life is interrupted by violent events, that force him to return to Union City.
Visually game set me right on the mood for a good old adventure game with a nice “comic book” feel, reminding some sort of Telltale Games mixture with Borderlands. I was surprised by the camera and control style (which is not point-n-click apparently, but a 3rd person action gamepad style), which gave me the impression of more action inclined adventure style.
Through the first hour, I realized that it’s just a gimmick for a feel of “a familiar to contemporary AAA action” user experience, yeah you will have to walk around to find the needed characters and items, but no action per se of any sort. And by the way, physics for moving around is buggy - you going to be stuck in spots with plenty room, stuck into other characters, experience buggy pathfinding with your character doing a “moonwalk” while stuck in a coffee-table and similar stuff.
The more I was playing, the more I was getting disappointed. And there are reasons for that. Minor bugs in character behavior, camera, and sound were annoying and distracting from the story, and puzzles were way too linear and not thrilling.
As I got the middle of my 12-hour game (which would take less for a walkthrough - I would say I’ve spent 2 hours at least dealing with bugs, reloading savegames, and listening to needless dialogues) I realized that I’m not going to have a deep and fun experience, but decided to finish the game anyway.
At this point, I didn’t have any connection with the characters left, nor with the narrative. Most of the characters and the plot were very cliche for my taste, and occasional fun dialogues of Joey and Rob are lost in the massive spineless waves of non-essential and dull dialogues of non-essential and dull characters. At some point it felt like it was the developer’s goal to waste your time on these and long walks around, just to make sure that average gameplay time would hit a certain mark.
The game world is very beautiful but empty at the same time. It’s interesting to see the scenery once and basically, that’s it. Why choose the form factor of the open world and at the same time not introduce anything that will breathe in life into it is beyond my understanding. Technically you have dozens of NPC wandering around to imitate life, but with the fact that you can’t even talk with them (Hey, Little Big Adventure 2, an open-world 3d adventure from 1997 had more life in it) it just adds more to the uncanny valley.
Speaking about uncanny valley - unfortunately, the animation in the game is terrible, very crude and characters don’t even blink EVER. Feels like the animation style doesn’t work with the actual models/graphics at all, which brings me to a thought, that… Expand
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