Syberia

The Good
The graphics and sound effects in this game were amazing. They combined to create imaginary, surreal, bleak environments that you could actually believe in. I found myself thinking, "Ya know, if there actually is some long-forgotten city of Barrockstadt or Komkolzgrad on an abandoned rail line, it probably would look a lot like this." Bleak. Grey. Run-down. Populated with small handfulls of slightly-eccentric inhabitants who take their unusual environments and the presence of advanced clockwork automatons for granted. As you progress towards your destination, the environment becomes more bleak and surreal.

My favorite example of this would be the Barrockstadt University. It's a massive, ancient, sprawling stone campus, yet there is a grand total of: three students, one professor, one groundskeeper/stationmaster, and three (three!) rectors.

None of them find anything weird about that, of course. Whether this lack of population is intended, or an oversight by the designers, I think it works to the game's advantage.

I also liked the plot-delivery method of Kate's cellphone. At certain points your character would receive calls from people in her life (her mom, or her boyfriend, or a coworker, or her boss.... and that's it. Not a very social girl, our Kate), and while these calls were often annoying, they do help one to understand the main character, and where she's comin' from.

As well as where she's going.

Unfortunately.... once you set aside the game-world itself and focus on the game's mechanics, there aren't many good parts left. The story was a bit far-fetched, sure, but still enjoyable. It's unfortunate that the presentation of the story was struggling uphill against the game itself.

The Bad
Well, looking back on it, quite a lot.

First, the voice-acting. Spoken lines rarely matched up with their subtitles. That's not too bad in itself, but on some occasions, entire sentences were dropped from the spoken dialog. There were a few pieces of information I could only find out by glancing at the non-spoken text before it vanished. Luckily, none of this information was actually critical. In addition, a lot of the voice actors sounded as if they were simply reading their lines out of context -- there wasn't much emotional weight added to lines that should have been spoken angrily, or happily, or what have you. It tended to break the fiction a bit.

Granted, in some of the cellphone conversations, Kate sounded... emotionally-dead. I'm still not certain if that's due to the overall bad quality of the voice acting, or if it was intentional during those times.

And speaking of dialog, you must speak to characters using keywords. Unfortunately, your selection of keywords is always extremely limited (to subjects like "Kate", or "Train", or "Hans" and such), and more times than I can remember, Kate would stupidly ask questions that I know the answer to, but she doesn't until she solves some lengthy puzzle, or talks to some obscure character.

Frustrating, to say the least.

The other big problem I had with this game, were the puzzles. They made logical sense, for the most part, but nearly all of them felt like they were cobbled together. And a very large number of puzzles required you to run from Point A to Point B, which is all the way across the city. Then run back to point A. Then back again to Point B. And back, and forth, and back, and forth..... This is how you don't design puzzles, guys.

Also, at the risk of giving spoilers, the ending disappointed me. A couple of facets of it were enjoyable, but there was all this buildup for a question over the course of the entire game, and you never find out the answer.

The Bottom Line
I dunno, to be honest. This game would have made a far better movie or cartoon than an actual game. Some people like "interactive movies" with puzzles grafted on; I certainly used to. It only took me a couple of days to complete; I think if this were a much longer game, I could recommend it.

The Good
* Unique story, characters, and setting not usually seen in games

• Good visual presentation

• No illogical or unfair puzzles
  
  The Bad
  * Puzzles are too easy

• Script issues, including pacing

• Hit-or-miss voice acting
  
  The Bottom Line
  Upon its release in 2002, Syberia was hailed as an instantly classic adventure game. Some even referred to it at the genre’s savior. Written and directed by Belgian comics artist Benoit Sokal, the game is a followup to his 1999 adventure Amerzone and is set in the same universe. With a low, accessible difficulty and focus on narrative, Syberia is best viewed as a transitional game between the puzzle-driven adventures of old and the modern breed of adventure games from developers such as Telltale Games and Dontnod Entertainment, which are purely narrative driven.

  Syberia follows the story of an American lawyer named Kate Walker. Walker is trying to close a deal between the conglomerate Universal Toys Company and the Voralberg company in France which for centuries has been manufacturing mechanical wind-up toys and automata. In the age of computers and cell phones, Voralberg’s toys have become increasingly irrelevant. When Kate arrives in France, she is surprised to discover that Anna Voralberg, the factory’s owner, and the person whose signature is needed to complete the deal, has just died. After doing some investigation, Kate discovers that the company has a secret heir - Anna’s long-lost brother Hans Voralberg. Making use of a clockwork train and driver automaton named Oscar that Hans designed, Kate undertakes a journey across Europe and Russia, through significant places in Hans’ past, to hopefully track him down. All the while, Kate’s relationship with her boyfriend Dan becomes increasingly strained as she moves farther and farther east.

  Unlike most video games, Syberia’s plot is very relaxed, while still retaining an epic scope. There are conflicts to solve, but nothing particularly menacing or dangerous happens to Kate for most of the game. Everything is resolved without violence or even much conflict.The only exception to this comes during the game’s climax, which features an obvious villain trying to kill Kate. This actually comes across as quite jarring given the tone of the rest of the game, which up until that point has been focused on intimate conversation and world building, rather than action.

