Syberia

Rating:
Summary: Definitely Above Average but Could Be Better
Review: This is not a bad game in any respect, but a few steps down from other recent adventure games such as The Longest Journey and Grim Fandango. Sure, the graphics are fantastic. Backgrounds are beautifully done, animations are fluid and realistic, and cutscenes are stunning. However, they seem to have been a bit too proud of their artwork because they've stuffed the game full of it, at the expense of sufficient interaction. I think more than half of all the frames are completely noninteractive (besides walking through and entering and exiting). Unlike the aforementioned games, the protagonist (Kate) will not comment on any aspect of environment except maybe once or twice. It's like walking alone through an art museum, sometimes. Not too boring, but had they included voiced "observations" from Kate, they could have made exploration a lot, lot more fun, especially given the interesting and beautiful environments they created.

In fact, limited interaction is the major flaw of this game, in my opinion. Puzzles are relatively few, and most of them involve putting little objects or pieces of machinery in their correct places to make things work. The cursor indicates when you can use or pick up something to useful effect, so often you find yourself using things and picking stuff up just because you can, yet you don't know what you're doing it for. There are no different methods of manipulation to try, and you don't even have the option of manipulating or combining objects that are not correct. Doing this in other games have often had funny consequences. In Grim Fandango, for example, tell Manny to "pick up" the car, and he'll dryly say, "Sorry, I left my tow truck in my other pants." Syberia seems awfully linear and limited due to this, and despite the beauty of the environments, they don't truly come to life. Conversations are also very limited in that they play almost like movies. You get to pick the topic, and then you sit back and watch them talk on their own. No more dialogue trees. So playing Syberia ends up being a very passive experience. Most of the time you're either watching Kate walk silently across frames (VERY SLOWLY, I might add, and it gets tedious sometimes) or watching her talk with someone without your direct input.

Lastly, the game seems altogether too short. The story itself was intriguing enough to keep me fairly interested, but it's actually very simple and straightforward, and my expectations were sort of dispelled by its abrupt and inconclusive ending, which is obviously setting up for a sequel. It doesn't have that epic feel of Grim Fandango or The Longest Journey (well I guess that's why they called it The Longest Journey...).

Notice, though, that I keep comparing Syberia to other, older adventures that I consider better. On its own, Syberia is definitely above average, for in these sad years the adventure genre hasn't had much to boast about. As I said, the 2D graphics and art design are gorgeous. The music is pretty good, but it doesn't seem to play all too often. The puzzles tend to be pretty direct and not difficult. While some involve just finding a key, others are creative and original.

Bottom line: Good (especially the brilliant graphics), but the slow pace and limited interaction results in a bit of tedium and can make the player feel somewhat excluded from any real in-depth puzzling and adventuring. Also a bit short and dangling. Even so, it's the best adventure of 2002, so if you like adventure games, it will be worth it. Though if you haven't played Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey, or even the Monkey Island games, you should try those instead.

Rating:
Summary: Makes you wanna pull your hair out 8-O
Review: When I first got the game Syberia, I was quite excited about playing it. I expected it to be like most 3rd person games I've played, in which you actually get to maneuver your character with the keyboard, not just "point and click" where you want it to go to. Well, I was in for quite a disappointment, as the whole game involves just the use of the mouse. It just made me feel detached from the gameplay. I hope to never come across another game like this, and if I do, that the other elements in the game make up for it.

I've read some reviews which mention the excellent graphics. Well, the pictures (yes, the pictures. The graphics consist of a static backdrop in which my character moves from designated point to designated point.) are pretty and unique, but you can't even look around in your environment. No up, down, sideways looking, as the view you get of the area is static. It reminded me too much of those old Oregon Trail games, in which all you see is the moving wagon against these unchanging backdrops. I thought the game was supposed to be 3D! The graphics are made to look 3D, but are actually flat and 2-dimensional. The only 3D things are the moving water and the animated people and animals.

There were also several glaring errors in the subtitles. I think they're last-minute changes that were made in the voice acting.

The gameplay itself is frustrating and overly simplistic. Honestly, I've found TOMB RAIDER games to be more difficult and challenging than this game. How is it frustrating? It's frustrating to be given the same missions over and over again, with the only things changing being the environment and the tasks you must perform. I don't know how many times I had to wind the train. By the third time, I was thinking, "Not this again!" Maybe the designers just ran out of ideas. It's also frustrating to have to just wait and wait for the character to make it from one point to another. Is there no faster way to get her to the other end??

