Syberia

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
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
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.