  The visuals and settings of Syberia are one of its main selling points. Drawing from art nouveau and clockpunk designs, Syberia presents a very original setting, with technology that is primarily powered by purely mechanical, rather than electrical means. The train that Kate rides throughout the journey is entirely spring-powered and must be rewound at every stop. Even the automaton characters are implied to be using incredibly advanced mechanisms rather than electricity. Of course, technology still hasn’t advanced to the point where even an electrical automaton like what is presented here is possible, but the rest of the setting helps you buy into it. Indeed, the conflict between the past (mechanical) and present (electrical) is one of the plot’s main themes. Most of the early environments are very mechanical and retro, but as you get farther along Kate’s journey and further into Hans’ history, the designs start to be come a bit more computerized, while retaining a mechanical feel. It’s a neat trick. Technically, the game uses the popular style of the era: 3D characters superimposed over pre rendered 2D backdrops. Many backgrounds have moving FMV elements, though there are a few times when details that should be moving are static (such as flowing water) that can make some scenes look a bit odd. Animations are fine, though there are times when characters are speaking that they can sometimes appear choppy.

  Mechanically, Syberia is as basic as inventory-based adventures get. Most objects can only be interacted with in one way, and nearly everything you pick up is either used to solve a puzzle or provide background information on the story. When talking to characters, Kate can choose several one-word options from a notepad which changes depending on the situation. This can make it tricky at times to figure out what Kate will actually say, as there are times where the option has the same name but the resulting dialog is different depending on the situation. I just ended up clicking on every response to see what Kate would say. Thankfully, this isn’t a choice-and-consequence game, so I could click on dialog options without fear of messing up.

  Syberia is primarily a narrative driven game. It’s easy to lose yourself in the game’s characters and lore, which showcases the broad and beautiful imagination of Benoit Sokal. The game is more about simply taking in the sights, sounds, and history of the world. As a result, the puzzles of Syberia are surely among the easiest to ever appear in an adventure game. I never even looked at a walkthrough one time, and only very rarely was I even close to being stumped as to what I was actually supposed to do. The vast majority of puzzles are simple use item on object puzzles. There’s no combining items in the inventory either. The rest of the puzzles are simply about figuring out how to use an array of mechanical devices. You’ll hunt for codes and keys to start machines up, then fiddle with them for a bit until they work. Only one early puzzle required any guesswork to solve, but even then the amount of guesses it takes is very low. I will say that there wasn’t a single puzzle that didn’t make logical sense, even if some of them felt a bit contrived. I almost have to wonder what the game would have been like if it had no puzzles, as these only seem to be here because the adventure game genre demanded it at the time.

  As a result of this approach, Syberia is sometimes bogged down with long, talky sections that seem to exist simply to waste your time. One part of the game requires you to talk twice to three different characters in order to obtain a key item. This means lots of traipsing through numerous screens and sitting through their banal conversations.

  The writing and voice acting are hit and miss but do manage to remain compelling in the end. Some of the characters have excellent voices behind them, while others seem to lack enthusiasm and emotion, which can make certain moments fall flat. Even the lead character’s acting can be inconsistent, as some lines land far better than others. The writing can be a bit stiff as well, with needlessly long conversations and responses that don’t entirely make sense given their context.

  The music can be good, but like recent games such as Breath of the Wild, the game mostly relies on ambient sounds to set the mood and only occasionally plays music. It’s often very melancholy but occasionally magical, which suits the game’s mood very well.

  The version I played on my MacBook Pro was clearly based off of a recent mobile port of the game and isn’t actually the original release. Parts of the interface have cheap-looking comic sans fonts and oversized icons that are clearly meant to be tapped by a finger. There are also annoying achievement icons for when you make progress in the game, and reading documents require you to swipe the mouse up and down in order to scroll through them. In addition, all interactive objects are marked, with absolutely no way of turning this off. This eliminates issues with pixel hunting, something that would make this game hard to play on a small screen. At the same time however, it can feel a bit too much like a gimme for a game that is already very easy. While I don’t regret experiencing the game in this manner, I will say that the only way to get the pure experience is with the Windows version.

  While I certainly enjoyed my time with Syberia, I wouldn’t necessarily consider it an amazing adventure game. The writing is stiff at times, and the puzzles are so easy as to be almost non-existent. Nevertheless, the world is beautifully designed and the story is compelling, even if you’ll have to wade through a lot of slow parts to experience it. It’s an adventure game designed for those who want to experience an adventure, rather than bust their brain over difficult puzzles, something that would eventually become the norm with the genre.

The Good

By now, Syberia has become one of the classics of an almost dead genre. Yet at its time, it was anything but that; it was a mad attempt to breathe life into a corpse. The problem, however, is that this breath of life was, in fact, terribly stale. While the game may be appealing to the newcomer, for seasoned adventure players, it's almost embarrassing. Consider this a rant on why Syberia is not a classic, or even a good game.

First things first, though: the game is gorgeous. The graphics have aged gracefully; the combination of 3D characters and prerendered backgrounds still looks very good (compared to Grim Fandango or The Longest Journey), while the backgrounds themselves are stunning. It's clear the prerendered images were meticulously touched up by hand, with a consistent art style, looking almost like a pencil drawing inked over. FMVs are a different kettle of fish, with wooden animations and a few ugly effects (oh, the explosions!), but the rest of it? Beautiful; and one of the best-looking games I have ever seen.