I am almost halfway thru the game, yet I really don't want to go on. I rarely call things boring, as I have a high tolerance for such things, but this game is BORING, period. It's not so much the story, but the gameplay that makes it boring. The main character is also badly designed. Her body just looks wrong. Wrong, as in, it looks like a walking, shapeless pole. Her face looks too rectangular and narrow. Maybe she would have looked better if they somehow squashed her down a little? :\

The positive things I can think of are the environments' design. Sometimes you just want to stare forever at the backdrops. The architecture is astounding and imaginative. I really wish there were such places here on earth. Also, it's kind of neat that it takes place in our times. The main character even gets to use a cellphone. :D The use of it, is, in fact, essential if you want to progress. The whole feel you get from the game is sort of like a mix between the old and the new, the main character serving as our portal into the old.
Overall, 2/5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: fairly easy adventure game
Review: I enjoyed playing this game because the story was interesting, but the puzzles themselves were not much of a challenge (even though I did get stuck a few times).The puzzles were completely plot driven. The graphics were beautiful. The only criticism was that there was no way to get to places that you had already visited, so there was a lot of watching the heroine walk (or run) through scenes over and over, back and forth, which got old. Fairly good length for playing time.

Rating:
Summary: This game had me at hello!
Review: Wow, all I can say is wow. From the musical score, to the graphics, to the story it told, Syberia was a great old-fashioned adventure game. The characters were charming and the cut scenes were amazing, inspiring more and more play.

The only negative comment I have is that sometimes I just had to go to the walk throughs. Some of the puzzles just weren't intuitive, but then again playing it all day and night probably had something to do with that also.

Rating:
Summary: Needed more wind-up men, puzzles
Review: This is a good story with great locations and atmosphere. This game had huge potential. A world of gloomy clockwork inventions is perfect for an engrossing, item collecting, puzzle solver. Unfortunately, they left out the puzzles.
The sounds and music were well done. Not LucasArts, but good.
Woody Allen writes dialog well. Video game makers don't. The dialog here is not entirely painful. They are smart enough to keep it brief and to the point.
The cut scenes are expertly done. The openening really is TOO good.
They had a good thing here, they just didn't take it far enough.

Rating:
Summary: Syberia / The Longest Journey
Review: Obviously people won't be able to help but compare this game to The Longest Journey. Both games cast a young heroine discovering herself as her quest progresses through places going from whimsical to eerie, and both games got outstanding reviews from critics all over the adventure gaming world.

On some accounts, Syberia is better that The Longest Journey. Graphically, for example. The premises are much more typical and interesting in Syberia. You can definitely feel Benoit Sokal's touch. It looks like great research has been conducted to create the different locations. The result feels very homogeneous, something I think The Longest Journey was lacking to some extent.

Another thing Syberia is really good at is stretching reality to great lengths, without ever totally breaking into fantasy or science fiction. The fact that (nearly) everything in that game is so close to how reality is, or could be, adds a great deal of credibility to the story, and the game itself. Mostly everything is exaggerated to some point, as to make the story and decor interesting, but it never goes too far, thus not distracting the player with inconsistencies.

Now for the bad (or not as good) parts.

The dialogs and voices are not nearly as good as in The Longest Journey. Voices are OK, but compared to the quality of the graphics, OK just does not cut it. Nothing is so bad it makes you cringe, but it just feels that it could have been done so much better. Dialogs sometimes sound canned, but I have to admit that it's a pitfall that is really hard to avoid when making an adventure game. I only know a handful of games that managed to avoid it (The Longest Journey being one of them).

The story is compelling, but it will leave you with a feeling of something lacking. Obviously the it is a set-up for a sequel. Of course the same trick has been used in many games, but does it make it OK? I just wish the end brought a better feeling of closure. When I play a game, I usually become attached to the main characters, and it always feels weird to have the story hanging when the game ends.

Conclusion: If you have to pick only one game between The Longest Journey and Syberia, it's a tough call, but go for The Longest Journey. But you should definitely try to play both those games, as both of them bring something very interesting to the world of adventure games. You will not be disappointed by either one.

