is a 3D point-and-click adventure game which is the sequel to 1994’s 2D point-and-click-adventure game Beneath A Steel Sky. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t play the first one, although some knowledge is helpful. You play as Robert Foster, returning to a futuristic city-state he freed from an evil AI ten years ago, because new bad things are afoot (these involving kidnapping children from the land outside the city). You have to infiltrate the city, team up with your robot pal Joey, and save the day. In its final form, this is looking a lot better than when I previewed it – the animation bugs are gone, and there’s a new layer of polish on everything.
But that is not what I want to talk about. Very early on in the game, a precocious child gives you a hacker tool to help with the whole saving the day thing. It is amazing. It is ostensibly to solve puzzles, but what it actually does is make you an agent of chaos capable of bringing any automated system to its robotic knees. I think it’s the best puzzle doohickey I’ve seen in a game for a long time.