Syberia

Rating:
Summary: Sheer Genius
Review: Imagine how you would create a visually compelling canvas backdrop, a unique story line, immense attention to detail in voice acting, movement and motion, and you still would not top this truly gem of a game.

As Schumann said with regard to Chopin's entrance to the musical society in the early 1800's, "Hats off. A Genius"!

That is how I feel about all involved with this wonderful new addition to the genre. It is an "instant classic".

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely stunning!!! "Game" seems like an insult to it!
Review: From the very moment you place the CD in your CD-Rom drive, you will be fated to play perhaps one of the best games of the year.

But "game" cannot describe what Syberia means to the average player. Kate Walker, a lawyer from New York, is sent to the small French Town of Validelene to bear witness to the taking over of a factory that manufactures robots...(only, don't call them robots...they prefer the term 'automotons') However, upon her arrival she finds out that the original owner of the factory has just died, and that there is an heir which Kate must track down in order to fulfill her mission.

Benoit Sokal has filled Syberia with tons of nuances that make this "game" very memorable, such as Oscar, the automoton sidekick to Kate, and while he's only there to serve as the engineer of Kate's train, the player will begin to wish that they knew Oscar, and care for him. The character's all have distinct voice acting that fits each and every one of them perfectly. No puzzle is too hard, and Kate's personality is explored through the means of her cell phone, and her interaction with the characters that she talks to.

While this may sound like it is my own opnion, (it is shared by many others) I never wanted this game to end, and I wish for a sequel. So I suggest you stop reading this review, ignore the one above, and buy this lovely piece of art! ...

Rating:
Summary: Not perfect, but saved by the sheer beauty of it
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Syberia vs Longest Journey? Not!
Review: I was thrilled to find this game, because people were comparing it to "The Longest Journey." I have to say that I was sorely disappointed.

People say they've gotten attached to the characters in this game. How? There is no exchange there is in TLJ. There is third person interaction, but only when the maim character happens to trigger the reactions. No give and take whatsoever in this. No allowing YOU, the reader, to truly have an opionion Sorry, but the best I can give thos is a "3". Sne and navigation hrough the plot is inpossible. Not because it's complicated, and certainly not because it's well-written, but simply because it doesn't make sense. I spent the first half deciding on which side my characters should exit the train.

My rating is "1", but only because the graphics are decent. Beyond that, if anyone wants to give me a refund, just let me know. Not worth carrying home, esp;ecially if you've already seen the nextr step in your mind;

Mel

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, but disappointing... and a little boring
Review: I'm an adventure gaming fan, so I was thrilled to hear about Syberia as a worthy entry in the genre, with frequent comparisons to The Longest Journey. I bought it ASAP, not expecting a clone of TLJ by any means, just hoping for a good adventure game.

Well, I have yet to finish Syberia and it's been 9 months. The game is breathtakingly beautiful to look at, and obviously designed with care.

But as lovely as the game is to look at, the story is kind of plodding, the voice acting is (frankly) terrible, and the game just has no personality. The player is given little chance to explore environments or make choices -- you simply have to point and click your way through every (often very derivative) puzzle to get to the next point.

One of the things I loved about "Longest Journey," as well as "Sanitarium," "Grim Fandango" "Myst 3" and the "Monkey Island Series," was the sense that we got the chance to contribute to the story or character's choices and personality. Characters like April and Guybrush really sparkle simply because the game doesn't just want to get you from A to Z, but to help you explore a world and feel part of it. So there are those little extras, like clicking on an object or a character just to enjoy the protagonist's responses to it ("I'm not picking that up!") and to learn about the character. There's nothing like this in Syberia.

I wish I'd liked it more, and do hope to finish the game someday (I got about 2/3 through before finally giving up in boredom). But it's ironic that the story is about automatons -- the character of Kate is almost as flat and uninteresting.

Rating:
Summary: Syberia was fun
Review: I am writing this review for my daughter who just finished the game with much hard work and dedication. She says she really enjoyed it and wants to play Part II. She really liked getting to travel to all the different places. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Long on looks, short on fun
Review: I'm writing this to counter-balance some of these overly enthusiastic reviews. True, Syberia has nice graphics, great sound, and good atmosphere. But where "The Longest Journey" adds an interesting story and empathetic characters, Syberia degenerates into a sequence of transportation related puzzles with goofy sub-plots involving retired opera stars and (often mentioned, but never seen) Wooly Mammoths.

I just never developed a liking for the main character and her supposed "personal development"--told via a silly cell-phone soap opera that frequently interrupts the plot. Worst of all, when the game abruptly ends, nothing is resolved and you realize that this is just part one of the story. Really shameful!

