Syberia

Rating:
Summary: BEST game w/out gore
Review: I can't even tell you how much i loved this game, when i got out of school for the summer, i hadn't started my job yet. I glued myself to this game for a couple days. On many adventure games i usually get stuck at a point and cannot get out of the jam no matter how hard i try. This had no humungous jams...I just had to keep looking. This game presented more of a thinking challenge to me than a "timed jump" and "kill him" kind of adventure.
The graphics were incredible, i was slightly disappointed that it had to end, but i love the graphics, and the cut scenes. This is the best i've seen in terms of graphics for the pc. The water is beautiful, the people talk with the words, and there is an uncomfortable eerie feeling about all the scenery building suspense.

Rating:
Summary: played non stop
Review: Finally a nice adventure game that's in 3rd person. I love it.
I lvoe adventure games like this, but don't like being in 1st person, I get too much into the game it makes me dizzy.
And NO shooting either. GREAT....
Once I installed it, I pretty much played it non stop for 3 days. besides from sleeping :)
I must say I got stuck a few times and cheated, but to me it was still all worth it. Now I want to find more games like this.

Rating:
Summary: 4 and a half stars
Review: Syberia, how should I say it, is a game with it's weaknesses and accomplishments. The story is one of the best included in any game in the last half decade, the voice acting and the art is astounding, and the overall length is good. The puzzles, perhaps, take away some of the enjoyment of the game. I didn't know how to complain, for several puzzles were incredibly easy to solve while others frustrated me to the point that I had to resort to a guide. Syberia is definetely a game worth owning though perhaps better when it's worth 10-20 dollars instead of 30. The copy I received from Amazon included a bonus disk which had lots of extra stuff but nothing that you would continuously view over and over. I feel that this game is one that you'll beat and won't play for a long while, before finally noticing it and having an interest again.

Syberia is the story of Kate Walker, an ambitious lawyer who begins her journey when she is sent to buy an automaton (robot) factory. When she gets there, however, she discovers that Anna Voralberg, the owner, has sadly passed away. Kate is about to give up when she discovers that Anna's brother, who was believed to be dead, is still alive. When Kate finds him, she will be able to make him sign the contracts and complete the mission. The game then begins to lead you through many puzzles and locations such as a toy factory, a cave, a university, several train stations, forests, and many more places that are each designed with every possible detail to give the player the most realistic experience.

Graphics: 9/10 - The graphics are brilliant, simply wonderful, in a good and bad way. The good is that everything looks too realistic. The bad thing is that players don't want a game to show them something that they could easily see outside. For example, take another adventure game, Curse of Monkey Island's graphics. The graphics there are cartoony. But are they colorful and entertaining? Yes. The realism of Syberia both takes and adds to the game.

Replayability: 4/10 - The game will have you hooked for many days but as soon as you finish it, you won't play it for a long time. In Monkey Island, there were at least difficulties in which there were more puzzles and harder solutions. Syberia's puzzles are mostly easy so trying to play the game for a second time knowing all the solutions is incredibly boring.

Voice Acting: 8/10 - Perfect. The actors show real emotions and feelings. One thing I would have liked to see was to actually choose the things I want to say after a person speaks to me. There are options as to what you want to discuss but then Kate starts saying unneeded things. For example, when a mechanical robot in the game starts asking Kate for things, she says "Oh, is that really necessary?" or "Come on, please!". I felt that all that time could have been used to actually get what the robot had asked for.

Story: 9/10 - Good but there's not really a villain. Kate's just trying to get to Hans Voralberg and it seems like nothing is going to stop her. There's no arch-nemesis or any person she's trying to beat. There's no conflict. And everyone knows that the best stories always have a conflict.

Bonus Disk: 5/10 - Not much to see and everybody talks French. I hate subtitles.

Overall, 95%. If a friend has it, I recommend borrowing it for a week or two and beating it easily. If you see it in a jewelcase for 10 bucks, buy it. If someone offers you this or another adventure game like Monkey Island, take Monkey Island.

Rating:
Summary: SUPERB!
Review: Amazing, fun and creative. Syberia is one of the best games that i have bought. You have some very challenging puzzles to solve and some very amazing graphics. If you are looking for a fun and very interesting game....BUY SYBERIA!

Rating:
Summary: Gotta have it
Review: It isn't perfect, but it's close. Syberia is a must-have game, on a par with "The Longest Journey", because despite flaws noted in earlier reviews, you'll love this game.

There are two serious problems with RPGs. The biggest is timed puzzles, which to me are fatal -- I stop playing and try to get my money back. None of that here, thankfully.

The second is trial-and-error puzzles, for which you have no clues at all. Syberia has 1-1/2 of those (the lock and the bar). You get a clue for the bar puzzle, but it doesn't seem to mean anything. This is the biggest thing keeping Syberia from 5 stars.

I had no unexpected problems with graphics on my desktop machine, and what I did have was likely due to my dated Voodoo 3000 card.

