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Unique adventure

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: September 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I felt compelled to let the reviewing audience know that thereis a very good reason why Syberiawas voted the best adventure atE3 of 2002. Did you enjoy how themechanical gismos and gadgets worked in Myst, Riven, and Mtst 111EXile? Well you are in for quitea treat with Syberia. There are tons of them to have fun with, andeven interact with. This game is apoint and click adventure, but Iwould have paid more than Amazonis selling it for. This game isnot for fast actioneers. There isno violence, just a beautifuladventure. Nice for a change!The Graphics are very detailedand well done. The music drawsyour heart into the game.After Playing Syberia, I believeyou will look forward to Syberia11 which is coming out for pcshortly. I am writing thiscommendation because I believethe original creators of Syberiatook there time to create quality,and do not want any adventurerto miss out on this beauty.

I would call it an interactive novel

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: February 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

You can immediately tell that there was a lot of dedication and effort put into this adventure game; the graphics are outstanding, animation is realistic, the dialogue, both verbal and subtitled was translated in several languages including Spanish, German, French and Italian (and Blue Cheese!)

You are in control of Kate Walker, a young lawyer that has a very specific agenda of signing a deal for her company to acquire a long-established automaton factory located in Valadilene, France. What seemed liked a straightforward, ordinary business transaction becomes an unexpected quest in search for a legendary man, known as Hans Voralberg.

The plot is intriguing, it succeeds in grabbing your attention, and the adventure unfolds in a very dramatic and cinematic way, but it doesn't really fulfils the expectations for people who are looking for a challenge.
The game seems more like an interactive novel where you unveil the plot as you progress, than it is a true adventure game. Some puzzles are there to give it a sense of challenge, but the linear approach of it made them very simple to figure out.

The dialog is remarkable, and there is plenty of it in this game. A negative side about it is that in between the entire dialog there are important clues for the adventure, so it is unavoidable to go through all of it in order to progress. There's a button available to skip the dialog, although I would suggest against doing that as there are many instances where the dialog is not repeated.

4 stars for a great effort, and for the overall entertainment value, I took one star out for the lack of a true challenge.

Elegant, challenging, non-violent game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: March 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I do not enjoy video games very much, mainly because I do not like the violence and the anxiety of being constantly stalked, shot at, or run over. This game is a great alternative. The scenery is beautiful, and I actually enjoy the slow pace of the game. I find many of the puzzles challenging, and the story is interesting and involved. The feel is very much that of a mystery novel turned into a video game. Most kids will probably find it dull, but for adults looking for a different kind of video game, I highly recommend this one.

Are we there yet?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: December 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I got this because I was looking for a game like Myst - which I thoroughly enjoyed. I probably should give Syberia two stars, but I really want to like it and I hope that others might enjoy it more than I do.

It's a whole lot like Myst, but in these kinds of games, there's a fine line between challenge and tedium. Like Riven, (in my opinion) Syberia seems way on the side of tedium.

There's also a fine line between addiction and compulsion. I find that I'm compelled to finish the game, but I'm not really enjoying it. The scenery is very nice, and the artistry is impressive, but it's 2-dimensional and I must admit that Myst-level graphics simply aren't awe-inspiring anymore.

I keep thinking that I should be cleaning the basement instead of playing the game and think occasionally that cleaning the basement would be less work and more satisfying.

You'll see the graphics a lot as you are running back and forth and back and forth and back and forth trying to solve the simple (good) and tedious (not so good) puzzles. When frustrated, the graphics don't seem so charming anymore.

There's also way too much boring dialog. You'll get interrupted by cell phone calls and hear long, dumb conversations from the main character's husband, mother and friend. You can skip through them, but it's hard to know what's important to the game and what's not.

It's the same with various characters that you run across in your travels. Many of them are useless to either the story or the game, which isn't too bad, but they're not entertaining and talk too long.

Moving around is also a problem. Syberia was obviously adapted from a mouse setup to the Xbox gamepad, and it doesn't work very well. It's harder to find things and the direction of travel changes from scene to scene. If you're not careful, you'll find yourself going back into the scene you just left.

The character also just got stuck so that it can't move. Since I hadn't saved the game in a while, I now have to go back and redo a lot of tedious stuff. It will take a good half hour to get through what I've lost, even though I know what to do.

If you have a LOT of time and REALLY like Myst, you'll probably enjoy this game. The creators obviously put a lot into it. I think these kinds of games should be reviewed and edited by a lot of real people before they go to market. A healthy bit of editing would have probably made a huge difference.

Recommendations: 1) Get hints from the web 2) In the game, ask all the questions of everybody 3) Get familiar with the X button and the B button - the first will make you run instead of walk and the second will skip through dialog.

Don't Fight the Addiction, It Only Makes it Stronger

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: October 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Once I picked up this game, I couldn't put it down! The storyline is beautiful, with all of the central characters (the Voralberg family) initially shouded in mystery. By the end of the game, I almost felt as if I personally knew Hans Voralberg .

The puzzles, though simple, are seemlessly integrated and completely locigal within the context of the game's universe.
All of the characters are lovable. Even the people you know you shouldn't like, you do. Some of the dialogue gets repetative and can be a little bit out of character at times, but the storyline and the dialogue between the characters is fantasticly written, humorus at the appropriate places, and just plain fun. Towards the beginning, an elderly man says "sit down my dear, so that we may simply enjoy the air together." I found that to be poetic, which reflects the game in its entirety - poetic.
And the clockwork mechanisms, the focal point of the game, are ingeniously cool.

I savor every cutscene in this game. They're beautiful, with the almost requiem ambiance. That also applies to all of the locations in the game...all four of them.

