This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Ever play a game that stumbled so much in all the important departments, it was ultimately a chore to finish? Well I have, and it’s called Beneath a Steel Sky. Developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment, it’s an older PnC title that feels outdated even by 90s standards. Top that off with an obnoxious comedic tone and you have a very unenjoyable product.
You glean the backstory through mandatory and optional conversations, but the general gist is you’re in a dystopian Australia run by evil corporations. As protagonist Robert Foster, you’ve been kidnapped by one of these entities and have to figure out what’s going on: why do they want you? What illegal products is the company making? And why does everyone in Union City quake at the mention of the supercomputer LINC? You’ll have to figure this out for yourself.
If you haven’t guessed from this excerpt, Beneath leans heavily into cyberpunk tropes, albeit without the typical aesthetic. Gone are the neons of evermore, instead replaced with something more akin to steampunk with a touch of post-Gulf War kitsch. If you’re not inside a building, you’re gazing at carbonized iron surfaces 80% of the time, with a yellow tint simulating the desert biome encompassing the metropolis. The plainness doesn’t quite evoke corporate dystopia, however Beneath partly compensates for this with its interiors: not only are they individually-furnished based on the owner’s occupation, but they also hold a slew of garish advertisements centered around the commerce gimmick of the establishment. One room may boast dirty plaster strewn with Americana, another red paneling lacquered with sheen and portraits- the assortment on display can be quite a sight.
Or so I suppose. A large issue you’ll find with the graphics is how condensed and grainy everything is. I get that this was an inherent flaw with the DOS operating system, but Beneath’s more photorealistic schema makes it shabbier compared to other titles from that era like Day of the Tentacle and Secret of Monkey Island. You genuinely can’t tell whether the texturing you’re witnessing is from the fabric itself or the Windows’ compressment. Worse, still, are the human models, which, despite being partly designed by Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame, lose his pleasant penciling when brought into a pseudo-3D projection. Expressions are non-existent, every body-type is rehashed, and eyes look like they were drawn by a caveman trying to channel Charles Schulz. The one saving grace are textiles. Major and even some minor NPCs are adorned with special calicos that vary tremendously in color, length, and fashion. It’s so well-crafted it honestly does a better job identifying an individual’s socioeconomic status than the story.
That unfortunately might be the last unabridged praise I make as every other facet of Beneath falls apart, beginning with the sound. The three sonorities are horribly edited together, the music and vocality, in particular, being so loud you can hear the volume tear that occurs in speakers at higher decibels. While you can independently turn down the music, you have to use a master control for the voice acting that concurrently affects the others.
Quality-wise, the music is terrible. There are a minimal amount of tunes in the game and most of them opt for a generic exploratory leitmotif headlined by an atrocious brass melody. It doesn’t sound cyberpunk, nor does it express sci-fi in the slightest. I relished anytime the music was programmed to take a backseat to the SFX as, at least there, you get better value, from the humming of a machine to the clanging of instruments. It’s all repetitive, of course, and using items tends to have almost no synchronized din; however, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t at least some effort put here to make things atmospheric.
Appreciation for the voice acting will vary from gamer-to-gamer. With the exception of Foster’s robot companion Joey, it’s evident the creative team was going for some 60s cartoon vibes in terms of the enunciation; that is, the actors are walking a fine line between being overly-dramatic and tongue-in-cheek. There’s no doubt they’re laboring over simply reading lines off a page, but whether or not you find the performance itself annoying or amusing shall depend on your personal tastes. For me, the charm wore off within the first couple of hours, and it didn’t help that Revolution Software opted to hire a lot of artists specializing in mediocre Cockney accents (why an Australian would speak like that is beyond me).
Then there’s the gameplay. You’d think it would be simple, Beneath being a point-and-clicker, but Revolution someone managed to make things unnecessarily complicated. To start with, you’re not told how to access the menu- that’s right, the very thing that allows you to modulate settings and save your dang game is kept a secret, and I ended up having to Google it. And no, it wasn’t an obvious answer like press ESC or M that you could at least claim could’ve been resolved via player intuition- you have to literally press ALT+F5 (name me one other game that uses the ALT+FUNC combo?!). And on that note, saving has a couple of flaws. There is no auto-save, meaning you’re gonna have to create manual checkpoints constantly, and doing so is not as simple as hitting a hotkey: the file has to be clicked and then new text inputted over the slot, otherwise it doesn't register.
You’ll want to get a hang of this interface quickly as Beneath features death scenarios I guarantee you won’t see coming, and you don’t want to lose more progress than you need to. I mean it when I say that some of the most random encounters and actions will result in your termination, with the game occasionally being so condescending as to warn you AFTER you’ve perished+. If that wasn’t bad enough, Foster’s walking speed is abysmally slow, and while this does tend to be an unfortunate aspect of PnCs, others like Grim Fandango and the Daedalic library have contained features like a run option or double-click teleport to alleviate the annoyance.
