Streets of SimCity
Overview
A solid adventure game from the mid-1990s re-released as freeware in the 2010s. Works on SCUMMVM, highly recommended. Might be one of my top three of 2012.
Review
Now considered a cult classic in adventure games, Revolution Software's Beneath a Steel Sky takes place in a futuristic dystopian Australia, wherein one Robert Foster is taken from his home from "The Gap" and taken to Union City, one of the mega-cities in economic war with other mega-cities in the continent. The whole backstory is explained through the intro video, with panels drawn by famed artist Dave Gibbons, creator of Watchmen. Robert was the survivor of a helicopter crash from the city (his mother didn't make it, leaving him orphaned) and was named Robert Foster from a beer bottle (though the U.S. release messes up the joke—the "Foster's" beer brand to "S.S. IPM (RAW)" ("WARM PISS"). In any case, Robert Foster, the first and possibly protagonist named after a brand of beer, finds himself trying to escape from a decidedly unfriendly guard who wishes to shoot him dead.
It's a point and click adventure game, similar to the LucasArts games. Normally these are sub-par, but BASS comes close to it. The puzzles aren't terribly obtuse, the music is good (sounds fine even without a SoundBlaster, though you can download an enhanced soundtrack to make it even better), and some surprisingly decent writing and voice acting, neither of which were very common in games from that time period.
I don't think there are any "lose states" per se (there are places you can die--use your ID card in the slot a second time after the guard pulls a gun on you, or stick the putty into the light socket before turning off the power) but there are points where it doesn't let you proceed without getting everything else. Try to jump into a hole in the first chapter without a crucial item needed for the next one (a wrench), and the game will do nothing.
Sadly, the story starts out good but gets predictable in the third act of the game (you'll know what I mean) and the characters are memorable but somewhat underwritten. Even the best characters, like Joey, Robert's snarky robot buddy (based on a circuit board that you carry around) and gets several new bodies over the course of the game, gets a rather disappointing personality change by the end of the game. There's not too much to say else about BASS that isn't mentioned in HardcoreGaming101, though HG101 tends to focus on some of the funniest and/or dirtiest parts in the game (such as the posters of enlarged breasts and rears in the surgeon's office, or some of the language bits) or the storyline (which follows in the paragraph below) as Robert explores Union City and the mysterious LINC computer which controls everything (including ID card terminals). It's also worth noting that for a game set in Australia, there's only one person with an Australian accent (everyone else has British or American accents), and it's not even a major character or anything.
Player Notes
I first played Beneath a Steel Sky sometime around April/May 2012 after reading about it in a book HG101 published and finding it as freeware on GOG, which was great. A few years later, I wrote what would be the first version of the review before making a second version after I played Beyond a Steel Sky and appended the "Good" review to it. This is the third version.
Port & Rerelease Notes
Beyond its initial DOS and Amiga release (later also expanded to the Amiga CD32), Beneath a Steel Sky was ported to iOS in 2009 as Beneath a Steel Sky: Enhanced Edition released in 2009 for the iOS that added new Gibbons-drawn comic book panels for the cutscenes, hints, and a new ending scene...yet even when BASS was brought to Steam in 2020 it was not the remastered version. Too bad.
Screenshots