I also rather like the interface, which is a logical conclusion of the trend adventure games have been following for years: single button point and click. It's barebones, and gives an extremely limited control, but it is a clear, reasonable design decision and as such, I can get behind it.

Sadly, however, it is now time to move to the next section.

Unusually for video games, Benoît Sokal has something of an auteur thing going on in Syberia. He's the lead designer of the game, but also a comic book artist, which explains a lot. As I have said, he certainly can draw, and he has an artistic vision. But he can't really write, and, worst of all, can't design games.

The soul of any adventure game is the writing. None of the true classics became a classic because of its puzzles, or its graphics, or anything else: it was always writing. And this is where Syberia fails tragically; and comic books are perhaps to blame. First of all, the story is simple. The whole thing can be retold in one paragraph, with nothing significant being omitted. American lawyer tries to find a missing, eccentric old man, whose eccentricity is an excuse for populating the world with all sorts of mechanical contraptions. That's pretty much it. It's a story worthy of speech bubbles, but certainly not branching adventure game dialogue. It also doesn't end; and I mean at all. Imagine listening to a story where the narrator suddenly pulls out a watch, looks at it, and says "Alright, so she went outside and there he was, sitting on a bench. Now go home." The ending gives a clear "to be continued in the next issue" vibe; and suddenly we learn the rather large amounts of backstory were just window dressing. Just an excuse to show more pretty pictures.

And regarding dialogue - there's nothing to write home about. There are characters in the game, and they talk. Everything about them is completely forgettable. There is just one exception of a dialogue that stands out: an old sailor who is talking in a hodgepodge of about five languages, curiously interpreted into English by his wife. The more of the languages you recognise, the more hilarious the exchange is. That's all, though, really. The dialogue system is simplistic, with a handful of the same, universal topics for every character, which certainly doesn't add any spice to it. It does the job. Full stop.

This single-purpose writing is actually one of the tell-tale aspects that reveal the true nature of Syberia's game design: things were put in just because adventure games, a genre Sokal has chosen for Syberia, usually have them. Their implementation is entirely superficial and often plain wrong. They are there just because a pure comic book videogame, where you would just keep clicking Next, would be too boring.

Yet this half-hearted implementation of the staples of the genre makes Syberia exactly that: boring. The game world is almost entirely dead. As I have said, visuals triumph here, which means the game is full of gorgeous, yet absolutely empty screens. My conservative estimate is that in about 70% of the game's screens, perhaps even more, absolutely no "gaming" is going on. They are there just to walk through. Every once in a while, a minor character is inserted into such a screen for local colour (and I do mean once in a while; there are about half a dozen of them altogether) who repeats the same mechanical response over and over again. The whole game is incredibly, mind-numbingly static.

And this brings me to the other major point, this one caused by something else than comic book design mentality. It takes a while before the penny drops, but the secret is that while the game pretends to be a classic third-person title, it is, in fact, a Myst clone. Gorgeous, yet empty and dull, fascinated by mechanical contraptions and puzzles that are not a part of the game world, but that exist only to be solved. It's quite obvious, really.

To put it simply, the puzzle design in Syberia is atrocious. It's an almost completely linear sequence of events, some of which are not connected at all yet have to be performed in the prescribed order, with copious amounts of backtracking through dead scenery. The train won't start because you haven't retrieved the MacGuffin yet. The train won't start because you have the MacGuffin in your inventory, but haven't put it in its proper place on the train (and after the train stops again, you'd better pick it up again, because you'll need it). Follow the numbers. Of course it makes no sense for your heroine to waste time doing this or that, but the story can't continue if you don't. The puzzles are not a part of the plot, they are added in, as an afterthought. The consequence, naturally, is that Kate is sometimes forced, by the twisted "there ought to be a puzzle here" logic, to do things in a needlessly complicated manner. There's a puzzle arising from the fact that she isn't willing to jump over a small brook, and another, involving running all over the place and talking to everyone who will listen, just because shooing away three cuckoos is apparently too difficult. The logic of the puzzles is twisted, yet the over-convoluted solutions are usually very apparent, because the extremely linear nature of the game means there simply is nothing else to do. And if the solutions aren't apparent, it's probably because you overlooked a hotspot in one of the screens which there was a good reason to consider useless. It's maddening; and I often caught myself wishing there was actually a "next" button to turn the pages of the comic book, skip a puzzle or two and view some more pretty imagery.

And that, to sum it up, is the sole reason why I can't consider Syberia a classic, its most peculiar characteristic: gameplay for gameplay's sake. It shouldn't have been a video game in the first place, that's what's wrong with it.

If writing is the soul of an adventure game, and puzzles are its flesh and bones, the only thing Syberia has going for it is a beautiful skin. Thinking back, there is nothing memorable about the game at all, except that it is gorgeous. And that's not even remotely enough.

The Good
Syberia was released to nearly-standing ovation from many fans of adventure games. Some went as far as to proclaim it the promised savior of the agonizing genre. So, what are the reasons for the overwhelming praise this game received from critics and players all around the globe?