Instead, Beneath provides a mechanic that simultaneously addresses both this sluggishness and the lost progress from premature deaths, as well any copious backtracking, which is the ability to increase the speed of the game. Either through the menu or CTRL+F, you can kick the tempo into high gear, allowing you to dart through areas and story beats fast. The problem is, this isn’t restricted to Foster- it gets applied to the NPCs and interactable objects too, which in turn impedes you when you have to do punctual actions with one or the other. It also boosts the celerity of any SFX in the vicinity, turning those monotonous noises into an irate cacophony.
As far as the puzzles are concerned, most of them are actually pretty solvable via good old-fashioned deductive reasoning. 90s PC adventures were known for their nonsensical solutions, and so it was nice to play a game that didn’t indulge (as much) in such cheap tactics. Sadly, though, I did end up having to consult a walkthrough more than once, and it was because of vital objects often appearing near-indistinguishable from the background. I know I’ve brought this up before with titles like Grim Fandango and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, but I actually felt it was worse in Beneath because of that aforementioned haziness of the environmental textures. There were many instances where I got stuck, only to read that I had failed to pick up an important tool from a prior chamber I thought was empty. This has reportedly been resolved in the iOS remaster, but if you opt to play the original PC version, be sure to run your mouse over EVERY square inch of the screen, otherwise you may miss out on a key you need down-the-line.
To end on two positive comments, I did appreciate how the game froze whenever you pulled up your inventory, as well as the chain reaction of gathering clues/knowledge from other NPCs and using that to open up new dialogue branches with others.
Now, we come to the story, and man is there a lot to talk about. Beneath was written by Dave Cummins, who also did the score, and let me say that his writing is tawdrier than his music. Reading up on the production process shows that there was an intent to hit a balance between serious and comical, but the end result is incredibly lopsided towards the latter. The game begins on a harsh tragedy, only to swiftly subside its thematicness in favor of a tone that can best be described as a sitcom. Foster will either end up in places where he makes dumb observations about the layouts, or engage in conversations with kooky characters and try and one-up them. The worst part is the majority of it isn’t even funny. You get dad jokes, bad puns, wannabe catchphrases, non sequiturs, and even toilet humor (thank goodness they at least staved away from pop culture references). Given all the petty attempts at quick wit, it truly felt like a rejected script from the Hanna-Barbera catalog. The only parts I did chuckle at were the interactions between Foster and Joey, primarily due to Joey’s “straight man” role culminating in him retorting with definitive statements whenever Foster tried to act stupid or patronizing.
Besides these lackluster confabulations, the narrative also suffers from neither building its world, nor exploring the dark subject material on display. Whereas other cyberpunk releases have you move throughout a city or cities, here you’re spending the entire game in a single building complex that houses a multitude of businesses. I’m not claiming this Dredd/Raid premise couldn’t have worked, but what you learn about Union City is gleaned purely from the single perspective provided by the denizens of this one area, no diversity in thought. Working-class or elite, everyone has the same views on the governing Council and the aftereffects caused by LINC’s genesis.
In terms of secondary concepts, anything interesting you happen upon is treated as a joke or purely surface level++. Pretty disappointing considering this is the one space cyberpunk generally excels at.
It goes without saying that I don’t recommend Beneath a Steel Sky. It’s a cult classic for a reason- it’s inferior to other PnCs and doesn’t offer anything interesting to compensate. It’s a shame too as the animation work is superb for the time, however, it can’t overcome the narratorial, visual, and technical downsides.
Note- Gibbons also drew comic panels illustrating the opening and closing moments of the game. So well done are they that, even without the voiceover, you could have easily interpreted the story. Brought me back to when I first read Watchmen all those years ago, though the screen stretching does make their pixelation a bit blurry.
Note #2- In a couple of cutscenes, you actually see some 3D animation in the form of a helicopter that still looks good. Definitely amazing given the limited budget Revolution Software had on hand.
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SPOILERS
+Getting vaporized by the elevator scanner after trying to prematurely use Reich’s ID results in the Guard’s commenting that you shouldn’t have swiped a stolen ID. Getting murdered by the third Android, redoing the section, and successfully uploading Joey to the second results in him telling you not to awaken the other droids.
++A surgeon trades organ transplants for surgical modifications, motorbikes were banned, a newspaper terminal lists the same headlines ad nauseam regarding terrorist activities, information warfare between the corporate hegemonies is said to be economically brutal, the endgame has you uncovering the production of androids for the takeover of the human race, LINC being a sentient AI, whatever that wall of flesh was in finale, and more. Very fascinating ideas not expanded upon in the slightest or outright ignored.
