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
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
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.