Syberia

Rating:
Summary: Nice dose of adventuring, but a little jumbled!
Review: As one of the steadily declining group remaining of adventure game enthusiasts for the PC, it was with great anticipation that I purchased this title. For the most part, it was a very worthwhile purchase. As so many have already said (and at the risk of stealing the thunder), the graphics are the main reason to buy this game. Simply phenomenal, particularly the atmospheric and weather effects. The game itself is ludicrously simple, with only a few puzzles proving to be stumpers (and those are simply mechanical do-this, then do-that puzzlers which will prove no problem to even the novice gamer.) While this is not exactly grand, it was actually a pleasant surprise to me. For once, you're not beaten over the head with horridly obscure mazes and such that are just plain silly. Let's hope future games learn from Syberia and stop already with the whole get-out-of-the-maze fiasco, because it's a time-waster and an excuse to put less effort into game creation.

One thing I particularly liked in this game that I haven't read anyone mentioning was the inventory use. In most adventure games I have played, harkening well back to the Sierra days when it was THE principal type of title, you gather up about 50 inventory items and wait for the appropriate time to use them. This is a colossal waste of time and logic. In Syberia, everything you pick up in a certain segment of the game gets used prior to moving on in the story. I can't emphasize too highly how refreshing this was to me. Who wants to carry around a wrench for the whole story, anyway?

In any case, sound was good overall, as stated previously. I was also quite happy to install the game and run it with no problems, as that is becoming a rarity these days as well. The only complaint I have is an occasional lengthy delay between some screens when walking around, but that's only because you have to repeatedly visit many locations and it's minor, because it's worth the wait to get those stellar landscapes.

The negatives in my mind relate mainly to plot. I won't recite the basic facts again, but I found the end to be cliched to the extreme and rather unresolved. I know we always want to leave room for a sequel, but the characters just pretty much fade into thin air after you're done with them. There are also an abundance of useless minor characters (excluding those two precious chess players at the Aralbad resort)and the dialogue is rather strained. Halfway through, a child of seven can generally guess what's going to happen at the end.

Still, those few observations aside, I find this to be an extremely high quality game, well worth the price. I'd love to see more titles like this in the future. Obviously, if you liked TLJ, you'll love this, but the first is the superior game if you have to choose between the two. A solid effort and an entertaining day or two of PC immersion.

Rating:
Summary: Syberia - Don't bother
Review: Syberia might be suitable for the novice adventurer but anyone who has experienced "Grim Fandango", "The Beast Within" or "The Longest Journey" will be sorely disappointed.

While the graphics are beautiful, the game play is tedious, repetitious and, at times, downright boring. Puzzles are absurdly easy - find the missing piece, turn the wheel or pull the lever. Yes, almost all of them are that simple.

And the ending was nothing short of idiotic.
Don't bother with this one.

Rating:
Summary: Best Adventure Game Since "The Longest Journey"...
Review: "The Longest Journey" brought us back to the Golden Age of adventure gaming, which had titles such as the legendary "Grim Fandango" and "Full Throttle" (both by LucasArts Entertainment). "Syberia" takes us back also: not only to the Golden Age, but a forgotten age. Starting in Valadilene, France, Syberia traces the story of a woman looking for the acquisition of an apparently washed out automato/toy company but finds much more than she could have ever bargained for...
Play this game. Its more fun than the bland title seems to show.

Rating:
Summary: Review for Adventurers
Review: For this review, i will actually make paragraphs and not write 100 lines clumped together that look like 1 big black block on your monitor.

Your reading this because you want to know if this games good , correct? Well telling from the ratings, this game is not good, it is great. So why should you PLAY it?

The story:
Although not as long as The Longest Journey (if you havent heard of it, play it now!) the story in syberia is VERY good. Story can often be judged by how well it resonates in your memories after it is empathized, this game really brings you in. Although i have just beat the game, i still have the story is still resonating in my mind, so its fresh. So in conclusion.... "the longest what?"

Graphics/ Music:
The characters are polygonal, and the background and objects are a vector like, you can obviously tell everything was once rendered from 3d. The graphics are perfect. The music is great, although not many scores, it does get repetitive to hear the same song for like an hour or three, or even days depending how long it takes you to beat some parts.

Puzzles:
Way too easy, but you could tell the creaters didn't want hard puzzles getting in the way of their gem of a story. Again this game is easy, just gets frusterating running around cause the areas are so huge.

Conclusion:
The only thing bad about this game, is the length. I would say it is about 1/2 to 1/3 the game lengh of the longest journey, but i think the story is much nicer. This game is also more real, as opposed to the longest journey where it attracted science fiction and fantasy fiction nerds, this game is real and actually has a moral.

So without spoiling anything ahem.. there it is.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, touching, enchanting
Review: _Syberia_ is a third-person, story- and inventory-based adventure of the best kind: there are no timed sequences, no mazes, no threats to life and limb and no incomprehensible underwater manoeuvres, but there is a lovely and engaging story peopled by real characters and punctuated by puzzles that make sense and are not so difficult as to be frustrating.

You play Kate Walker, an American Lawyer who has been sent to the Alps town of Valadilene to negotiate the final buy-out of the once-famed Voralberg Automaton fatory by a multi-national toymaking conglomerate. Once there, however, you find that the factory owner has died and the factory now belongs to an eccentric recluse whom no one has seen in about fifty years. You job is to find the recluse and seal the deal.