A big criticism of this and most other games, is that it does not play well with others. This is a multitasking OS, and software is expected to cooperate and multitask. Syberia wants to take over the entire machine, and warns against task switching. I had some problems when I did that. If I ever find a game that simply makes task-switching impossible, back it goes. You are not allowed to take over my machine that way.

Others have noted the abruptness of the ending and the seeming shortness of the game. I'm not sure that's valid, because this is an unusually absorbing, even fascinating game. Coming back to the real world is a real letdown, especially if you've been immersed in Syberia for many hours. I wanted more.

More is coming, there is a sequel scheduled for release in October, 2003. I will be buying it.

One reviewer commented on the frustration of dealing with Oscar, the automaton. I suppose that's a viewpoint issue, because after a while it struck me as quite funny.

All in all, this is a game you have to play, to understand where the industry standards are -- unlike some of Dreamcatcher's earlier bombs.

Rating:
Summary: If it was a film, it would've won the Oscar.
Review: When this game was released in 2002, it was the most imaginative story I'd heard all year. And it was a video game! The same medium that is flamed by Hollywood as the bastion for all evil in modern filmdom, had upstaged every novel concept by Hollywood that year.

Even the opening is cool. How many games begin with a funeral procession at a small town in the French Alps...? This is no typical funeral procession, however, since its entire entourage consists of clockwork automatons, made by the toy factory of the late Anna Volalberg. "You," Kate Walker, have been sent to have the surviving owner of her failing company sign on the dotted line, and sell all a$$ets to a prestigious client. Trouble is, now that Anna is gone, that ownership lies with her brother Hans, whose whereabouts are unknown. It is your mission to trace his life since leaving this small town, and find him.

I think what really sold me with Syberia is its overall message; what makes us "human," compared to the life-sized windup toys Kate comes across throughout her journey? As Kate's mystery progresses, she gets called on her trusty cellular phone by her friends, relatives, and colleagues back home, each of whom is either a total dimwit, or too obsessed with their "routine" to truly show any compassion for Kate. Each call seems not as interested in Kate's well being as much as how quickly she can return, so their daily routines can be complete again. This is Kate's life to a "T," whose most frequent phone call is from her boss, demanding her to "do what you're told," as if she were a wind-up toy herself. Will this assignment be a turning point for her? You bet; and that's half the fun.

This was one of my favorite games of 2002. Not as action-packed as Jedi Knight 2 or as comical as Freedom Force, though very cerebral and as close to "interactive novel" as a game has come since The Longest Journey. I loved it. I'm sure you will too.

Rating:
Summary: Great adventure for girls
Review: I picked up this game last week. I was nostalgic for the great adventure games of years ago - King's Quest, Zork. The first thing I noticed is that great adventure games do not exist much anymore among the aisles and aisles of shoot to kill games. I searched and searched and finally found Syberia.

What a great game. Terrific story. Great graphics and music. My daughter-in-law and I spent four wonderful days having a great adventure. If you have daughters, get them this game. It's terrific for all ages and contains strongly positive messages for girls.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Kate acts totally uneducated, considering she is supposed to be a lawyer. The ending was a BIG disappointment. I think they want us to purchase the other half of the story in another game. Not me!!!

Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars--Not enough
Review: full of surprising experience,
though it's 2D,
but better than most of the 3D games.

Rating:
Summary: Moves at a Snails Pace..................Yawn
Review: Some background....
My wife and I have a group of friends who once or twice a month come over to the house and we eat dinner, watch a movie and then crowd our chairs around the computer to play "group adventure games" with everybody contributing strategy while we take turns "driving" the mouse thru the game.

We have played dozens.

Now SYBERIA.

Well I will give them credit for the basic storyline which is interesting.
The environments and graphics are very good and pull you into this make believe world.

Sound good so far.. right ?
So why only 3 stars ?

The game moves at s snail's pace.
Dialogue goes on and on and on forever with 60% of it being meaningless and non-essential to the game.

Worst of all is the number of times you have to re-trace your steps and go back and forth between the same locations 3 or 4 times to get something done.
This must be a way for them to extend the play time but it gets really annoying after several times (ie..... go to train, back to University...back to train...back to university.....back to train...back to university, etc.....).

With a good intriquing adventure game, out group will often get sucked in and not want to stop until we finish.
This may mean going until 3-4 in the morning.
Usually we finish a game in 3 or 4 sessions.

SYBERIA on the otherhand does not create that fascination.
We started playing at Christmas time and still have not finished.
We start playing and after about an hour you can see that the group is getting bored with the slow pace of the game and the attention span is wavering.
Finally the group consensus is.... "Well that's enough for tonight, lets maybe do another hour or so when we meet again".
NOTE: It's been over a month since we last played.

The point is.... Our whole group has pretty much agreed... "While the story was interesting at first, it moves so slow that nobody really cares anymore or even cares to see how it ends"

This is probably the first Adventure Game we wish just had a cinema feature to watch it like a movie, because as a game it simply gets boring.

At this point we may finish it or we may just un-install it and move on to Post-Mortem or another game.

Summary:
GOOD: Wonderfull graphic environment. Good storyline premise.
BAD: Story unfolds so slowly it becomes a boring chore to play.