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Ever play a game that stumbled so much in all the important departments, it was ultimately a chore to finish? Well I have, and it’s called Beneath a Steel Sky. Developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment, it’s an older PnC title that feels outdated even by 90s standards. Top that off with an obnoxious comedic tone and you have a very unenjoyable product.
You glean the backstory through mandatory and optional conversations, but the general gist is you’re in a dystopian Australia run by evil corporations. As protagonist Robert Foster, you’ve been kidnapped by one of these entities and have to figure out what’s going on: why do they want you? What illegal products is the company making? And why does everyone in Union City quake at the mention of the supercomputer LINC? You’ll have to figure this out for yourself.
If you haven’t guessed from this excerpt, Beneath leans heavily into cyberpunk tropes, albeit without the typical aesthetic. Gone are the neons of evermore, instead replaced with something more akin to steampunk with a touch of post-Gulf War kitsch. If you’re not inside a building, you’re gazing at carbonized iron surfaces 80% of the time, with a yellow tint simulating the desert biome encompassing the metropolis. The plainness doesn’t quite evoke corporate dystopia, however Beneath partly compensates for this with its interiors: not only are they individually-furnished based on the owner’s occupation, but they also hold a slew of garish advertisements centered around the commerce gimmick of the establishment. One room may boast dirty plaster strewn with Americana, another red paneling lacquered with sheen and portraits- the assortment on display can be quite a sight.
Or so I suppose. A large issue you’ll find with the graphics is how condensed and grainy everything is. I get that this was an inherent flaw with the DOS operating system, but Beneath’s more photorealistic schema makes it shabbier compared to other titles from that era like Day of the Tentacle and Secret of Monkey Island. You genuinely can’t tell whether the texturing you’re witnessing is from the fabric itself or the Windows’ compressment. Worse, still, are the human models, which, despite being partly designed by Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame, lose his pleasant penciling when brought into a pseudo-3D projection. Expressions are non-existent, every body-type is rehashed, and eyes look like they were drawn by a caveman trying to channel Charles Schulz. The one saving grace are textiles. Major and even some minor NPCs are adorned with special calicos that vary tremendously in color, length, and fashion. It’s so well-crafted it honestly does a better job identifying an individual’s socioeconomic status than the story.
That unfortunately might be the last unabridged praise I make as every other facet of Beneath falls apart, beginning with the sound. The three sonorities are horribly edited together, the music and vocality, in particular, being so loud you can hear the volume tear that occurs in speakers at higher decibels. While you can independently turn down the music, you have to use a master control for the voice acting that concurrently affects the others.
Quality-wise, the music is terrible. There are a minimal amount of tunes in the game and most of them opt for a generic exploratory leitmotif headlined by an atrocious brass melody. It doesn’t sound cyberpunk, nor does it express sci-fi in the slightest. I relished anytime the music was programmed to take a backseat to the SFX as, at least there, you get better value, from the humming of a machine to the clanging of instruments. It’s all repetitive, of course, and using items tends to have almost no synchronized din; however, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t at least some effort put here to make things atmospheric.
Appreciation for the voice acting will vary from gamer-to-gamer. With the exception of Foster’s robot companion Joey, it’s evident the creative team was going for some 60s cartoon vibes in terms of the enunciation; that is, the actors are walking a fine line between being overly-dramatic and tongue-in-cheek. There’s no doubt they’re laboring over simply reading lines off a page, but whether or not you find the performance itself annoying or amusing shall depend on your personal tastes. For me, the charm wore off within the first couple of hours, and it didn’t help that Revolution Software opted to hire a lot of artists specializing in mediocre Cockney accents (why an Australian would speak like that is beyond me).
Then there’s the gameplay. You’d think it would be simple, Beneath being a point-and-clicker, but Revolution someone managed to make things unnecessarily complicated. To start with, you’re not told how to access the menu- that’s right, the very thing that allows you to modulate settings and save your dang game is kept a secret, and I ended up having to Google it. And no, it wasn’t an obvious answer like press ESC or M that you could at least claim could’ve been resolved via player intuition- you have to literally press ALT+F5 (name me one other game that uses the ALT+FUNC combo?!). And on that note, saving has a couple of flaws. There is no auto-save, meaning you’re gonna have to create manual checkpoints constantly, and doing so is not as simple as hitting a hotkey: the file has to be clicked and then new text inputted over the slot, otherwise it doesn't register.
You’ll want to get a hang of this interface quickly as Beneath features death scenarios I guarantee you won’t see coming, and you don’t want to lose more progress than you need to. I mean it when I say that some of the most random encounters and actions will result in your termination, with the game occasionally being so condescending as to warn you AFTER you’ve perished+. If that wasn’t bad enough, Foster’s walking speed is abysmally slow, and while this does tend to be an unfortunate aspect of PnCs, others like Grim Fandango and the Daedalic library have contained features like a run option or double-click teleport to alleviate the annoyance.