Syberia was developed by a company that, by that time, had had some experience with adventure games; their previous works were Amerzone and Road to India. Syberia got rid of their "disturbing factors" (the overused Myst-like perspective and atmosphere of the former, the demo-like size and non-existent challenge of the latter) and expanded itself to become a more mainstream, full-fledged adventure game of the ever beloved third-person, point-and-click variety.

Though it does borrow a few elements from Amerzone, it cannot be denied that Syberia has a strong sense of style. That's its most appealing aspect, and that's how it managed to capture the hearts of so many players. The creators of the game let us enter a unique world. Usually, science fiction novels, movies or games are concern with either space travel or all kinds of futuristic machinery. The word "science fiction" becomes immediately associated with highly advanced electronics, spaceships, robots, and overly intelligent maniacal computer systems. But a "retro" science fiction of the beginning of the 20th century, science fiction in little quiet European towns of yesterday - that's quite unusual, and that's what Syberia is about. A strangely interesting world of automatons - mechanical robots - is definitely stylish. This is something no one has probably thought of before, and for that idea the game deserves credit.

A few of the locations are rather imaginative, with some interesting architecture and the elusive mechanical toys contributing to the peculiar charm. There are some nice gameplay elements here and there. You may rejoice at the occasional good, fulfilling puzzle and a bit of lively dialogue happening when you least expect it. I liked the idea of the protagonist communicating with her friends and family over the phone - particularly because that wasn't connected to any in-game activity and was there simply to flesh out the rather indifferently-acting main character a bit more.

Syberia has good production values. The pre-rendered background graphics are detailed and aesthetically very pleasing - though, in my opinion, the art is somewhat cold and cannot quite compare to the majestic beauty of the similarly-looking The Longest Journey. Also, everything is done in grayish tint - which is probably intentional, conveying the occasionally atmospheric, bleak solitude of the game's world.

The Bad
Syberia may be the next hippest thing in the world of 2D background art or even a clever metaphorical tale of human life for all I care, but it is not a good adventure game.

Most adventures live and die with their puzzles, and that's where Syberia fails utterly. There is no spark or inspiration in the puzzles at all. After you finish the game, only the cocktail preparation and perhaps one or two other tasks would linger in your memory for a while. Everything else is forgettable at best, and more often irritating. The mechanical puzzles are uniformly dull; inventory-based activities come across as pathetic shadows of the merry experimentation we knew from the comedy adventures of yore. Worse, however, is the fact that most objectives force you to run back and forth through lifeless landscapes from a solitary character to an obscure item well-hidden in the backgrounds, to an extent rarely seen in the classic representatives of the genre due to the game's abysmal linearity and lack of interaction. Even more so than other contemporary adventures, Syberia discourages experimentation and any kind of creative thinking; it contains almost no optional actions at all, grabbing your hand and sending you on an on-rails museum tour, occasionally sticking your nose into a puzzle that has to be solved here and now.

The puzzles are also poorly balanced. You encounter them virtually in every location you visit, and many of them are elementary easy to solve right away. As a result, you are able to actually solve many puzzles without even knowing that. Since you can't get stuck or die in the game and there are usually only very few things the game allows you to do, the puzzles often refuse to follow the cardinal rule of logic (first find out why you need to do something, then do it). Because of that, most puzzles feel like amateurish imitations of classic gameplay devices pasted into the game without a good reason.

The story of Syberia starts strong, but unfolds itself much too slowly. There is absolutely no sense of urgency in the development of the plot. It is as if the designers decided that the stylish setting alone would be enough to guarantee good storytelling. The whole game is spent overcoming ridiculously irrelevant obstacles while searching for a missing person. You could sum up this story in a couple of sentences. Nothing really significant happens in the game. True, the ending is not bad compared to the rest of the game, but to suffer hours of unexciting gameplay without any real story advancement just in order to see this ending is a bit exaggerated.

Syberia is also a very dry game. It sorely lacks emotions. Its attempts at humor are infantile at best. Its characters feel artificial and uninspired. You know there is a problem with the character cast of a game if its most interesting character is a mechanical robot, and even he comes across as forced with his uneasy goofiness. And all those dry characters will force you to engage in equally dry conversations with them. There's a lot of dialogue in the game, and almost all of it is dull. Almost the only exception I can think of is that guy hitting on Kate in different languages.

The Bottom Line
Syberia was met with joy by critics and players alike. People were longing for an adventure game, and this one was undoubtedly better than most of its genre cousins released at that time. To me personally, the success of this game only highlighted the gravity of the death sentence imposed on adventures. It's the story of The Longest Journey once again - except this time involving a lesser game.

The Good
The atmosphere is absolutely incredible... this is the first adventure game in over ten years than can come close to Loom when it comes to atmosphere. Beautiful graphics, perfect sound underscore, and a great storyline. Our hero, Kate Walker, is sent to the French Alps to conclude the overtaking of a toy factory and by doing so immerses herself into a mystery that takes her far east into Russia, encountering automatons and mammoths on the way.

The atmosphere is rich and sad at the same time. It reflects the timelessness of a post-war Europe slowly fading away into modern times. Old people reminiscing, abandoned factories, polluted rivers. A very moody and gray game, but it has an undeniable romance to it.

The interface is very smooth, the graphics and sound brilliant. I've heard some complaints about performance - I use an AMD Athlon 2800+ with 512 MB RAM and had no problems, so I cannot comment on that. Thus I give it full grades on the technical side of things.

