They sure don't make em' like this anymore. Syberia is an old-school point-and-click adventure game, and while it doesn't do anything that hasn't been done a million times before, it's all done so well and adventure games have become such rarity, that I really didn't care.
The story-line in Syberia is a bit different, and while at times it might not be all that believable, (for instance, you'll meet clockwork robots, complete with artificial intelligence) it's always interesting, and will keep you playing just so you can see what kind of bizarre characters you'll run into next. You play the role of Kate Walker: an attorney charged with handling the buy-out of an old French toy factory. Upon arrival in Valadilene, Kate soon discovers that the owner of the factory has passed away and that she left behind an heir: Hans Voralburg, a kind of idiot savant who suffered a head injury as a child. After the injury he soon displayed a genius ability for making clockwork contraptions. He was also left with a strange obsession with Wooly Mammoths. Back in the 1930's, when he was just a teenager, he ran away from home to search for these Mammoths in the frozen wastes of Syberia and hasn't been seen since. It's up to Kate to find this heir so that the buy-out can be completed.
You'll travel through a variety of places where Hans once stayed: from an old university amid a ruined city, to an abandoned Soviet rocket base. But they all have a couple of things in common: they're all old, run-down, forgotten places populated by a motley assortment of strange characters, and they're all littered with clockwork contraptions left behind by Hans. These contraptions provide the basis for many of the game's puzzles.
The puzzles in Syberia are pretty good. They're all pretty logical, (in their own weird way) and they don't require as much pixel hunting as most adventure games do. Too often adventure games can turn into a pixel hunt, where you have to scour every screen pixel by pixel, looking for that one key item; Syberia for the most part avoids this, and at the same time still remains challenging enough. There are a couple of places where the puzzles are kind of illogical though. For instance, there's this place where these birds are blocking your path and instead of just shoeing them away you have to go through this huge ordeal to get a kind of berry which the birds will eat so you can lure them out of your way. But I get the feeling that they just put these things in there as a kind of joke.
The dialog is handled with a kind of "keyword" system. You'll have a list of keywords that you can ask any NPC about. As you discover new clues, more keywords will become available. The dialog, for the most part, is alright, there are however a few instances of poor translation and the voice-acting can be pretty bad at times. There's this one guy who's supposed to speak with a Russian accent but at times his accent becomes more Scottish and then a little Australian. But overall, it's not the worst acting I've heard in a game.
Like many adventure games, Syberia features gorgeous, high-res pre-rendered back-rounds. There are a few animations-such as birds which fly by, and rippling water-which help add life to the scenes. While you won't find anything fancy like bump-mapping or dynamic lighting, Syberia's graphics are still quite impressive.
In a day when adventure games are becoming rarer and rarer, it's nice to see that there are still a few quality adventure games being made. While Syberia doesn't do anything to advance or evolve the dying genre, it's still a great game and I had a lot of fun playing it.
Sound: 7/10 Good music but the voice acting is sometimes poor.
Graphics: 9/10 Beautiful pre-rendered back-rounds.
Controls: 8/10 Not really a factor, but everything works pretty good.
Game-play: 8/10 Rarely requires a lot of pixel hunting, and yet still remains challenging enough.
Originality: 1/10 Nothing new here.
Value: 6/10 Probably about 20 hours long and no replay value. Only 30 bucks though. Also it's pretty stable (only crashed on me once).
Difficulty: 5/10 Average.
Final Score: 8/10 If you haven't been getting enough adventure games in your diet, then you definitely won't want to miss this one.
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