The game seems promising, has good graphics, voice acting and the story is interesting enough, but it has so many quirks it doesn't appear it was tested enough and is still in development. The inventory is opened and closed with different keys for some reason, the protagonist's voice level ranges from something close to a whisper and then suddenly, when trying something that doesn't work a loud curse out of the blue. And other times she remains entirely silent, as if the suddenness of her reactions are on purpose to... wake you up? You click on something (name of the item appears on the low right corner) and activates another thing closeby, it could also get stuck, quite rare for and adventure game and probably only happened to me while playing Telltale games -unfortunately they rarely patched their games-, which again gives the impression that the game was released before it was finished and thoroughly tested. As a bonus it is free, it gives some taste of what it can become but for my part I'll leave it as it is and maybe come back to it once it's finished.
The game lets you play as Kim, the orphan boy in the eponymous novel by Rudyard Kipling, does a good job at portraying the characters and the interactions in the book, and lets you explore and choose your path as you travel around colonial India. The art is nice and has good animations, careful detail has been placed in this department as it appears to be its main selling point. The music is ok but repetitive, sounds effects are lacking, only text and no speech means a wasted opportunity to create a really immersive experience, missing the chance of using the beautiful graphics to complete the atmosphere. Until this point I would have given the game a score of 3, but it all comes down with the inexplicable lack of a save option. I assume the reason for that is the developer thought players would want to have a completely different experience taking a different path to completion, but I don't see a compeling reason to begin anew when everything I wanted to change was 3 or 4 other options I didn't take. And how much does the game really change from taking a different path? Not much from the looks of it, as others have pointed out the game is repetitive and you don't change much choosing one thing over the other, so in the end the lack of saves actually discouraged me from playing again, all the way from the beginning, and in case you mistakingly take one option over another, well, don't worry, you can start all over again.
Even 13 years after Syberia's original release date I'd be surprised if anyone playing this game for the first time won't be astounded by how beautiful the world depicted is. No doubt a bold move back then, considering how the genre was declining in popularity in favor of FPS and 3D environments. The story is ok at best, puzzles don't appear very well thought of and, let's admit it, often insult the veteran adventure players, and the user interface lacks polishing, so why rate it any higher than 3 stars? And the reason is, quite simply, the well added element of nostalgia, which games strived but rarely accomplished to achieve. From the beginning it became clear a great amount of work went into capturing that small town's charm and for those in love with France's countryside it surely grabbed our attention. Kate Walker is a NYC lawyer who represents the interests of a toy company which plans to acquire the famed automaton's factory in Valadilene, a small quaint town that has seen better days. Starting with the funeral march of its owner, and after a turn of events, you set on a mission to find the deal come through, not expecting the journey to transform how you view what you do and who you are. Good voice acting and, except for that I-speak-words-from-many-European-languages part, well written dialogue keep it believable despite the fantastical, anachronistic setting. Be advised, though, the slow pacedness never picks up and you have to wait until the 3rd part is released to (probably) have a proper ending. I also discourage from buying the second part since it feels more like a filler for the final act, it's even slower, doesn't add any character development, and doesn't solve any of the problems that, I consider, were tolerable in this game but not 2 years after. I doubt they even thought of them as problems but as what made the game quaint. Microïds/Anuman: believe me, they did not.
As someone accustomed to Telltale, Lucasarts & Revolution, among others, brand of adventure I find it difficult to place this game in the same category. As you might notice from the naming Syberia draws inspiration from the cryptic bestseller Myst and tries to become more accessible and appealing to the more discerning modern audience. Puzzles are easier to grasp and solve, sometimes to a fault, and the artwork is still impressive even a decade after its original release. Unfortunately it not only suffers from the same problems as its predecessor but adds some of its own. Thinking the series would pick up steam I was disappointed to find out nothing has changed and the sequel is slow paced and lacks interactivity. Animations take a long time to complete and can't be skipped, backtracking is unrepentantly used to make the game longer, and every minor problem must be solved by the protagonist. Three kinds of puzzles inhabit the world: extremely easy, hard if you miss a single item which will almost surely happen because of the unrefined UI (hotspot hunting) or for the absolute lack of guidance of what to do next, and try all the buttons. Locations fall flat despite the impressive artwork, voice acting appears to have taken a step back, the worried mother and pressured boss part is impossible to buy since they never even answer the phone anyway, and the game advances in a very linear fashion, as if the creator wanted every player to have the exact same experience. New additions to the series are no possibility to replay conversations since once pressed the options disappear, and absolute lack of character development, something I feel its predecessor did right. Syberia 2 isn't the worst adventure game you'll ever play and I recognize it does many things right, unfortunately like a state of the art cinema with a broken projector it doesn't add up to a nice experience.
