I read a great quote somewhere recently (I wish I could remember where so I could give credit) making a very simple comparison to adventure games of today and older ones. It said:
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| Nice sweater! |
"An adventure game is not an adventure with puzzles in it. It's an adventure with adventure puzzles in it."
It may seem silly, and may not make much sense if you haven't played many adventure games, but it's absolutely true. Many modern "adventure" games I've played in the past few years have digressed from the tried and true model of the classics, into a storyline that becomes disconnected from the actual gameplay by forcing you to play little mini-games that "solves" the problems you're faced with. I'm not at all saying all games like that are bad or that it can't work (The 7th Guest, anyone?), it's just that games like Beneath A Steel Sky are so much more engrossing.
BASS starts with a comic book-like cutscene, telling the story of Robert Foster, a young boy stranded in the "Gap", a part of the Australian Outback away from the rest of civilization in a dystopian Earth future. Defenseless and vulnerable to the harsh wilderness, he is taken in by the locals to be taught survival skills.
Some years later, his village is raided by an unnamed security force, and Robert is quickly captured and flown away. His helicopter mysteriously crashed into a factory deep in a nearby city, killing everyone but him. He quickly escapes only to find that he is constantly being chased by the same security force and a man named Reich, who is also looking for someone named "Overmann".
The story takes him through a post apocalyptic factory area of the city which has obviously been hit hard by some kind of catastrophe (maybe extreme pollution or even nuclear attack), to the more civil and restored living areas of the rich folk near the ground, short forays into cyberspace, and to deeper, underground parts of the city that hold secrets that are the keys to your past.
I won't lie, classic adventure games aren't always easy. Unlike modern adventures and RPG's, there are no in-game maps, no quest journals, no arrows pointing to your next objective, or conversation recorders. BASS prefers to work with subtle hints while talking to NPCs, searching the environments, and examining items you find along your way. Figuring out exactly how to move on can require a lot of trial and error (SNSO is very important here!), and probably a few deaths (not nearly as many as the "Quest" games though). Carefully examining each screen is paramount to your progress, as sometimes items you can pick up or interact with are very small and often unnoticable. Items you pick up early in the game are sometimes not used till much later, some might be used multiple times, and some can even be combined.
BASS was re-released a number of years ago as freeware, which is freely downloadable from any source. GOG.com has a great free version of it that installs and runs as a Windows program, so no need to mess with D-Fend or DosBox. There was also a surprise on a recent Kickstarter campaign for a new Broken Sword game that saidd if the funding reached 1 million dollars, there would be a sequel to BASS. Check it out here.
Get the Windows version of Beneath A Steel Sky HERE. It requires a free sign up, which will also get you 9 other free games available to your account as soon as you download BASS. Not bad!
