Syberia

This is truly a marvel of adventure gaming. It features unforgettable sounds and visuals, also, it tells quite a story. If you play it, don't rush it. BTW contrary to popular belief, Syberia is a standalone story. It ends in definitive moment while leaving something to our imagination. Just like a good book. Playing Syberia 2 is optional, however, it is fantastic to play both back-to-back.

From the very start Syberia is a cinematic treat. Its unique characters and gorgeous settings are shown in great detail, rich animation and creative design, and this carries on throughout the entire game. In fact, both get even more elaborate. There are a few annoying animations and the occasional empty areas you are forced to walk through that only serve to connect point A to point B, but they don’t take away from the game that much. The sound effects help bring the world to life and are fitting for each area whether it be beautiful sounds of nature or the mechanical sounds of the city. They help to immerse you in the world that Syberia creates, although there are some volume issues with quiet lines of spoken dialogue or overly loud sound effects but these are few and far between. The music… my word, the music is a treat. Cinematic orchestra swells in and the low woodwind bellows help pull you into this game that only feels like a movie. Of course, the real treat in Syberia is the story. It caught me off guard. What starts as a story about a toy factory turns into one of the most beautiful dramas about heart and humanity that I have seen in a while topping most movies and TV shows I have seen. Even the subplot between our hero and her boyfriend begins to take center stage and melds with the main plot at the end that could bring tears to your eyes. If you love adventure games or great stories in general, you are doing yourself a disservice by not playing Syberia.

After hearing so much about how this game is masterpiece and saved the adventure genre I decided to give it a spin, and found it to be severely lacking. The good: the setting is luscious, with dozens and dozens of screens depicting the impossibly intricate world where the game sets place. There are lots of details and videos, and there is an animation for almost anything that happens. The bad: everything else. The characters are all flat starting from the main character, both because of the sub-par writing and the emotionless voice acting. The most interesting persons you meet are a retired opera singer and an automaton, and that's because they provide some well needed humour to the story. This lack of emotion makes it also hard to get into the plot: you never quite seem to get the impact on Kate of the things she discovers or the places she visits. Whether it's talking to a bureaucrat or stealing from a church or sending a man into space (!) she seems to take it all in stride as if it was standard fare. It doesn't help that much of the locations you visit or objects you see are non-interactive, so you can't even hear her talk about the scenery. The puzzles are usually simple once you find out what you have to do and where's the item you need. Unfortunately that is not always as obvious as the authors thought, and often involves a severe case of pixel hunting or mental leaping. This is made worse by the fact that the character sprite is s-l-o-w, and running through the mostly-empty screens to get to the item you need will often take several minutes of your time. Oddly enough, I was not too troubled by the ending. While it does not explain much, it does accomplish the original goal the protagonist and gives a certain sense of closure to her arc.

How strange was to see these weird mechanizm at first glance. I still remember I played with my bro, we were so excited. We didnt have a walkthrough not even internet so we played on our own. The game wasn't so hard but there was a few scene where we stucked. Every character has a personality. Really rare thing but the second part of Syberia was up to the first in my humble opinion.

First off, I'm no good at adventure games. The solutions tend to be too farfetched for me to comprehend. However, I'd been curious about Syberia since seeing a copy at Wal-Mart a few years ago. My first few hours with Kate were magical as I was mesmerized by the story, the character development and the sensible puzzles. Then the bizarre puzzles reared their ugly head in the second area and I had to refer to a walkthrough. They made sense within the story but felt wholly unnecessary (the whole opera singer arc, for example). I really had to push to finish this one, but I had fallen for the story, which is probably the selling point of any adventure game.