Syberia (PC)
Reviewed by Libe Goad

Life-affirming video games have been few and far between as of late. Games with fun, but senseless, violence have attracted so much attention that developers seem to be looking for any excuse to throw in bullet time and human shields.

If you want to push against the tide, take a vacation via Dreamcatcher’s new story-driven epic, Syberia. This game will take you far away from guns, thugs and drugs and into a lush environment filled with story-driven adventure, self-discovery and oddball automatons -- just to keep things interesting. Though the game doesn’t cover new ground in terms of the waning adventure genre, it’s the Big, Fat Greek Wedding of the fall gaming season.

The story, created by French writer/illustrator Benoit Sokal, takes you to a small mountain village called Validiliene. American lawyer Kate Walker has arrived to oversee the takeover of the Voralberg toy factory. Upon her arrival, Kate learns that the factory’s owner has died and left her with an unfinished takeover and an unsolved mystery directly related to her mission. From there, you step into Kate’s loafers and guide her through the journey ahead, solving puzzles and finding clues that will help unlock her way.

Graphically, Syberia is a work of art and the game’s highlight. Benoit’s imagination takes us through four worlds, each inspired by art nouveau architecture and both sides of the iron curtain during the cold war. Lush forestry and ornate buildings fill the west and dingy gray buildings comprise the east. It’s a shame there isn’t more opportunity to explore this gorgeous world, as the 2D background is mostly static (except for a few flying birds) and impenetrable. The character design looks reasonably impressive, though there’s no real in-your-face interaction with any character other than a few automatons. Of course, we were more than elated to play a main female character with a full set of clothes and a reasonably realistic body type.

The scenery is further enhanced with a gorgeously orchestrated score and aural surroundings. At one point in the game Kate rolls into a train station that’s also an aviary. Either the developers had to have recorded the sounds from an actual aviary or the sound designers visit aviaries in their spare time. If you close your eyes and listen, you’ll think you’ve just stepped into your own bird sanctuary.

If you’ve played any point-and-click adventure game before, then navigating through Syberia will be as natural as brushing your teeth. The curser changes shape to signify whether Kate needs to speak, insert a key, pull a lever, enter codes or pick up an object. Most of the puzzles revolve around these kinds of actions, and for the most part, they require little more than a keen eye and basic reasoning skills. However, just when the game seems to be rolling forward rapidly, you’re slammed with an aggravating puzzle that requires more dumb luck than logical application. This bewildering experience occurs several times throughout the game, and if it weren’t for the compelling storyline, it would prove detrimental to the overall experience.

Character interaction was equally troubling. When Kate approaches a main character, a notebook filled with topics appears on the screen, and the conversation is controlled from there. While multiple-topic conversations are the norm for adventure games, there was no way to tell which topics had been covered previously. Go through the list with one character, solve a puzzle and then return to a main character for another chat, some of the list’s topic would yield different answers and others would not. This was especially overbearing when Kate confronts three verbose school chancellors later in the game. One repeated question and she was stuck listening to much ado about nothing—all over again.

The voice acting could have used refinement as well. At times, Kate’s character would say a few awkward openers, such as “Hi. Hey there. Hi Professor.” Maybe she was supposed to convey a sense of urgency or perhaps the correct phrase was lost in translation, but it happened too many times to go unnoticed.

Though Syberia fails to be the genre-saving adventure everyone hoped it would be, it won our heart by default. It won't revolutionize the flailing genre, but perhaps it will inspire a game that will.

SCORE 8.0