Beneath a Steel Sky

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Dave Gibbons did the art for Watchmen, which is probably the best comic ever. The movie didn't show the "pirate scenes." And I'll confess that the very first time I read Watchmen, I skipped over the pirate scenes.

(In the Watchmen universe, since there were already superheroes, the medium of comics was dominated by pirates. In our reality, the pirate genre died off.)

I've since read Watchmen a dozen times and can quote passages by memory. I've read the pirate stuff loads of time. And specifically in those bits I am always taken back by how Dave Gibbons can draw some truly creepy stuff when he wants to. He has this ability to draw things that are just human enough to look anything but.

The opening scene to the adventure game Beneath a Steel Sky is sort of animated - I get the impression that Gibbons drew a bunch of things, and someone on the game's dev team was in charge of the motion. But the ENTIRE opening has the same creepy vibe that the pirate stuff did in Watchmen. Whatever that indescribable aura is, it's inside virtually everyone for BaSS's opening.

The game was $4.99, released yesterday or today, for my phone. I usually don't buy stuff that expensive for the iPhone. But I think I'm going to change that around. You see, I normally buy a game or two a month and hate them. I hate them, that is, if they work at all. They are expensive and doing this sort of thing has become a frigging money pit for me.

The games I've been getting recently for my phone - Blockhouse, Vector Tanks, Abiaia (Moron Chess) - they are GOOD. And they are cheap. All of the games mentioned in this thread are good, and together they've run me less than ten bucks.

I used to say, when I purchased a buggy retail game for the PC, that it wasn't the money, it was the principle of it. Well, this is the worst economic disaster any of us are going to go through, and I can't justify dropping thirty bucks on something laughably unfinished because I want the gaming industry as a whole to survive. This cheaper, handheld route has a lot of advantages.

...

... That being said, I do hate games that try to put a gamepad on the screen for the iPhone. Those can eat fois cock.