Having also subjected myself to Benoit Sokal's previous attempt at this genre ("Amerzone"), I should have been suspicious. That game was awful, pure and simple. Microids went out of their way to tie that one in to this game (at one point Kate says somthing like "Amerzone? Amerzone? What is the Amerzone?"). You don't want to go there, Kate.

The puzzles revolve mostly around winding up her mechanical train so the trip can continue to the next location. Some of the screens are so dark that I couldn't see what it was I was clicking on (no gamma adjustment either, sorry). Some items could only be found by the most painful pixel hunting--slowly trolling the cursor back and forth over the entire screen. That was enough to get me to resort to a walk-through. You know what needs to be done, but you just can't find that item dropped in the corner of a room.

The story itself is advanced by dialog fill-ins that seem shoe-horned in here and there. The voice acting of the American charaters is OK, but the dialog is full of poorly translated phrases (Kate keeps saying "I don't need to go down there" every time you try a locked door--down where?). And the accents of the European charaters are consistently terrible (the crazy industrial city commandant sounded more Scottish than Russian!).

I suppose I could play "Syberia 2" and find out where all this mess was going, but I just don't care. Think I'll wait for "The Longest Journey 2" instead.

Rating:
Summary: So much wasted potential
Review: I decided to buy this game a while back after reading such great reviews and was sorely disappointed. While the visuals were fantasic even the character movement and transistions flowed well on my dwindling PC; overall the game was too short. I managed to play the entire game in one sitting less than 3 hours with many, many, many breaks.

I enjoyed the 3rd person perspective as welcome change from other puzzle games (ie. Myst series). Converstations with other characters were usually rambling nonsense which one had to sit through to progress, the puzzles were simplistic, and in the end there isn't very much to this game. Its like playing connect the dots with an occasion errand to run every third dot.

The story line follows a young woman (you) looking for an old toy maker. To find him you'll have to ask towns peoples and rebuild some of his old toys. When you finally do find him and the game starts to get interesting it ends. You don't even go to Syberia! They should have called it "girl plays with complicated puppets". Okay maybe that title was too long.

Graphics are great but they sacrificed gameplay and story.

Rating:
Summary: FInally! They get it right
Review: An old fashioned adventure game. I mean a real adventure game. No shoot em ups, no ridiculous puzzles that don't make sense... just a really great game. Deserves the game of the year award.

Rating:
Summary: Repetitive junk not saved by mediocre animation
Review: This game has gotten so many good reviews that I can only imagine it is because we are overwhelmed by massive amounts of ugly trash. The game is pretty by gaming standards, but ask any designer who does work in Alias, Maya, or even Studio Max to create you a picture of a city and you'll get something better. The fact this is pretty decent for a video game demonstrates the lack of animation and drawing skills of computer designers. So, fine, pretty- but if you only want pretty scenery go to Barcelona or Florence, so much prettier than this absurd French city where the people don't even have accents.

The mechanics and story of the game are badly thought out and trite. The 'puzzles' are the same as any game. Unlike some games they are not totally arbitrary and subject to pure guessing, instead they are absurdly simpistic. You walk into a room and the cursor gives you two things to look at and basically the puzzle is solved. Otherwise, fail to find one detail in a room and you'll wander until you see the detail. This is where the pretty graphics fail- the designers failed to use basic things like perspective, contrast, or aperture features to help focus on certain details. Why no good puzzles? Probably, we the gaming public is viewed as too stupid to figure out even some basic logic puzzles- perhaps it is true, but it would be nice to get a game with thought beyond 2-step thought processes.

Also, the walking around part is so tedious. YOu walk, and walk for no purpose other than to make the game seem longer. It was maddening, especially given most of us gamers are imbued with a bit of ADD.

Lastly, I bought a new computer at the end of 2004 on which I have played the game. Super fast,tons of ram, graphics card etc, but this game runs like I got an old 386 here. So the designers and the code writers should be fired.

So, if you can tolerate tediousness for pretty graphics (which I never played on low settings so it may only be pretty on a high res flat screen) buy the game. Plus, don't think this is a whole game, it is half of the game. The sequel is like a force buy to actually get the whole story. It approaches fraud to say this is a whole game. How would you feel if you bought cookies and cream ice cream only to get home and realize that the label says you had to buy Oreos, too, or else you only had a tub of bland vanilla ice cream?

P.S. The main character is a lawyer. As a lawyer I wish someone would have any clue about how the law works before they attempt to write a story about a legal tansaction- the whole set-up is absolutely absurd.