A nice touch: during the game, you are often called on your cell phone from your boss, your mom, your boyfriend, your slutty co-worker. It has no real relevance on the game, but it's a very well done nice touch. I am reminded of the old Star Trek episode "The Conscience of the King", where Kirk and the antagonist reminisce about a happening on a far planet, and the audience gets so involved in that scene without a single picture being shown. The same here: we get a very good and lively account of things from the half a dozen or so phone calls during the game without ever seeing a scene or one of the people we talk to.

I never got too attached to Kate, our hero... she's very bland but turns more colorful during the game. The being bland is a GOOD thing though because you get less focused on the character and more on the developing storyline... I believe this is what the creators intended. It's completely unlike some of the older adventure games, where the game was designed around Roger Wilco, Larry Laffer, or Guybrush Threepwood. Here the story is the focal point - and what a story it is!

The Bad
Well, it was very linear. The puzzles were either too easy or too complex: since you mainly deal with machines and automatons, a lot of the stuff was guesswork: which lever do I move, which button to push? Also, it seems in the end as if the game was a bit rushed. For example, in the early game, everything was nicely animated. Later in the game, for example when Kate cuts open the cage door, no more animation: you just click with the mouse and it's done. Oh well, the game already occupies 1.1 GB on my hard drive.

Also, even though the graphics are all very nice paintings, there's too many of them, since two thirds of them are just for the flair. If there are three screens between point A and B that serve no purpose other than being nice to look at, that's real good... but when you have to pass between A and B ten times during the game and have to cross all three screens each time, it becomes tedious.

The Bottom Line
If you like adventure games, get it. If you don't, still get it, download a walkthrough from the net, and just play it to follow the fantastic storylines, cutscenes, and painting-like graphics. You won't regret it. Plus, right now you can get the "Game of the Year" edition which comes with an extra CD and includes an interview with Benoit Sokal (the creator), wallpaper, trailers, a poster, and more for around $20. That's well worth the money.

The Good
Steampunk style point-and-click with really nice graphics (just remember it was made in 2002) and fantastic voice acting (one of best I've ever heard in an adventure game).

Village mysteries, steampunk factories, amazing airships and intricate automatons - all this explored by young New York lawyer, Kate Walker.

The Bad
"Syberia" has some shortcomings, namely some annoying unskippable animations (like stair or ladder climbing) and it is quite linear, but the story is so great I would definitely recommend it anyway!

The Bottom Line
GRAPHICS: 8/10 AUDIO: 9/10 GAMEPLAY: 7/10 STORY: 10/10

The Good
Syberia is, simply put, breathtaking. It's not the graphics (see negatives below), but the sheer creativity and attention to detail that went into how the game is built; the amazing depth and consistency of the renderings, the slow, subtle buildup of the music, the way everything is put together is nothing short of cinematic brilliance.

The back story is also fascinating and unique; a cross between an Indiana Jones-like sense of awe and adventure, a fantasy world bordering on the plausible, and a narrative the flits back and forth between fantasy and reality convincingly. Finally, Syberia conveys a true sense of desolation; not oppressive and agoraphobic, as in Fallout, but rather lonesome, sad and beautiful. From a purely audiovisual standpoint, Syberia utterly oozes atmosphere.

The Bad
Unfortunately, Syberia has significant shortcomings, and fails to capitalize on lessons learned from previous adventure games. The gameplay consists of the routine "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" detours, which is fine, but does so in an infuriatingly linear way. There are no multiple quests to keep you interested, and very few intellectual challenges, so the player's involvement is essentially reduced to a "go there, do this, go back, do that, talk to the guy, go to the other side of the current map" routine which becomes badly predictable after the first episode or two.

Worse still, puzzles come in either the woefully obvious verity, with a lot of unnecessary walking and dialog to fill the blanks; the annoying sequence puzzles where you have to do very specific things at a very specific order (which may or may not make sense); or, and this is probably the worst adventure game anti-pattern I can think of (a leaf unfortunately taken from the pages of The Longest Journey), pixel hunting puzzles. The detailed but static graphics are actually a detriment here, with important objects dissolving into the background and easily missed. This leads to a routine of moving the mouse back and forth over the screen area in order to make sure no clue is missed, which leads to boredom and hurts suspense of disbelief.

Lastly, the game mechanics mostly work but, given the repetitive and far-reaching nature of the puzzles, can become insanely annoying after a time - moving from screen to screen takes forever, there's no way to skip non-cutscenes such as climbing a ladder, the inventory system is not particularly effective and there's no notepad or dialog history, which means you need to keep notes (even phone numbers!) manually. For any game, this is an annoyance (unless there's an actual intellectual challenged involved; Star Control 2 is pretty much the only example I can think of); for a 2002 game, this is simply inexcusable.

In the nitpicking section, I have to add that the graphics (not the art - the actual in-game graphics) are disappointing for the game's age. The characters only look somewhat believable, the resolution is low and everything is too static; computers back then certainly had enough horsepower to handle a little more detail and move moving objects. There may have been budget constraints here, but suspense of disbelief suffers accordingly.

The Bottom Line
Ultimately, Syberia is a modern version of Myst: beautiful, well-made, certainly a labor of love but ultimately a flawed game. Well worth the sixpence you can get it for nowadays, but I would have been gravely disappointed had I paid full price back in its heyday.