Instead, Beneath provides a mechanic that simultaneously addresses both this sluggishness and the lost progress from premature deaths, as well any copious backtracking, which is the ability to increase the speed of the game. Either through the menu or CTRL+F, you can kick the tempo into high gear, allowing you to dart through areas and story beats fast. The problem is, this isn’t restricted to Foster- it gets applied to the NPCs and interactable objects too, which in turn impedes you when you have to do punctual actions with one or the other. It also boosts the celerity of any SFX in the vicinity, turning those monotonous noises into an irate cacophony.
As far as the puzzles are concerned, most of them are actually pretty solvable via good old-fashioned deductive reasoning. 90s PC adventures were known for their nonsensical solutions, and so it was nice to play a game that didn’t indulge (as much) in such cheap tactics. Sadly, though, I did end up having to consult a walkthrough more than once, and it was because of vital objects often appearing near-indistinguishable from the background. I know I’ve brought this up before with titles like Grim Fandango and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, but I actually felt it was worse in Beneath because of that aforementioned haziness of the environmental textures. There were many instances where I got stuck, only to read that I had failed to pick up an important tool from a prior chamber I thought was empty. This has reportedly been resolved in the iOS remaster, but if you opt to play the original PC version, be sure to run your mouse over EVERY square inch of the screen, otherwise you may miss out on a key you need down-the-line.
To end on two positive comments, I did appreciate how the game froze whenever you pulled up your inventory, as well as the chain reaction of gathering clues/knowledge from other NPCs and using that to open up new dialogue branches with others.
Now, we come to the story, and man is there a lot to talk about. Beneath was written by Dave Cummins, who also did the score, and let me say that his writing is tawdrier than his music. Reading up on the production process shows that there was an intent to hit a balance between serious and comical, but the end result is incredibly lopsided towards the latter. The game begins on a harsh tragedy, only to swiftly subside its thematicness in favor of a tone that can best be described as a sitcom. Foster will either end up in places where he makes dumb observations about the layouts, or engage in conversations with kooky characters and try and one-up them. The worst part is the majority of it isn’t even funny. You get dad jokes, bad puns, wannabe catchphrases, non sequiturs, and even toilet humor (thank goodness they at least staved away from pop culture references). Given all the petty attempts at quick wit, it truly felt like a rejected script from the Hanna-Barbera catalog. The only parts I did chuckle at were the interactions between Foster and Joey, primarily due to Joey’s “straight man” role culminating in him retorting with definitive statements whenever Foster tried to act stupid or patronizing.
Besides these lackluster confabulations, the narrative also suffers from neither building its world, nor exploring the dark subject material on display. Whereas other cyberpunk releases have you move throughout a city or cities, here you’re spending the entire game in a single building complex that houses a multitude of businesses. I’m not claiming this Dredd/Raid premise couldn’t have worked, but what you learn about Union City is gleaned purely from the single perspective provided by the denizens of this one area, no diversity in thought. Working-class or elite, everyone has the same views on the governing Council and the aftereffects caused by LINC’s genesis.
In terms of secondary concepts, anything interesting you happen upon is treated as a joke or purely surface level++. Pretty disappointing considering this is the one space cyberpunk generally excels at.
It goes without saying that I don’t recommend Beneath a Steel Sky. It’s a cult classic for a reason- it’s inferior to other PnCs and doesn’t offer anything interesting to compensate. It’s a shame too as the animation work is superb for the time, however, it can’t overcome the narratorial, visual, and technical downsides.
Note- Gibbons also drew comic panels illustrating the opening and closing moments of the game. So well done are they that, even without the voiceover, you could have easily interpreted the story. Brought me back to when I first read Watchmen all those years ago, though the screen stretching does make their pixelation a bit blurry.
Note #2- In a couple of cutscenes, you actually see some 3D animation in the form of a helicopter that still looks good. Definitely amazing given the limited budget Revolution Software had on hand.
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SPOILERS
+Getting vaporized by the elevator scanner after trying to prematurely use Reich’s ID results in the Guard’s commenting that you shouldn’t have swiped a stolen ID. Getting murdered by the third Android, redoing the section, and successfully uploading Joey to the second results in him telling you not to awaken the other droids.
++A surgeon trades organ transplants for surgical modifications, motorbikes were banned, a newspaper terminal lists the same headlines ad nauseam regarding terrorist activities, information warfare between the corporate hegemonies is said to be economically brutal, the endgame has you uncovering the production of androids for the takeover of the human race, LINC being a sentient AI, whatever that wall of flesh was in finale, and more. Very fascinating ideas not expanded upon in the slightest or outright ignored.
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