Beyond A Steel Sky iOS, PC
Old habits die hard for Charles Cecil and Revolution Software. In many ways, that’s no bad thing: within minutes of starting this followup to the studio’s other best-loved game, we’ve got the makings of a cracking mystery involving a corpse, a kidnapping and a fearsome mechanical quadruped. By the time it’s over, we’re reminded that Cecil knows how to craft – and, just as importantly, pace – a three-act story with a proper beginning, middle and end. The witty dialogue, fondness for puns and love of regional accents with which we associate the studio are there in abundance. And yet despite promising an evolution of the point-and-click adventure, too often it leaves us grumbling about its puzzles – not least since a litany of technical issues leaves us unsure whether it’s us or the game that’s missing a vital piece of the solution.
For returning players, part of the early intrigue comes from the promise of a look at how Union City has changed since the original game. Yet protagonist Robert Foster’s homecoming is tantalisingly withheld – the area around its entrance amounts to both a tutorial and an extended puzzle as he tries to figure out a way in. The place is a microcosm of the game’s weaknesses. The rampant screen-tearing is such a distraction that we enable v-sync within minutes of starting. During a dialogue exchange, the character we’re talking to sporadically disappears from view. Another clips through a piece of playground equipment, leaving us shuffling left and right so we can talk to them rather than interact with the object. While speaking to a third outsider, the subtitles vanish along with all dialogue options, forcing a reload. Mercifully, the game autosaves regularly, though you begin to wonder if its frequency is partly a result of such shortcomings.
Yet this extended intro highlights the game’s strengths, too. Dialogue exchanges are brisk and funny, such that you’ll likely exhaust most potential lines of conversation even as the UI makes it clear which avenues of enquiry will yield story- or puzzle-critical information. And it’s not long before Foster is given a handheld gadget that lets him hack into any computerised device, static or otherwise, and change the way it operates. Already, there’s opportunity for mischief: we use it to summon a hapless repairman before nipping into his office to steal a sandwich. Then, for good measure, we use it on a vending machine so that an alarm blares when anyone tries to use it. But even here, Cecil’s insistence that the player should be able to figure out every conundrum simply by studying their surroundings and the predictable routines of the nearby NPCs proves misleading. An electric fence hidden behind a waterfall is merely the first example of the game’s sometimes abstruse logic, and the process of interrupting moving characters when you need to either talk to or use items on them feels clumsy throughout.
Once the gates swing open, however, our doubts are temporarily cast aside by a rather glorious reveal, set to a sweeping score. The utopia promised by Foster’s robot friend Joey appears to have become a reality, as Foster stands in wide-eyed awe, gazing through his transparent transport pod that speeds smoothly along a twisting skyrail carrying him up, down and around a gleaming future cityscape. It’s the first of a series of majestic sights that showcase Dave Gibbons’ art direction at its finest. If the animation still leaves a little to be desired, the views are often spectacular. Inevitably, all is not as it seems, as Foster soon discovers when returning to the apartment home of the man whose identity he has stolen. In a neat twist, citizens here are looking to go down in the world; social climbers like Songbird, the dead man’s wife, are actually aiming to descend. It’s on the upper levels where you’ll find the rust and grime of the city’s industrial zone and its more impoverished inhabitants.
It’s here that Beyond A Steel Sky really hits its stride. An interrogation by a suspicious official is a set-piece standout: though you can prepare by rummaging through the belongings of the man whose life you now inhabit, his widow will perform a silent game of charades behind your interviewer should you take too long over any answers. And while your hacking device is mostly used to change a system’s verbs, adverbs soon come into play. A museum exhibit of a synthetic arm can be reprogrammed to act aggressively, letting you flick the Vs at an unfortunate patron. Meanwhile, an optional bit of tinkering provides one of the game’s funniest moments, as you give another exhibit an inappropriately alluring voice. Later, there’s a conceptually ingenious moment where you enter a physical manifestation of a computer’s memory, reborn as a Dr. Manhattan-like avatar. And though it makes little narrative sense that Foster would put a pursuit on hold to watch it play out, there’s a delightfully cathartic scene where you get to publicly embarrass a wealthy blowhard at a poetry recital.
Such playful invention only just makes up for the myriad bugs, game-breaking or otherwise, which increase in volume as the game moves into its third act. During a party scene, we watch in bewilderment as we direct Foster to examine an object, only to see him calmly and slowly walk away and up two flights of stairs before delivering his observations. We experience two hard crashes, and another puzzle where one key element refuses to play nicely. If that hint system weren’t present we’re not sure we’d have reached the end, though the payoff is worth the hassle, particularly for those who’ve been in Foster’s shoes before. Even so, as the credits roll to silence – which smacks less of a stylistic choice so much as a studio running out of money or time – we’re left to reflect on a game that only sporadically lives up to its billing. In the end, it falls beneath our expectations as often as it stretches beyond them.
Playful invention only just makes up for the myriad bugs, game-breaking or otherwise