Syberia

So many people raved about this game I felt sure I was in for a treat. Alas whatever goodness there might be is buried under heaps of tedium. You walk everywhere, through window dressing screens with hard to find exits, and it takes forever. Fast travel would have been nice. The puzzles are either simple or maddeningly arbitrary. Three hours wandering around part 1 and I am done. Sorry.

This game is a much loved classic and as a long time fan of the genre I was excited to get it for free and give it a try. Boy was I disappointed. The pace is tediously slow. The puzzles are easy but at the same time quite absurd. The dialogues are a bit stiff. I'm sorry but I'm quitting after getting to the second location in the game because I can't bear it anymore. The setting is nice and the story is not that bad but unfortunately that's not enough to carry the title for me. It's barely enough to give it that second star in the rating.

Syberia is very typical of the era it was released, with graphics and a style that really draw you in. The locations are indeed beautiful and there are elements of the storyline that really make this worth playing through. Particularly the relationships between the main character and the people you meet along the journey. The whole game has a melancholy feel, much like those 15 minutes of twilight where the whole world seems more alive. I think this deserves 3.5 stars, but I feel the need to counter the top reviews that sell this game a little high. I particularly disagree (purely academically of course) with 'wooglah' on the suggestion that this game is a masterpiece or indeed that it saved the genre. Sadly, this genre has been under-represented for the last decade, and although games have come out with all the right mechanics and dastardly puzzles, they invariably lack the flow and the creativity of the old games, especially the lucasarts/sierra range. Visually excellent, yes. Superb sound? Not really, one melody is used to build the atmosphere throughout this game, its pleasant enough, but it never progresses, just the same simple melody all the way through. The story, then, which is the only really important thing anyway... Formulaic, really, and flows much like a book with a few pages stuck together. In fact, pretty much the whole story is told through a few flashbacks and not integrated into the players actions at all. There is also zero background or expansion to the world we are presented with, its almost normal reality, but with a twist. I love the world, its clearly been lovingly made, but a little effort to make it real in the context of the game would go a long way. On the plus side, though, the character relationships are more than enough to keep you involved and it could be argued that the story is more about those interactions and the development of the people around you rather than the context for the journey. (I should point out though that there is a horrible sequence of mostly irrelevant phone conversations designed to provide character background on the player character that really don't add to the story at all. And I was actually really put off by the excessively negative portrayal of men. Its nothing you haven't seen before by any means, its just so unceremoniously shoved in your face every few plot developments and so entirely unnecessary that it feels uncomfortably like someone making a personal attack) Unfortunately, it is let down by a few significant gameplay elements. Most importantly, the puzzles are far too simple, and never really progress from simply 'finding the obvious item to make the obvious machine work'. This becomes very repetitive, especially for an experienced player as there is no problem solving encouraged. This is further marred by the frequent issue of items being very hard to find or perhaps running seisure-causing gamma levels on your monitor. To increase the difficulty of the game, some of those simple puzzles are made incredibly hard to complete by simply not providing information, or expecting wild leaps of the imagination to connect two events. Its difficult to explain without spoilers, simply put; a good adventure game drives you mad because you know what you're supposed to do but you can't work out how to do it. Syberia drives you mad because you don't know what you're supposed to be doing! Add this to the slow movement, large locations, numerous empty areas, put there just to make you walk for a long time, often with scrolling so you have to keep clicking to get to the next transition... You'll get frustrated trying to solve the puzzles not becuase they're that hard, but because you can't be bothered with all the travel. The ending is rather cheap, safe to say you don't finish and get an ending to a story, you're fully expected to buy Syberia 2 if you want the ending to a story, which is really unsatisfying. It certainly isn't the sad feeling of it being over you get with a good story. Its just a feeling of wanting to finish what you started. So I'm going to justify all the negativity now with a simple statement: I played this game at the same time as playing The Longest Journey. Same era, same genre, if you haven't played it, you really must. Unfortunately, my opinion of Syberia has suffered greatly due to comparison to The Longest Journey. To call Syberia a masterpiece is a matter of opinion and there are certainly enough positives to go on, but it is simply outclassed. The only area in which Syberia is superior is in 3D graphic quality, with really exceptional rendering for the time and great character models. And even this is a limited victory, as the 2D visuals don't compare to the wonderful locations of TLJ. If you're looking for the masterpiece that made the genre great (you don't have to take my word for it, check the reviews and consult the numerous accolades it received over the years) then go play The Longest Journey, available on GOG of course! If you're looking for a top 10 though, this will do just nicely.

Anyone who like a good adventure wil love this game, the story and the music in the game realy sets the mood. Not played it before? Buy it, turn of the lights and sit back and enjoy the ride!

Puzzles have no alternate solutions, interactive elements are sometimes small and easy to miss, and area transition points can be hard to spot. This isn't really a game so much as a movie/book that lets you click around until something happens. Too bad it's such a drag, because the atmosphere and story are both really solid.