One of my main gripes with Syberia was the amount of time you spend watching the main protagonist pause in front of a staircase before slowly ascending/descending said staircase. This didn't need to be animated. Watching someone slowly traverse stairs is not interesting. Especially with the amount of backtracking I had to do in that game to find pixel-sized plot items for a puzzle on the other side of the current area. More out of a desire for completionism than anything else, I started the second game after completing the first. One of the first things that happens in the very beginning of the game is watching the main character pause at the top of a small staircase off a train car and then slowly descend it. Maybe I'll come back to this someday, but right now my time is taken up by more pressing matters, such as watching water boil or staring at the walls contemplating my life choices.
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.
I have so much nostalgia wrapped up in this game, it was an absolute joy to hear about it being released on GOG! It was an instabuy for me as soon as it came out here. Just installed it and played through the first chapter, and it runs perfectly on my Windows 10 machine. The gameplay itself is roughly what you'd expect from a Diablo clone, except it has a lot more plot and character development. It's very text heavy, which may be a turn off for some, but the text is all very well written. This game also has major balance issues, and enemies scale in weird ways, particularly as you use more of your training points to improve your character. It's still fun though, whether you're picking off targets as a scout, blowing enemies up as a mage, or plowing into hordes of foes as a fighter. It's also fun to customize your equipment. Armor is layered on, with individual pieces filling specific slots on your character, and it actually shows up on your character model as you run around the keep. The developers put a lot of attention into lore here, particularly with the enemies you're fighting. There's even a bit where you get to talk to them, and you find they're every bit as human as your allies are. Overall, a great experience if you like slash and hack type games with a copious helping of story. 4/5 would definitely recommend.
My experience with Oblivion went something like this: Step 1: Buy this. Step 2: Install it. Step 3: Play it until bored (admittedly, this takes a while). Step 4: Install OBSE and OOO. Step 5: Roll a dark elf (or anyone who isn't slow). Step 6: Follow Patrick Stewart through a dungeon full of raving lunatics with knives. Step 7: Pick the Lady. Or the Atronach. Or the Steed. Step 8: Skill up in Blade, Heavy Armor, Conjuration, Mysticism, Illusion (for the CC and lolz later on), Armorer, and Marksman. Take Agility and maybe Endurance or Strength. Step 9: Get a big sword and learn your reach. Step 10: Kit yourself in enough armor to keep you alive without weighing yourself down and dance around enemies as you have a murder party together with your summons. Step 11: Avoid the bottom floor of Vilverin. Seriously. With OOO on, it will MURDER you. Honestly, I got bored with vanilla after the main quest (there was no point to anything I did anymore, loot was all differently colored pieces of meh, rats had long since gone extinct for no reason), and mods are what made it interesting again. OOO takes the base game and makes it something that actually validates tactical gameplay (the first time I one-shotted a troll with a backwards power strike before it got in its range was AMAZING, or that one time I staggered a spectral warrior to death while circling him with a big sword), all while making the world WAY more immersive and interesting. Of course, that doesn't really fix the main plot (you're a side character until Shivering Isles, and Morrowind's story was INCREDIBLE, and it's not really a fair comparison), but it's still tons of fun. And honestly, as much as I love Morrowind, it's Oblivion I keep returning to. Probably because I like dancing circles around slow enemies with a nice, big sword, and this game lets you do that.
