Beyond a steel sky switch review android#

It is the same with the societal systems that – there is no impact on the player at all, although they have a QDOS score it never changes and none of your actions affect it – a real missed opportunity. For a mega-city, you only explore a handful of small hub-locations (repeatedly), and these hub locations are gated appearing far larger than they feel.

The higher a citizen’s score, the lower their place in society – with high-rollers roaming the glorious playgrounds at the bottom and the more odd and interesting characters, such as a murderer with an obsession of collecting his victim’s thumbs, found at the peak of these towering skyscrapers.Īlthough you are presented with this full, vibrant city with interesting social constructs and systems the game does absolutely nothing with it. The Council is in place to oversee the population, providing guidance and services to ensure that citizens can be as happy as possible. Union City feels like an interesting place, with your social ranking based on the “QDOS” system which gives each citizen a happiness score built up from mundane tasks such as daily polls and time spent at work (none of which you do in the game). There is also an excellent hint system in place to help if you are more focussed on experiencing the story, and when I say hint, they will effectively point blank tell you the answer. The puzzles themselves never feel overly challenging with the majority involving the use of a handheld scanner to hack items in Foster’s vicinity and are varied enough that they don’t get old. Foster appears surprised at the utopian state of the city, but it is clear from the outset that there are darker forces at work here and of course it is your job to find the underlying cause and become society’s saviour.įoster sets voyage for Union City where he firstly must find a way to breach its huge walls and gain access to the bustling metropolis where he hopes he will be able to unravel the secrets of the city (and hopefully find the kidnapped child) by solving a wide variety of puzzles. Foster assumes the identity of a late resident of Union City, the same city that he had left in the hands of his AI creation Joey 10 years prior following the events of the first game.

Beyond a steel sky switch review android#

You take on the role of returning protagonist Robert Foster, amidst a situation where one of the children from his village has been kidnapped by a huge, android driven robot called a STALKER. So, when given the chance to have a look at the console release of Beyond a Steel Sky from Revolution Software, the long-awaited follow-up to the 1994 point-click-adventure Beneath a Steel Sky it seemed rude not to.īeyond a Steel Sky moves away from its point-and-click roots evolving into a 3D narrative focused adventure. The point-and-click adventure genre is one I have acquainted myself well with over the last twelve months through exploration of titles such as the classic Grim Fandango, the unusual The Procession to Calvary and the dark Twelve Minutes.