Ooph, I went into this knowing it wasn't as well recieved as the previous two but good grief haha. It baffles me that three games in they still haven't fixed the acting being terrible. By this point they've used three different voice actors for Nina and this is an improvement but the script is still painful and disjointed. Every time there's an action scene, or even the implication of action, the game fades to black and then fades back again. It wreaks of pushing the game out in a hurry and not having enough money for cut scenes. This gets particularly disorienting towards the end when it jumps back and forth around the planet with no transitions or suggestion of travel. Totally bonkers. I like what they tried to do with the story, and some of the scenes are truly beautifully designed, but with all of the above, it just comes across a hot mess. I used a walkthrough for the last couple of puzzles just so I could uninstall the thing. Oh well. That's that then!
I'm reluctant to write something so negative because I've previously worked in a games studio and appreciate the immense amount of effort that goes into creating a game under pressure from deadlines etc, but dear lord. I recently played 1 & 2 for the nostalgia and got lured into three, assuming it would a similar dose of the same. Sadly it couldn't be more different if it tried. I lost my mind running in circles as the conversion to 3D has made the controls AWFUL (on laptop with track pad). Every time the camera changes, the directional controls switch direction and drive you bananas. Who's idea was it to make the action highlight symbol a small white dot that resembles snow... in a game where it REGULAR SNOWS!? *breaths* The script and voice acting is dire and often stock American, being completely innapropriate for pretty much every character in the game. At one point it used blatant AI, but janky AI from 2017 with zero intonation. I spent the majority of the game feeling uncomfortable becuase I couldn't work out how racist it was. Half the "puzzles" were Kate just straight up being a criminal. Whats with all the stealing stuff from boxes and breaking windows!? And if I didn't play the entire thing with a walkthrough (because I'll be damned if I'm exploring this clunky game at normal speed) some of the puzzles were so abstract you just plain wouldn't solve them. At least they preserved one element of the previous games. Endlessly running around MASSIVE playable areas, with very very few puzzles. Oh wait. That was a nightmare too. *breaths* OK. I've got that all out of my system. I appreciate there were huge delays to the release of this thing and I can only imagine how stressful it was for those who worked on it, but the result is SUCH a shame. *takes a deep breath because I know I'm still going to play the next one*
Syberia 1 drove me insane with the amount of running around and slowly watching Kate Walker plod up and down stair cases. There was still a fair bit of running around in this but I was definitely less inpatient! Completed in a two day binge. Puzzles weren't rocket science.