LBA was the brainchild of Alone in the dark's creator, the first truly successful survival horror game on any platform. Albeit of an entirely different nature, players of both games can easily spot the similitudes: controls, music, and art direction. I haven't finished Alone in the dark but it is a game I enjoyed despite all its flaws and shortcomings, my vision not truly colored by nostalgia since I only played the second one when originally released and 3rd briefly. But I did play and finish LBA2 in its original CD-ROM form, a much more polished version in this games' evolutionary progression, if you will. Well, somehow along this fine line of games some bad decisions were made, and it appears none hits more painfully than in this one. It's a break or (not break?) case for the player so if you're still with me I'll explain what bothers me about this game: First and most notably is the save system, which consists of copying of a game save, which is more of an archival save, since you don't continue auto saving on that copy, but on the original one you loaded. Loading a saved game will then overwrite its contents, which due to the awkward checkpoints when making a new copy it might not be where you just loaded your game, but another one! This bugged the hell of more than one gamer and it was heavily criticized when it was originally released, so it's not a case of "games weren't that good in this aspect" problem. It's also surprising how easy you get caught/killed in the beginning, and the fact that every time you lose a life you need to get out of prison again. Normally you expect a game to start easily on you but this one makes it clear from the beginning it means serious business. Tank controls weren't that bad imo, but it gets screwed when you run into things because you lose health, and since enemies do respawn I found myself playing it a lot more defensively than I did in its survival horror spiritual predecessor. Judge for yourself if I made a fair point
As the third and final installment of the Deponia trilogy, I guess you're well aware by now what this game is about, and the same criticisms and praise apply to it, but to summarize: * Rufus, the antihero, is still a self centered egotistical jerk. * You appear closer to reaching your Goal. Hehe. See what I did there? F-U-N-N-Y. * Voice acting is good, with the occasional bug on the subtitle and language department. * Minorities are to be laughed at, since they deviate from what can be perceived as normal. (You freak.) * NON 17-25 yr old 1.7-1.8m (~6 ft) tall Caucasian males are NOT normal. * Poisoning, betraying and murdering innocent people or animals still carry no consequences, since they help you reach your Goal. * The art department made a great job. * Puzzles are hard but not insanely difficult. Unfortunately you'll end up solving more of them by the select object-click everything on the screen-rinse and repeat method (was my case anyway). New to the table are: * A location where every dialogue comes with an audience response, including a laughing track! (M is your friend). * An ending. * Funny jokes! I kid you not! That is not sarcasm, and part of the reason I elevated the score to 3 is that I found myself laughing at some of the situations for what appeared to be the 1st time in the series. Now if you're reading this far and haven't played the previous games, I can recommend you buy this one on 2 conditions: 1. Watch the cutscenes of it predecessors, and 2. Get it on sale. The game is not long and has no replay value, so you may not feel like getting its money's worth paying full price. In fact, I think the only sensible way to get around Deponia is not getting the previous installments, since this is where the story really picks up (but never launches, unfortunately), and you'll make as much sense of the story as those who played through the whole ordeal. Sorry, I meant to say, adventure. You'll probably enjoy the ending as much as I did. And boy did I...
First and foremost I have nothing but praise to Daedelic for making a game with a prolo as its (antihero) protagonist, prolo being more or less what my mother calls whitetrash, or at least would, if I didn't "accidentally" pull the plug on her. Hehe. Oh, wait, you say that was in bad taste? In that case I don't recommend you this game and you can stop reading now, because Deponia will offend you, and offend you it will (my mother is doing fine, btw). Now I'm not the squeamish type and I like my fair share of dark humor, but this game makes such a little attempt to justify your actions, which include, but are not limited to, poison, betrayal, selling into slavery, murder and making fun of minorities, that it is so difficult to buy into and feel sympathy for its world. For starters, Rufus -the bitch resting faced prolo-, has so little respect for hi(s) friend(s) you wonder how he got him in the first place, let alone have a girlfriend! Second, the game obliterates the fourth wall by not only being aware but constantly reminding you that things can only be done by its protagonist (and why?, because it's his game obviously -lame). Third, the two main female characters are either too bitchy: Toni, who has all the right to be, imho, or not much more than an object: Goal I-kid-you-not-that's-her-name, whose memories can be manipulated at will, which I can only assume was in effort to please the 1.8m (6 ft) tall 17-25 yr male Caucasian population this game is directed at. Finally, the story is not very compelling and although voice acting is good I found it of so little consequence I soon stopped trying to make sense of it. Positives? I have to give most of them to the art department for a superb job, as mentioned voice acting is good, and puzzles bring a good challenge and although you're sometimes given little direction on what to do next I found none of them to be insanely difficult (a little annoying, yes). In short, if you're a dwarf, animal lover, or black: not recommended.
I stumbled with this game while reading an interview to one of the game developers demigods, wishing more of them were like it. That was enough for me, I didn't read any reviews nor saw any trailers or videos, anything at all. I think that's the right way to approach it, not having any background of the story or how it plays out. Since you're reading this I'm sure you're looking for more than a few words to make a decision (it's your hard earned money after all!) So here it goes: You're April Ryan, an art student living in Newport, USA, at the end of the 22nd century. As you might expect, there's a lot of new technology here and there, but, gladly, this isn't a game about a dystopsian future or a post-apocalyptic world ruled by machines, but something closer to home. The world, as we know it, appears not to be whole, and some sort of "leakage" from another place seems to haunt your dreams lately. The premise is simple, and as the game lays out all its elements, you start to discover what's going on, and challenge your own perceptions of place and reality. It all plays beautifully, with characters you care about, a well written story, great dialogue, and, despite sounding too cliche, a great adventure all around. Yes, the game has its faults: some dialogues might be too long, it's not always clear what things you can interact with, and some puzzles seem a little out of place; but in the end, the gripping story and all the positives I already mentioned should make up for it.
