Irony Curtain: From Matryoshka with Love

PLZ MAKE MORE GAMES LIKE THIS! ITS PERFECT ! ITS SO ENJOYABLE! I LOVE IT!

A fun short point & click adventure, formulaically good with little player abuse... But fun only if you can stomach the anti-communism (or rather anti-soviet) heavy-handed satire, not balanced by any in-depth examination nor by much counter-criticism of other systems (e.g. capitalism). Without a good amount of knowledge on the player part, the game's representations may well be reinforcing unfortunate bias and untruthful clichés. Not a commentary on what the USSR may have been. If you ignore the historical context, the actual suffering that is depicted, then the game can be enjoyed. The puzzle are funs, the jokes are quite good. You won't get bored. A lot of attention has been given to each scene (+easter eggs) and voice acting is good. Except the US rendition of a couple of German lines. Some easy mini-games. Too bad there doesn't seems to be a way to break them in-game. The integrated hint system is fun to use just to ear the exchanges. Some areas are under-used. No replayability. You will miss what you did not try. But that's it. What would seem important choices are not - often delivering the very same lines even. Forced single-save auto-saving - harms the fun. Some unobvious inventory item manipulation. Some (litlle) counter-intuitive trigger flags (e.g. no passing of concrete for flour; no breaking down the concrete before getting the container?...) Some instances of disbelief suspension breaking behaviors, e.g. the comic bench reading that has to be used too many times to be credible/acceptable. Playing it, I was in the 4 star range. Looking back, I can't give it more than 2. It's like rating a comedy about the third Reich making light or glossing other the atrocities commited, using them only for the fun factor, being unapologetic about it. In the 90s it may have been better received. Culturally, this is not possible anymore. There are no good guys in this game, and that's a good thing. Better play DOTT or an Indiana Jones (with or without Nazis).

It reads like some edgy socialist's love letter to the Soviet Union. The first dialogue option you get, you get to choose that Communist Evil either doesn't exist, is justified, is good, or is as real as Santa Claus, which means that the writers have no understanding of Saint Nicholas of Myra. But other things that make this game unplayable: The dialogue is trite garbage. A script for a game like this should be funnier, punched up with dry social commentary. It is one thing, but there's a lot of poor writing. The Set Manager is too boring to be in a point and click.

The trailer says it all, it is as if someone made a cartoon of old Yakov Smirnoff jokes. Playing this game at my friend's place was enough for me. Yet another game that has done everything to make sure that it will never be played by any native Russian speakers. I mean sure, that market is only 150-200 million people, but how well did that policy work for Syberia 3? Unless, of course, there is some giant market for Russophobia among gamers, in which case the designers really nailed it. I would give this game more stars for effort, but I don't think we should condone inflammatory games about caricature Russians, or caricature French or caricature Africans or even caricature Americans. This kind of narrative design just cheapens games as a medium. We have already spent the last 25 years trying to prove that games are not just kids toys and this game is not helping our case.

One of those games, that demonstrate stuff like double standards, racism, whole stereotype-created world, but does so openly. For this, it deserves a bold one star as the comment section alone gives enough data for psychiatric study on both side of barricades. Probably valued by McCarthysts, ex-Nazis, other victims of post-WW2 West propaganda or what not, and they shouldn't be denied right to cultivate their personal hate. In the end, freedom counts and the game controversial theme is its main selling point, right eh? :)