Syberia

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
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?