It doesn't seem to bother the guy we're playing as, though. You start to wonder if the shiny veneer of this beautiful place is precisely that a veneer - a fake front concealing something altogether darker in the undergrowth. Monopods flick all around you - the omnipresent whoosh as they pass by will buzz and irritate in your ears like digital mosquitoes - but you'll never know who's in them, or where they're going. The Council wants you to think Union City is a clean, pure place where your comfort is always at the top of its priority list, but it sometimes feels like the buildings don't stretch up as much as they glare down at you, heavy and imposing and watchful. And now we're in Beyond a Steel Sky's Union City. You'll jog gently along, weaving between the unhurried folk with their multicoloured hairdos and futuristic fashions, camera flicked upward to take in the full majesty of this stylish metropolis and its neon lights, and there's a jarring sense of deja vu here. A health scanner will eventually recommend it, and that's when it becomes impossible to ignore the distant alarm bell chiming in the back of your head.Ī dystopian cityscape is nothing new, of course. You wonder why they're pushing it so hard.

Later, you might realise the tagline - 'Explodes your mind!' - is a tad sinister. You start pondering why there are advertisements at all given they're issuing cans for free, anyway. The Spankles mascot - a nightmarish hybrid of Ronald McDonald and the terrifying clown from Poltergeist that haunted my early years - leers at you from.

Availability: Out now on PC and iOS as part of Apple Arcade.Īnd then you'll spot another ad.'A benevolent government that gives away free refreshments? I'm in!' Beyond a Steel Sky review

'Wow!', you think, dispensing a can for gratis for the first time. Even before you breach Union City's walls, there's a kiosk giving away free cans of the stuff - actually, there's a lot of vending machines that give away the stuff. It's the insidiousness of Spankles that bothers me at first. Handsome visuals can't quite make up for bugs and a lack of urgency.

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