The Good
The graphics are beautiful. I wish there was a way I could just sit back and watch a slide show of all the scenes in the game. They are some of the best I've ever seen, and the ambient sounds that went with it were just amazing. Almost immediately I was immersed in the atmosphere of this game.

Character models look great. A real improvement over past recent adventure games.

The cutscenes are also very beautiful. You even get to go back and watch them again on the main menu, which is something I did a few times.

The Bad
Allright, the story isn't that bad, and the cutscenes and in-game graphics are beautiful, but like many other recent adventure games, this game's biggest flaw is the completely unlikely method of completing puzzles and getting anywhere in the game. The story is something like, you find out that this company that you're trying to buy (or rather, a company you represent is buying this company) belongs to an heir that everyone thinks is dead (and the reason why is so mind-baffling stupid), so you must go find him and convince him to let you buy the company.

Well, that sounds like a nice adventure detective-type game. Now, if you were a lawyer trying to track down this heir, what would you do? Would you break into churches and rummage through peoples' dressers and dig up caskets and steal a train? Well that's pretty much this lawyer's method of "puzzle-solving".

That was by far the most annoying aspect of the game. And since there's no way around it (for God's sake, she's carrying around a cell phone! USE IT, WOMAN!) that's just what you have to do. But there are other, more minor parts of the game that I found to be annoying. Like some of the voice acting. This "Mumu" kid pisses me off. Whoever voiced him (or wrote his dialogue) should be smacked.

One part of the game REQUIRES you to draw a picture of a mammoth for this Mumu kid. Now, you have paper, you have a pen, why don't you just draw it? No, apparently you've never SEEN a mammoth, so you have to go find a picture of one. Didn't see the barely-visible picture of the mammoth on the wall? Well, you can't go any farther in the game until you see it so you can sketch it. I think I spent three days just wandering around every single part of the town looking for a way to go on with the game. I finally resorted to using a walkthru and discovered that there was this picture of a mammoth on the wall of an attic...I didn't see it when I was up there.

Now, some people might have seen it. I could have just been blind. But my point is, a lot of the puzzles in the game require you to have eagle eyes, to be able to scrutinize every single inch of the game for anything that you might have to use later. I play adventure games because, to me, they're like an "interactive movie". But I don't remember seeing any movies where the main character spends the entire show on his hands and knees on the dirt road searching for any sort of pebble that might be out of place.

The Bottom Line
I'd say, pick it up just for the incredible graphics. But for God's sake, can't they make an adventure game that requires you to do realistic things and complete puzzles that don't involve such mind-numbling scrutiny?

The Good
If you are reading this review, I will assume you haven't played Syberia but are thinking about it. Let me say, adventure fans, you are in for a real treat! Not only are the graphics and music really, really wonderful, the story is a captivating and evolving tale.

I was disappointed with Microids' "Myst-like" game Amerzone, and I am very pleased to tell you this game is a HUGE improvement. Not only is Syberia a 3rd person adventure, the mechanics of the game include everything I like: Easy install/uninstall, point-and-click interface, subtitles On/Off option, plenty of Save Game slots, and no disc swapping.

You'll travel to truly picturesque places where the atmosphere is alive with movement - water ripples, birds flutter, leaves blow in the wind - and the sounds of life are everywhere. The character you play is a lovely young woman named Kate Walker, a New York lawyer, sent to get a company buy-out contract signed. She moves fluidly through her surroundings and her actions are portrayed very naturally. You'd think you are watching a real actress rather than a rendered one.

The puzzles all center around "automatons" - cog, wheel and lever wind-up machines of old. None of the puzzles are difficult, and all of them are unique and well integrated into the plot. The owner of the toy company you seek was the inventor of automated toys most of which require a key or other metal part to work. (Another plus - NO maze, NO slider puzzles!)

In the midst of the beautifully rendered backgrounds plays gloriously orchestrated, classical music. When Kate accomplishes an important objective, the music changes to congratulate you. When Kate gets surprises by something, you receive different music. (Wait until you hear the opera!)

Sound effects of the automated machinery always sounded appropriate. In addition you'll hear Kate's footsteps going up and down steps, opening and closing doors, the flood of water gushing as you open a gate and many other normal sounds. These, in combination with the scenery, give you the feeling of actually "being there".

The voice acting is excellent and lip-sync is done very well. I noticed that most of the conversations do not give you a "head shot" of the other party. Therefore, lip-sync perfection was not required.

The Bad
Only a few annoyances are worthy of comment. Those include:
1. Hard-to-see cursor changes on interactive spots.
2. Extra long load times for the cut-scenes
3. Too much travel in between locations to accomplish little things

The ending was totally satisfying to me, but I wasn't expecting it to happen so fast. I finished the game in a day and a half (with breaks, of course), and it left me wanting more.

The Bottom Line
I consider Syberia fantastic - worthy of a "5 star" rating! The story is original and lifelike amidst an environment that is pleasant to explore. Puzzles are integrated well and easy to work (once you have found the proper parts). And your character evolves and grows during the course of her adventure.

By the end of the game, I actually shed a tear or two -- why, I began to care about Kate! Only a handful of games I've played in my life thus far have actually evoked that kind of emotion.

