Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Syberia is easily one of the most breathtaking games to look at. It's landscapes and buildings are stunningly beautiful. The opening takes place in Valadilene, supposedly a town in the French Alps. It's Art Nouveau architecture all around (Guimard, Majorelle and Lavirotte-style for enthusiasts out there), and creator Benoit Sokal is forgiven for putting Art Nouveau in the Alps. You'd be hard pressed to find decent Art Nouveau there nowadays, or any day in the past for that matter! But if Valadilene really existed, it would be an architectural Nirvana!
The animations in Syberia are superb - I've never seen moving water done better than this. The cutscenes are superb, razorsharp, and it is apparent that mr. Sokal likes atmosphere - the rainy openingsequence is very reminiscent of his first game, Amerzone.
But apart from graphics, is it a good game? Well, it certainly has a few shortcomings. For one, it's much too easy. This was also the problem with the first game from mr. Sokal, Amerzone. Very atmospheric, but, too easy, too short. In Syberia, it's all spelled out for you. "I should get someone to carry my suitcase." So you talk to the first person around, an presto, he carries your case. "I can't go in there, maybe I should find a missing part", that sort of thing. In this case it reminded me of the recently released Road to India (also by Microids/Dreamcatcher) wich is an abysmal game and whould never have reached the shelves. But, Syberia overall is much, much better. First of all, it not that short. Although it's always difficult to estimate gameplay in adventuregames - it all depends on how astute you are - I would say it's 25 hours or so, certainly much less than Exile or Beyond Atlantis.
Syberia is reasonably immersive, although I wonder why mr. Sokal decided to design the game in third person, instead of the much more engaging first person perspective, as in Amerzone, Exile, Journeyman Project etc.
The difficulty-level is, of course, always the problem with adventuregames. Either you target the experienced gamer and put in hard puzzles. Or you target the bigger (and probably more lucrative) market of younger players, but then you'll have to downgrade the difficulty. The latter is evidently the case here. It could have been overcome somewhat though, by giving the option of switching off the hints. It's highly irritating to hear "I don't need to go down there" every two minutes just for trying to open a door. Gameplaywise it's very similar (if not identical) to The Longest Journey, with prerendered landscapes and a little lady running through it. You talk to people, you'll get hints, nudges and pushes and you switch from one area to another.
I would have liked 3D free movement - as we have come to expect from most of the recent games around, like Exile, Beyond Atlantis and the like. In this way, Syberia has not kept up with these dramatic and very important opportunities and innovations. Valadilene, Barrockstadt, Aralbad, the surroundings are truly astounding. But time after time you feel the disappointment of not being able to look around in 3D! What a labour of love has gone into the artwork, but what a waste that I'm no able to zoom in, look closer, explore more...
In a recent interview mr. Sokal promised a 'new gaming experience'. Well, sorry, but a new gaming experience it is certainly not. This is more like a sequel to The Longest Journey, but in a different setting (and much shorter). Graphics, gameplay, it is exactly the same. But TLJ is 5 years old, so you would have expected some evolution in graphics (3D!). Even the tedious conversations from TLJ - a major drawback of that game - are somewhat repeated here. The voiceacting in Syberia is much better though.
The puzzles are all inventorybased, and very, very simple. You don't even need to try all the objects you have - your cursor will change into a cross if it's not right. So in fact, there are no 'real' puzzles to speak of. Just click and see what happens.
The story is compelling, well written, funny, and foremost: moving. You are Kate Walker, a lawyer being send to Europe to handle the takeover of an robot-factory. But, of course, you'll get into unexpected situations. You'll have to fix machines, locate missing people, find hidden parts and so on. It's not very original, but it is certainly entertaining. I wouldn't say exciting, but entertaining, yes.
Soundeffects are extremely good, but I wonder why they didn't put in some more. Ascending a ladder sounds exactly the same as ascending a iron staircase.
The music is very atmospheric, classical. Some money must have gone into the score, but most of the time, there's no music at all and you wander around in utter silence. The main musical themes are certainly dramatic - sad even. As is the storyline overall - beginning with a funeral, and evolving into a familydrama. All in all, a sense of tristesse pervades Syberia, and I like that. The sadness of course reminds a bit of the Myst-series (cultures being whiped out) but in Syberia it's much more done on a human scale. There's humour too, as in Amerzone. The scene with the university rectors made me laugh out loud. Amerzone even makes its way into Syberia, with quite a few cross references. Overall, there are certainly quite a few shortcomings, but they are forgiven, just because the game is such a joy to look at, and I applaud Microids/Dreamcatcher for churning out these games. The adventuregenre has become an endangered species, and I dread the day they wil stop making them. So the four stars are mainly earned by looks, not complexity. Technically, the game ran very smooth, no bugs at all on my system (P3 550mhz, 128mb). So buy it? Yes do. I'm sure you'll enjoy the sheer beauty. But don't get your hopes up too high that this is a second Riven, Journeyman or Atlantis. Anticipate the architectural beauty, not the puzzles.
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A journey beyond compare...
For the young Kate Walker, an ambitious lawyer, the Voralberg toy company acquisition process seemed like a textbook case: a quick stopover at a small alpine village in France to buy-out an old automaton factory, then straight back home to New York. But her journey across land and time throws all that she values into question, while the deal she set out to sign turns into a pact with destiny...
Winner of JustAdventure.com Best Adventure Game of E3, 2002.
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