Review by GamingCouchPotato.co.uk
Beyond A Steel Sky is the sequel to classic cyberpunk science fiction point-and-click adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky, released on the Amiga in 1994.
It has only taken 27 years to be made! So, it better be good.
You play as Robert Foster, you live in a community in the desert wastelands, a child had been taken after a brutal attack, and it is your job to tracking them down and bring them home. You find yourself travelling to Union City, one of the last mega cities on the planet, a planet that has been ravaged from war and political strife.
Union City is a seemingly perfect utopia, controlled by AI, everyone seems happy, everything seems wonderful, but with anything that seems so perfect, when you scratch beneath the surface, you find out that things are not at all what they seem.
Instead of a 2-dimensional world, that the previous game lived in, the modern point and click adventures takes on a much more 3-dimensional appearance, and a feeling of more freedom with that. Beyond a Steel Sky is very much a cyberpunk thriller, but within the point and click genre, whereby you will have to solve puzzles, speak to people, find out what is really going on, and try to solve the abduction of a child. And while that is a very serious subject, the game does have a humorous side within its Cyberpunk world. One of the achievements you will want to get is to make a robotic butler fall over, to do this you need to hack into the laundry machine, and change some settings so that the water over flows. You then return to the butler, and ask him to do the laundry, follow him downstairs, stand back and enjoy the hilarity. Many of the puzzles will need you to hack machines, but often you will need to engage in a lot of dialog with people, to find out the information you need, sadly this can sometimes feel a bit tedious, when you just want to get on with the game, and not just listen to seemingly endless dialog.
Early puzzles include helping people, who in turn reward you with things that will help you to solve the next puzzle. Similar in game mechanics to the Telltale games like Batman: The Enemy Within and Tales from the Borderlands, if you have played those games, you will instantly feel comfortable playing Beyond A Steel Sky. Although Beyond A Steel Sky does feel much grander in scale than those games.
The Good
The graphics are superb, everything looks and sounds great, and despite a few dodgy voice acting, overall, the acting and graphics are top quality. The game is easy to play, the puzzles are logical, and never too difficult.
The Bad
A relatively short game, and as mentioned earlier, some of the dialog can be a bit tedious.
Overall
If you are a fan of point and click adventures, or the Telltale series of games, then you will instantly fall in love with Beyond A Steel Sky, and feel right at home as you play, it is far from perfect, and a little short, but even so, it is a game you should consider adding to your collection.
I score Beyond A Steel Sky a very strong 8/10
Out now on PC
Release date 07/12/2021 on Xbox
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