I definitely recommend this game and anxiously await the sequel.

The Good
..This isn't a game you must buy and play. The whole agiotage around this game was always a mystery to me. No, no, I understand that Microids put a great amount of money into the advertisement company. I also can't deny that graphically Syberia is stunning. Sokal is indeed a great artist. But..

The Bad
..not a great adventure designer. The whole concept is nothing more then "interactive movie". And not a very good one, actually. Almost everything that makes adventure game an adventure game was simplified or even taken away.

Plot? It sure looks intriguing at first. But bad writing quickly ruins the whole concept. What the game suggests us is a very (and I mean VERY) linear journey from one fixed point to another. And at every stop some odd thing happens, delaying the departure of our young heroine. I don't really mind the drunken cosmonaut that denies to open the gates to freedom. OK. But a madman that steals Oscars' hands? What a stupid and wire-drawn thing is this?! And that's how most things happen in the game.

You get quickly bored watching Kate Walker running through hundreds of beautiful, but empty locations in search of something you can interact with. And even after you find a rare inventory item or a mechanism, all you can do is follow the prescripted procedure that can hardly be called "a puzzle" or even "a problem". The only available item you can use on the only available hotspot. Isn't that wonderful? Use a screwdriver on bolts. Logical? Yes! Entertaining? Hardly.

The smart cursor was invented many years ago, with games like Kyrandia or Gobliiins. But even though it had very limited abilities, it still allowed players to explore locations, to "feel" the world. This time it often serves as a triggering mechanism that allows player to move from one point of story to another. Exploration and interactivity, the main components that were introduced by IFs and always associated with adventures, were almost reduced to zero.

Another "high point" that many people discuss is characters. Now this is really surprising, as all of them are so badly written that you can hardly tell anything about the past or present of most people you met. Several identical questions that Kate comes up with are of "Who are you?" and "What should I do?" variety. And Oscar.. If someone asks me what is a bad way to present a robot in an adventure game, I'd show him Oscar. "Hello, Kate Walker". "Where are we going now, Kate Walker?" "Good by, Kate Walker".. It's plain awful! Play Feeble Files, or Chronomaster, or Y2K for comparison (and they have wonderful robots!). Or any of Gabriel Knight games for that matter, to see REAL personalities, memorable characters that you want to believe in. Which don't act like badly animated dolls.

The Bottom Line
A highly overrated interactive movie that was called "an adventure" by mistake. I would've closed my eyes, if it didn't become a cult. Not a "classic", just a cult. The game surely introduced many new people to the genre. People that are in love with Syberia and don't want to hear about anything that is not of the same beauty, length and style. And developers? They understand that masses don't need deep stories and smart puzzles, nor interactive environment. Pretty pictures and female heroine is enough to get some money from the product. Sokal already showed his fans that he knows nothing about adventure development (first with boring sequel, then - with ugly Paradise). But Syberia is still considered by many as "the best adventure ever". Now, who put the last nail in the coffin of adventure genre?

The Good
OK, you think to yourself after reading the headline, “oh another one of those big queens who cry from anything”. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I AM gay, but I am ex-special unit soldier who fought both in Lebanon and in Gaza. If I cry over a computer game, you can guess that this game is a real gem.

I think in order for you to feel Syberia, you have to play it twice. Then, the people in the game will really matter to you. The main characters in the game make you feel sorry or happy for them long after you finished the game.

Take for example Helena Romanski, Does she not represent the fear we all share of getting old and loosing our social status? Are we all not afraid to be alone toward the end of our life? When you hear her talk, sing you can only feel so much sorry for her.

And what did you think about Anna? How can one not sorry and sad for her loss? Two days before she was to meet her brother whom she has not seen for over 50 years, her heart gave up, probably from the sorrow of having to sell the factory.

The scene where Kate tells Hans about Anna is simply most moving.

In a way, Kate’s personality is somewhat of a disappointment. She is more the glue that connects the plot and brings you closer to all the other characters. Normally the main character is the one you are supposed to identify the most, not in this case. But, who knows? Maybe this was the intention.

From a technical point of view: The game still looks great, and the music is simply phenomenal. I bow before the composers.

Voice acting was also superb.

The game interface is also very easy to use.

The Bad
You need to walk a lot to solve some of the puzzles. This makes the game somewhat tedious.

The Bottom Line
If you want a moving long lasting game experience, play Syberia!

The Good
It was unbelievably beautiful in the artwork and the movement of the characters. On a fast computer, one will be very happy with this game. The voice acting was also excellent, and it was long enough for a busy highschooler to finish her homework fast enough daily to continue it for weeks. Those who have weird imaginations will also like Syberia.

The Bad
If all you do is gaming and you aren't very busy, then this game will be short. Also, if your PC is not top-notch or it's already loaded with other stuff, then this game will only be slow, crash every 5 minutes, and irritating. My computer just happened to get some bug that week, so it crashed every 10 minutes and the "virtual memory" message appeared every frikkin time! But I was still satisfied, and as a child who grew up with the beloved King's Quest series, I was happy to see adventure gaming still alive.

The Bottom Line
Unique. Compelling. Beautiful. Get some popcorn.

