Even the gaming experience itself is fairly easy as a whole. Not only is the interface simple to pick up, but Beneath a Steel Sky is a game that holds story well before puzzles. There are plenty of obstacles and challenges throughout the game, but the low number of hotspots in each location makes the solutions rather easy when compared to other adventures. That’s not to say you won’t get stuck once in a while. Pixel hunting has been all but eliminated by the game’s hotspot interface, but it’s not always clear exactly what Robert has to do next, and sometimes you’ll come across an obstacle that is impossible to deal with until later in the game but gives no indication that this is the case. Often the solution is just to walk around the city and talk to everyone, even if you’ve thoroughly interviewed them before. Robert will frequently have more to say after talking to other people or discovering new information on his own. The only downside to this is that Robert walks rather slowly and backtracking can get very tedious.

If you really get stuck, the game offers an easy way around the problem in the form of a built-in hint system. A blue question mark in the upper right corner can be pressed to access answers to whatever puzzle you happen to be stuck on at the moment. It’s context sensitive, which means it will provide hints only to the puzzles in your current location. This is a nice idea but has a bug or two of its own. For example, if you’re standing outside a locked shed door it won’t help you open the shed at all, but stand in the location where you need to use the item locked inside the shed, and the game will then walk you through what you need to do to get that door unlocked. Generally, though, the hint system fits the game well, for while BASS has a fairly open ended world, right down to certain characters wandering on pre-determined paths through the city, the puzzles themselves are fairly linear in nature. It should be noted, however, that the hint system is really more like an answer page. It doesn’t provide gentle nudges or hints so much as directly tell you the answer to the puzzle, so make sure you’ve fully given up before using it.

The only graphical enhancement is in the updated intro movie and epilogue, drawn by comic artist Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame, and these are quite impressive. The rest of the visuals are dated now, of course, but on a screen as small as the iPhone’s they make an adequate showing. Robert and the other characters have a somewhat pixelated appearance, but their movements are believable and the voice acting gives them all plenty of character as it is. The backgrounds, meanwhile, are just as beautifully designed today as they were fifteen years ago, and still convey a great deal of the game’s rich atmosphere.

Unfortunately, an inconsistency in the game’s atmosphere is one of my few complaints about it. BASS seems to idly flip back and forth between silly humor and chilling danger. Right off the bat, Joey mocks Robert for plugging his circuit board into a vacuum cleaner, and then five minutes later a violent act occurs right in front of them, complete with a slight touch of blood and gore. One minute Robert is taking off his coat to reveal he’s wearing a sweater with a teddy bear on it, the next he is in serious danger of being brutally murdered. This dual personality makes for a somewhat uneven experience where I wasn’t sure how seriously to take the plot at any given moment. For every dark moment, there’s one that wouldn’t be out of place in a game as comical as Monkey Island. Yet despite the mixed tone at times, the story is solid with lots of fun (if not entirely unexpected) twists along the way.

There aren’t many other changes in the remastered version. There’s a button that allows you to email a friend about the game’s existence, but one hardly needs a function to accomplish this. There’s another feature that allows the game to post tweets on your Twitter account as you discover new things. It’s an interesting idea, but the reality is that these tweets will likely amuse you more than anyone else reading them, even fans of the game. The only real addition to the story that I was able to discover is the brief animated epilogue after the closing credits. The animation has no voices or words, and is more confusing than anything else, but seems to hint that a long-awaited sequel might possibly be forthcoming. Perhaps after 15 years, the viability of platforms like the iPhone may finally help make that happen.

While it’s one of the more expensive apps on the market at $4.99, Beneath a Steel Sky – Remastered makes a solid showing on its new platform and justifies its price admirably. Adventure enthusiasts who have never played the game have no excuse not to download this classic, and existing fans of the game will likely enjoy the new format. However, since the game is legally free to download for PC, it all depends on how important the mobile aspect is to you. One thing is for sure, at least. This enhanced port shows that the iPhone and iPod Touch can easily handle adventure games along with the more casual games they’re currently known for. Technology may have been the bane of the city denizens in this game, but it has sure made my subway rides more entertaining for the last few days.