![]() ![]() 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. 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. You'll spend a lot of time in the company of those NPCs, though, whether you want to or not. 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. 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. It's the same for the eclectic supporting cast, too. 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 doesn't seem to bother the guy we're playing as, though. 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. 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. 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. And now we're in Beyond a Steel Sky's Union City. ![]() 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. 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.Ī dystopian cityscape is nothing new, of course. You wonder why they're pushing it so hard. Later, you might realise the tagline - "Explodes your mind!" - is a tad sinister. You start pondering why there are advertisements at all given they're issuing cans for free, anyway. The Spankles mascot - a nightmarish hybrid of Ronald McDonald and the terrifying clown from Poltergeist that haunted my early years - leers at you from. Availability: Out now on PC and iOS as part of Apple Arcade.Īnd then you'll spot another ad."A benevolent government that gives away free refreshments? I'm in!" Beyond a Steel Sky review "Wow!", you think, dispensing a can for gratis for the first time. 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. It's the insidiousness of Spankles that bothers me at first. A beautifully detailed, comic-book styled world, from the mind of legendary comic artist Dave Gibbons.Handsome visuals can't quite make up for bugs and a lack of urgency.Intelligent puzzles are interwoven with an intriguing dramatic narrative to deliver a compelling gameplay experience.Unravel dark conspiracies, defeat a terrifying antagonist in this dramatic, humorous, cyberpunk thriller, which explores contemporary themes: social control, AI, and total surveillance.In combination with a unique hacking tool, multiple solutions to puzzles emerge from player choices. An adventure set within a dynamic world, populated by willful characters driven by motivations that the player can subvert.‘Beyond a Steel Sky’ is a dramatic, humorous, cyberpunk thriller in which engaging puzzles drive a fast-paced narrative set in a dynamic gameworld that responds to – and is subverted by – the player’s actions. ![]() But the trail has led you from your community of desert wasteland dwellers, to Union City, one of the last remaining mega-cities in a world ravaged by shattering wars, and political meltdown.įortified and impenetrable, it is a utopia in which people live happily under the surveillance and control of a benign AI. A child has been abducted in a brutal attack. From Charles Cecil, creator of the Broken Sword series, with art direction by Dave Gibbons, legendary comic book artist behind ‘Watchmen’, comes ‘Beyond a Steel Sky’, the long awaited sequel to the cult classic ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’. ![]()
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