Syberia

I like the atmosphere, a little bit like Prof. Layton, but I soon gave up because there is just too much running for me. It takes forever to get where I want to go.

I belive this game is hugely overrated. After so many years the only things I can remember about this game are beautiful backgrounds, lots of empty rooms (to showcase backgrounds?) and necessity to WALK A LOT (so you could marvel at the backgrounds again?). The rest (puzzles, story, setting) was mediocre. I do remember many details of games like Goblins / Larry / Monkey Island / Culpa Innata much better than this. I believe System Shock or Deus Ex w/o combat could still be better quests than this. It looks like devs thought: 'Well, we got nice concept art, let's make a game around it! And let's split it in two, to cash more!'. I would not recommend it to others. However, many love the game - maybe I'm missing something..

the 3D rendering engine could not be initialized I will try on progressively older computers in my studio to see if I can find anyuthing that it does work on and update this review if I have any success. But from my first attempt on my top gear system I have to call this a dud and warn people not to actually buy this game as it stands. There is a FAQ acknowledging this error but a fix has not been provided at the time of this writing.

If I have to watch this woman scale one more flight of stairs, so help me... In this game you play as Kate Walker, an American lawyer who under no circumstances will take stairs more than one agonizing step at a time. You can double click to run across scenes. Not on stairs though. Occasionally, you'll be spared the riveting experience of watching her climb the entire flight of stairs, which I suppose is something of a mercy. This game has atmosphere which comes through beautifully across every scene. Unfortunately, roughly half or more of those scenes exist solely for you to walk/run through - often multiple times as you backtrack (which gets worse any time stairs are involved). Occasionally, there's something in a scene for you to click on, but it can be a little pixel-hunty, and on various occasions, you don't even realize that there are pixels you need to hunt. It's so tedious that I felt little desire to actually finish the game. The plot is okay, but far from riveting. Mostly, I finished it out of a sense of completionism and nothing else.

A lot of people consider Syberia a masterpiece. Probably because it was released during a time when there were relatively few adventures. But let me tell you, the visual style and general atmosphere of the game are, indeed, quite well done. The story as well deserves to be called interesting. But as game, Syberia just doesn't work in my opinion. First, let me tell you that Syberia tried to fusion Myst-style eerie worlds and wondrous exploration with traditional 3rd-person adventuring, inventory based puzzles and conversations. In the end, however, the game failed to really score in both departments. The wonderful world is almost completely devoid of hotspots. This works in Myst or Riven because you play yourself and have to piece everything together without outside help. In a 3rd-person-adventure, where you play another character, this is just lazy. There were so many things I wanted to look at or even use but it's just background. The game also suffers from some rather boring puzzle design and tedious long walks back and forth through empty (though pretty) backgrounds - and no way to skip them. At least, the English voice-overs are not as bad as the horrible German ones and actually quite nicely done. Do I recommend this game? Somewhat. The story and atmosphere are really well done and, well, it's certainly worth five dollars if you like adventure games.