The Good
This is an exceptional game, and not for the reasons you might think. As a game, it is abominable, completely linear, with absurd puzzles, and so on. And yet I loved it, and I see, from other reviews, that all those who have played it have been swept off their feet too.

Why? There is nothing special about the graphics. The scenes are a series of rendered backgrounds which you cannot pan unlike, say, Exile (Myst III). The camera is set and unmovable for each scene, only Kate Walker (that's you, gamer) and her occasional side-kick move against the background. Nothing to write home about.

The gameplay is abominably linear. Don't you dare even think of doing this until you are allowed to, after having done that.

So? So where is the magic? (It is a magical game).

So where is it? Hidden. When you play "Myst" you cannot hold back a "WOW!" of wonderment. Not so here. The "WOW!" is there, but subdued. There is nothing alien at all about those landscapes, that architecture, even those clockwork automata. But everything is... unfamiliar, yes unfamiliar enough, to wrench you out of this our world into the world of Syberia, without fully realizing how, or why.

What else? Oh, that is the one. Kate Walker (you, gamer) slowly grows in understanding and in wisdom. By the time it is time for her, her mission fulfilled, to fly back to New York, to her job as a lawyer under a perfect arsehole of a boss, back to make up, perhaps, with her perfect arsehole of a boyfriend, and back to her harebrained pain-in-the-bum of a mother, you just know that she will kiss good-bye to the "good" life for the frozen barrenness of Syberia. And that is where the story, the game, becomes a morality play. Kate takes to her heels to catch the Syberia-bound clockwork train which is leaving right now. Running like mad through the dining room of the Grand Hotel Cronsky, she slips, knocks over a chair, regains her balance, resumes running, away from New York, her boyfriend, her boss, her mother, to catch the train. That split-second incident, the slipping, the knocking over of a chair, is what turns this game into an unforgettable experience. This is no longer a game, it is life.

There are some very funny scenes too, some of them, alas, inside jokes which most players will miss. Kate's clockwork train runs out of spring power in Barrockstadt, a university town and a perfect spoof of Oxford and Cambridge. She has to take her train to a winding station. To do that, she needs to get it towed by a barge. Kate hasn't got the money (another piece of absurdity: who would go on such an errand without $100 in her pocket?). So she tries to talk the barge owner into doing it for free, as a favour. The barge owner replies: "Favor, favor, alors buik not full, mooonney, ya, buik full." Unless you know French and Flemish you won't appreciate it: "Favour, favour, then belly not full. Money, yes, belly full". Then Kate tries idle chit-chat. There is a marvellous aviary in the railway station. Has he been to see all those birds? Comes the answer: "Met U, mooie girl, ya, ya, met plezier!" (with you, beautiful girl, yes, yes, with pleasure!) Kate does not understand of course, so the barge owner's wife translates: "We no leave boat, husband is land sick."

The Bad
The puzzles. They bring nothing to the story, but aggravation. Some are trivial, some absurd, some aggravating. Aggravating such as when one puzzle requires you to have listened to Kate's mother's over-the-phone logorrhea to solve the Russian diva's puzzle. It was all useless garbage, along with her boyfriend's calls, and her boss's calls, and you are expected to have written down all that crap? (it doesn't show on your journal). Or again, you are supposed to mix a cocktail that will make the Russian diva regain her voice. Following the instructions, you mix the cocktail. She drinks it. No effect. So? So you think you have stuffed up, and you try again, different ways. Wrong. What you must do is mix it again, exactly the same way, and it will work. I object to that. There are many more such examples of aggravating absurdities, such as when you are told that a document must be signed, when, in fact, you should have it stamped.

The Bottom Line
What other game could be worth playing, with such stupid, irrelevant puzzles, with such a linear story? And yet, what other games end up with such flying colours against such a handicap? "Syberia" just has to be something exceptional.

Ah, if only, if only....

The Good
Syberia begins a fascinating tale of a young lawyer Kate Walker, who must locate a heir for Voralberg automaton factory. The heir, Hans Voralberg has left his home village decades earlier to find the fabled island of Syberia, where mammoths roam the land covered with blue grass.

The graphics in this game are in one world beautiful. The whole game is made with pre-rendered graphics, while the characters are 3d-models themselves. The music and the voice acting are good as well.

Most of the puzzles are pretty logical and in places the game is almost far too easy. From this reason the game doesn't give out much of clues, as if it would, even the not so seasoned adventure gamers would run through the game in a day or two.

From time to time the story goes forward with stunning CGI-animations, which range from the train leaving from the platform to an aging opera singer doing her last appearance in a dying mining town. You can watch these animations later, if you so wish, as they appear in the cinematics menu of the game.

The Bad
Despite the fascinating story some of the dialog is pretty awful. There also is a fair amount of running between places, because the game is full of screens, that are there just to, well, amaze the player of how much time was put in to making those stunning surroundings.

The surroundings of the game, despite are animated, feel rather static, as there really isn't much you can operate. There isn't even your standard look-command, which would allow you to examine the area you are in. The game is very limited in that area, and that is a shame, as it would be nice to get some other stuff out of the surroundings despite just the pretty looks.

The Bottom Line
all in all, Syberia is solid, good adventure with a good storyline behind it. Benoit Sokal has managed to create an atmospheric little gem, which provides good, yet rather solid experience.