Rating:
Summary: Didn't live up to the hype
Review: Great graphics.Sadly lacking in puzzles. Basically just a walk through. The ending just fizzles out. Certainly not in the same catagory as Myst.

Rating:
Summary: Syberia
Review: This game follows the adventures of Kate Walker, lawyer, as she tries to hunt down the heir to the Voralberg toy company. First, I'll talk about the good parts of this game. The graphics were excellent, really stunning. What errors there were (sometimes Kate walked on top of things like lightpost that were supposed to stay in the background), were there, I'm told, because my laptop couldn't handle DirectX 8. And it still looked good, even on my laptop. I loved the cutscenes, they were all really beautiful. The background music was wonderful, as well, which was a good thing, since I would've gone insane in some areas of the game if it hadn't been. The voice acting was mostly quite good, although there were some voices that I found annoying, such as the voice of Dan (Kate's fiance) and Kate's boss.

Now on to the reasons why this game got a 3 from me. If it weren't for how wonderful the atmosphere of the game had been, it would've gotten a 2. First, the puzzles: they were mainly pretty easy, which I don't necessarily have anything against. However, a lot of them involved walking through screen after screen, and it got to the point where I wanted to scream. I really wish there had been a way to get from place to place quickly - even when she was running, it took a while to get Kate from one area to another. And she never ran on the stairs. When the puzzles were basically just something annoying (Oscar, the automaton train driver, was fond of asking Kate to do inanely stupid things, like get a ticket for the train when she was the only passenger planned), I felt like banging my head against a wall. When even the main character of the game is frusterated, you'd think it would occur to the game designers that the players would end up feeling the same thing. Also, this was probably the most linear game I have ever played. My dad, who loves games shoot 'em up-type games, always complains that the games I play are way too linear. However, this game takes the cake. It's literally impossible to do another puzzle until you've finished the first one. I spent much of my time wanting to work on some other part of the game that intrigued me, only to discover that I couldn't do anything until I'd finished something else. If you get tired of working on a puzzle, that's too bad, because you've got to finish it before you can work on anything else. That really bothered me. And the game designers never really took advantage of the fact that the game included these incredible automatons. Sure, they were there, and occaisionally a puzzle required that you had to make one work, but so much more could've been done with one. I wanted to examine how one worked, but the closest I ever got was getting to give one a pair of legs. It was dissappointing. I was, however, relieved that there were never any timed puzzles. Big plus.

Next, although the music and most of the voice acting was quite good, sometimes the music would drown out what the people were saying. I suggest keeping the caption mode on, although, when you do that, you'll notice that the captions don't always match what the people are saying exactly. Especially near the end, I kept noticing errors, too, like words left out and weird punctuation. It was still readable, but it shouldn't have been too difficult to edit the captions.

Now, one last point. I really wish there had been something like a diary for Kate, or a notebook, or that she had occaisionally commented on some of the things that she could interact with (If you've played The Longest Journey, you know what I mean). It would've given more insight into how she thinks. I don't think there was enough of that, and, especially as the details of her relationships with her family and friends became more apparent, that would've been nice.

So basically, the game was lovely, but it definitely had a lot of failings. The ending was a big let-down (I kept expecting more to happen, and then the game just ended), leaving me with the feeling that a sequel is probably planned. If a sequel is made, I'll play it, but I just hope there are improvements in certain areas.

Rating:
Summary: Best Adventure Game EVER!!
Review: This is the best Adventure game I have ever played...And I have played ALOT.

First, the storyline. This game has a great plot that is easy to follow. You know excatly what your mission is and why you are doing it.

Second, the puzzles. The puzzles in this game are actually easy enough to figure out on your own. You do not have to follow a walkthrough or use a cheater site. And they seem to make sense, meaning they go along with the storyline.

Three, The graphics. EXCELLENT! Very cool for this kind of game.

The only thing I can complain about is the fact that you have to run back and forth alot. But that is to be expected in a game like this.

Buy this game you will not be sorry.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating !
Review: The game is captivating with highly developed graphics and scenery. The puzzles are moderately challenging which does not make it impossible--but still keeps it interesting.

The ending was a major let-down. The game begs for a sequel. It's a decent game without anything that might be offensive to different sensibilities. I'd love to see more games like this on the market.