The first thing that struck me about _Syberia_ is that it is without a doubt the most beautiful game I have ever had the pleasure to play. The backgrounds are stunning, from the Art Nouveau architecture of Valadilene to the industrial Kolmkozgrad. The character animation, based on motion-capture, is without a doubt the most realistic I have ever seen, giving every character lifelike mannerisms and body language. The amount of detail is unbelievable, featuring birds flying and leaves blowing through scenes, water rippling and clouds moving across the sky. You really get the sense that you're in a real place and living a real experience. As I knew that _Syberia_ was designed by Benoit Sokal, the designer of _Amerzone_, another game that struck me with its beauty, I was expecting _Syberia_ to be pretty. But the reality of it still blew me away.

The sound is also quite good. Each location has its own musical motif, which is beautifully orchestrated but not over-used. Most of your gameplay is accompanied by silence interspersed with well-synchronized f/x -- footsteps on cobblestones, dripping water, or birdsong, for example. I really liked that, because I sometimes find that repetitive music in games interferes with my concentration. The voice acting was above average, with only one character who couldn't seem to settle on which nationality he actually was and several who were truly well done.

As far as gameplay goes, _Syberia_ was on the easy side. By that I mean that it was always pretty clear where you needed to go and what you needed to do; there were none of the leaps in logic that tend to send gamers running for a strategy guide because that's the only place to find out what in the world the programmers intended. The puzzles were generally inventory based or conversation based (meaning that you had to have the right piece of a conversation to advance). I appreciated that the conversations were succinct and free from the mindless repetition that plagues some games. A couple puzzles seemed a little contrived, and one at least could only be solved (as far as I was ever able to determine) by randomly running through your options. Most, however, required about the level of thought and ingenuity you might expect to have to apply if you really were Kate Walker and really did have to deal with the situation. While this did lower the level of challenge (after all, you want her to succeed, don't you?) it added to the realistic nature of the game.

Gameplay was a little bit linear, with it being necessary to accomplish certain puzzles in order to open up certain avenues of exploration. For the most part, however,it didn't matter in what order you explored those avenues. The plot veered off in kind of an unexpected direction about two thirds of the way through, but managed to find itself and do a pretty decent job of bringing all the loose ends together by the end.

I really got to care about the characters in a way that is unusual for me. I cringed whenever Kate's cell phone rang, wondering what crisis from home was coming now (and often having all too good an idea of what it would be!) I felt real sadness for former diva Helena Rochinski and I cheered at Kate's ultimate decision about her life. My only real complaint about _Syberia_ is that it was too short! I finished it under 20 hours, about half the time it took me to get through _The Longest Journey_, which it resembled.

In my book, _Syberia_ is the best game of the year. Play it.

Rating:
Summary: Easy Gamplay with stunning graphics!
Review: Syberia is brought to you by the same developers which brought you "Amerzone", "Chronciles at LochNess" and various others just like them. After I played Amerzone I was resolute on the fact that there would be no game such as this with its high level of interaction and ravishing graphics.

Well just a few years later, here comes something way better. Something with greater graphics and something with, well, um pretty much the same gameplay. Easier to be more precise!

You play as a Lawyer, most commonly known as "Katy" to her friends and family. Your mission at first, was to make a deal with a large Toy Manufacturing company in Valadeline, French Alps.

However, the sceanrio abruptly changes when the owner of the Company dies. Well now youre informed that the owner had an heir, which you had no idea about. So you start your mission in search of this so-called heir who is supposedly somewhere is Syberia.

You begin your journey from Valadeline and head east towards Syberia so as to reach a deal with the heir. You pass other destinations such as a Univerity and another town somewhere in Syberia, after completing puzzles.

Sounds tedious, yet the gameplay is awfully easy and the puzzles wont keep you confused for weeks or even months, rather minutes.

Some aspects of the game are just outright silly. For example you are supposed to climb this ladder, but you cant because there are these birds arund it. You just have to pick up some object and distract them right? Wrong! You have to go through this whole charade to get these berries which you distract the birds with.

Overall, the gameplay will not impress you, rather it is the wonderfully renderd graphics which will!

Rating:
Summary: Magical Mystery Tour
Review: Great adventure with no shoot-em-ups. Action required to move to next step made perfect sense, acting of characters was superb, and the visual is exquisite. I can't wait for a sequel.

Rating:
Summary: its just the best
Review: ...this is one of the intresting quests ever made even better than the longest journey
syberia is one of the bests quests i ever play
it has a very intresting story that make you play all night
if its may seemed easy to you at start so just wait and you see whats happen when you have 7 diffrent places to go even that this is only the the first city and belive me if you buy the game you'l never regret couse its a great with great graphics that make the game better

Rating:
Summary: The graphic adventure lives again!
Review: If the The Longest Journey set the stage for things to come in the world of graphic adventures, Syberia surely opens the first act. With a combination of compelling storyline, haunting locales, lush music, and jaw dropping animations, Syberia will be the game to beat as developers work furiously. I'm sure the boys over at Cyan and Presto are up to the challenge!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Wonderful!!!!
Review: Let's be honest. Most games these days are all run and shoot games or played for the gore value. "Real" adventure games, I mean the kind that transport you into the story are in dwindling number. But Dreamcatcher has outdone themselves with this game. The story is wonderful and the enviroment has been crafted with loving care. It was like taking part in your favorite movie! Go buy this game today and take a trip with Alice. You will not regret it!