That brings me to the bad news. If you're a pretty good problem solver, you'll breeze through the meager four levels easily (about eight hours). This goes hand-in-hand with the main problem I had with the game - the ending. Don't worry, I won't spoil anything, or at least I'll try not to. If you want you can stop reading now!

As you play the game, you are building up the character of the man you are trying to find (Hans) in your head. Where is he now? What is he doing? Has he accomplished his life's goals? Why is he the way he is? Because of this, you also build up this expectation of how the game will end, which would seem like the most logical conclusion. However, because the game is so short, so is your journey, and thus the game just sort of ends. Where it ends, I won't say, but its seems so out of place, so WRONG, that you'll positively swear that there's been some sort of mistake. You'll simply convince yourself that there's more gameplay after the credits. You'll have a lot of questions at the end, and there won't be any answers.

Please, please understand that the ending didn't lessen my enjoyment of the rest of the game. I do, in fact, plan to go back and play it again, and I still watch the cutscenes (which are saved on the main menu once you've seen them in game) when I need my Syberia fix.

There's alos a demo of the game available for PC, for those of you who don't believe me when I say how enjoyable this game is. I think it's at: www.syberia.info. The only real differences between the PC version and the Xbox version are:

1. The PC version needs several patches in order to work properly, while the Xbox version is guarenteed to work.
2. The navagation on the Xbox version is slightly more troublesome. For example, rather than hover your mouse over something and select it, you have to physically walk up to it. It makes it a little more difficult, because you actually have to walk around the screen in order to find things instead of 'mouse scanning' the screen until the cursor changes into the action icon!

There you go. I hope that's all you need to know about Syberia to make you buy it...er, I mean, make a decision about buying it!

Great Adventure with Lots of Twists and Turns

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: August 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

In starting to play this game, I was immediately struck by two things: the incredibly detailed graphics and the beautifully haunting music. Those two elements do a lot to set the stage and tone for what turns out to be an exciting -- though at times frustratingly slow-paced -- journey.

My husband and I played it together, and found that we each contributed ideas that led to the solution of the various puzzles. Although we were tempted to cheat and search the web for some clues, we didn't, and were always able to figure it out. We found the puzzles to be clever, original and well thought out. Naturally, they don't reflect what we would do "in real life;" it's a fantasy game!

There were many times when our progress seemed to hit a brick wall and we were ready to give up completely. Naturally, we had a breakthrough five minutes later and stayed up until 2 a.m. playing. (We don't have any kids for whom we must set an example.)

A bit of advice for Xbox players: Save after each big breakthrough. We hit 2 dead spots where we couldn't move and had to start from the previous save. Arrgh.

There are no blood and guts, nobody gets decapitated, and nobody gets run down by armored vehicles. It's an intellectual game, not a shoot-em-up game, and for someone who's used to faster-paced games, this might be too slow to be satisfying. We, however, loved it.

Atrocious controls

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: June 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Maybe this isn't an issue on the PC version, but I'm just about ready to stop playing this game on the Xbox because the controls are so annoying. I don't enjoy pacing back and forth across the floor (when I can even get the character to stop standing in place while I wiggle the joystick) trying to find the one spot on the floor in the left half of the big open room that will switch the view over to the right half of the big open room. Try to walk down the road in the initial town by staying on the sidewalk and you'll get nowhere -- if you don't walk exactly in the middle of the street you'll get stuck in one place. And make sure you release the joystick whenever you walk from one place to another, since chances are the camera angle will change and you'll end up turning around and going back where you came from before you realize it. This is a very pretty game, and the story seems like it might be interesting, but it's like reading an engrossing novel that's been translated into Pig Latin. Not worth the pain.

Very disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I thought this game was slow and boring. The controls were ackward and movement was difficult. The scenery was detailed, but I spent more time looking around than actually doing anything. I can't really say what was specifically lacking. I thought it was uninteresting, hard to manuver through, and rather dull. I played it for a few days, hoping something about it would grab me, but nothing every did.

Don't believe the HDTV propaganda

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: November 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you run Syberia at 1080i or 720p the game shrinks instead of increasing in detail. I can't believe this isn't called out in other reviews, but I'm pretty sure I'm doing nothing wrong here- I have a very standard setup. I have the XBox High definition AV pack and changed the XBox settings to turn on 720p and 1080i. Even after monkeying around with various options on my HDTV TV the only result I could get was a tiny game screen in the middle and a big black area all around the edge. I personally feel really gipped and wouldn't have bought the game had I known. The only way the game is playable is at 480p, and at that resolution it's very hard to read the text in notes and such.

My second complaint is that the game is of the annoying throwback variety where you aren't playing 1st or 3rd person, instead you're guiding a person around a flat drawing, like in phantasmagoria. Personally I find that to be lame, as you can't walk up to something and inspect it (and at 480p, that's extremely crippling). I was hoping for 11th hour except in high definition and with a first or third person viewpoint- what I got was a low resolution throwback.

Summary: The PC version is decent even if it feels like it was written in 1995, but avoid the console versions at all costs. They just don't work on a TV screen, and HDTV is there in name only.

Not a Page Turner

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: September 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I read the reviews about this game and expected an experience similar to the Myst series. The graphics are beautiful throughout this game and the voice acting is as good as it can be with the material provided; however, it falls short in too many other areas for it to be called "fun." The storyline is somewhat intriquing, but definitely not a page turner. The characters are lifeless and uninteresting. Even the main character, Kate Walker, is a bore. The "puzzles" throughout the game are mindless and, for the most part, lack logic. You might be better off reading a good mystery novel.

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