YMMV / Beneath a Steel Sky

• Awesome Music: There are several definite ear worms which you'll undoubtedly start humming along to, but the very best music is found on the CD32 version, where the title screen (also "LINCspace") music with its synthesised horn section is so catchy you might not want to start the game until it's looped a few dozen times.
  • Both the Hyde Park theme and the Top Walkways soundtrack excellently set the dystopian bureaucratic mood of Union City.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The courtroom scene, where justice takes the form of a gameshow, with Rob defending Hobbins. Seriously, where the hell did that come from? (It's also entirely skippable and no bearing on the plot.)
• Cult Classic
• Epileptic Trees: Played for laughs, usually. Rob's crackpot theories on the nature of the game world are priceless.
• Fridge Horror: Late in the game, Robert has to get his own fingerprints exchanged for Colson's, just to pass a scanner lock. Imagine, however, what it must be like to never have your own fingerprints ever again. The fact that the back-alley Dr. Burke is whom you consult for this doesn't help.
  • While Pushing Up Roses mentions some Artificial Atmospheric Actions happening in her video review of the game, she points out a rather common scene - for Robert and Anita to be talking with a random worker standing right next to them. Given that Anita ends up dead later on, it actually comes off as Paranoia Fuel since that person could have ratted you out.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Robert refuses to pick the dirty tissue in Reich's cabinet. On the other hand, someone does and shows it to everyone.
  • Dr. Burke has the same surname as a similarly incompetent Nigel. Hmmm...
  • Rob notices an old poster of the Anchor Insurance in a decommissioned subway tunnel. In his comment he wonders if Billy Anchor's grandfather was a complete zero too.
• Moral Event Horizon: Reich nuking Rob's entire tribe at the start of the game. Even when you see his fate, you can't feel for the guy.
• Narm: Rob's reaction to the destruction of his family...
  WHY YOU MURDEEEERRRRING!!!
  • At the climax, there should really be a long pause in Foster's line after his father dies. As it is, he just seems to get over it in record time:
  Father! FATHER! It's too late. It's over now.
• Nightmare Fuel: There are several examples throughout the game, which are best left for the player to discover.
  • The line "There's something in there... something HORRIBLE!" about the subway beast sums up a lot of moments.
  • The Non-Standard Game Over at the end. Rob gets plugged into LINC, struggles for a few seconds, then apparently has his entire mind and self erased and replaced with LINC.
• Nightmare Retardant: The aforementioned meeting with the terrifying subway beast (usually accompanied by no music or sound effects at all) can be made less scary if you leave the jukebox on while leaving for the subway tunnel, and save once inside. If you're killed once (as many first time players are likely to be) and restore your save, your monster encounter will be accompanied by... the swinging smooth jazz sounds of the club's resident Hot Club Quartet.
• Once Original, Now Common: The game's engine allowed for multiple NPCs onscreen at once, but also allowed them to continue doing their usual routine while the player was having a conversation with them or interacting with the environment. This at the time was impressive among video games, but has become a staple of game design since at least the mid-00s, making the limited use of it within Beneath A Steel Sky look timid.
• Paranoia Fuel: In his final incarnation Joey acts so polite, that after being used to him being all snarky, it comes off as rather eerie. This leaves you with a lingering suspicion, that the jerkass is still in there somewhere. It is kind of confirmed by how easily Joey/Ken wrestles the control from LINC when you plug him into it. Of course there was no better option but you wonder, what kind of shit may Joey pull off, when being in control of the entire Union City.
  • The recently released sequel then confirms that your paranoia was proper.
• Porting Disaster: The CD32 version, which includes the slow loading times due to slow CD drive, buggy save files, and a tendency to freeze the game. The only single redeeming aspect is the music, and that's it.
• Questionable Casting: Very possibly done deliberately, but in the updated version, there is precisely ONE person with an Australian accent in a game set twenty minutes into the future...in Australia. Almost all the other accents are British and Irish regional accents, with the exception of a French doorman and the protagonist...who sounds American.
• Squick: The more you know about LINC, the more you'll be grossed out by it. Even Rob is disgusted by many of the things he sees, and doesn't mind telling you about it.
  • When you get to LINC's core, the walls are covered in Meat Moss and fleshy tentacles. After the rest of the game has been set in a fairly realistic (if futuristic) city, there is nothing to prepare you for this, and it's terrifying.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Seeing Rob's tribe family being nuked by Reich at the start of the game is heart wrenching.
  • The death of Anita.
  • A meta example. A BASS fan tried searching Dave Cummins (one of the writers as well as the music composer of the game) for years only to find out that Dave died a long time ago. When Charles Cecil heard the news, he said he wanted to mend his relationship with Dave and offer him a chance to create a sequel.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: Take one internet, mix it with equal parts virtual reality and acid flashbacks then serve. Then you'll be close to what LINCspace is, what with the giant sentry eyeballs and coloured ying yang pieces which act as passwords. And some other stuff that is even more batshit insane, like dropping an angel statue (your brute-force attack) on a crusader (a security program).
• The Woobie: Rob has had so much bad luck that it's hard not to feel sorry for him.

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