Syberia 2

You can read my Review of Syberia to get a gist of what this series is about, because for better or for worse, Syberia 2 is more of the same.

In essence, you're on a quest to find mammoths. The first Syberia was maddening in that it ended the game without even achieving your quest and without warning you that this was only "part 1 of 2". So it was a big let-down. Also, Syberia 1 had a REALLY annoying sub-story involving your boyfriend having an affair with your supposed best friend and lying to you. I really hated it.

But that all being said, moving through Syberia and Syberia 2 is like walking through a hall of gorgeous paintings. Sure, the snow falls in the background, but your world is a static one. You have one angle that you see a given room at. That's it. You wave your mouse around the room to see if anything highlights to work with. So while the rendering is gorgeous, we're a long way from the days of pre-rendered rooms to wander through. I'd much rather have the room a real, interactive one that you could turn around in.

Also, as much as the puzzles are made to be part of the plot (since you're travelling around with Hans, a puzzle maker), a lot of times they are just maddeningly tedious. Take this example. You discover that in order to cure your sick friend, you need to get a special cloth, put it on his face, and take it to the doctor. This isn't a mental challenge. But it takes you a full FIFTEEN screen moves to get from the location of the cloth to him, never mind walking back again. And each screen move means you sit there watching Kate, the Hero, walk slowly from one side of the screen to another. The hot spots to "move to the next screen" change each time, so you can't even leave the mouse in one spot for the clicking.

Speaking of tedious, some of the inane conversations you have with people go on literally for 10 minutes or more. I fold origami in my spare time, so I kept a pile of origami paper next to the mouse. I could finish sets of cranes in the time it took for Kate to get through talking to a single person. Click. (talk 4 minutes). Click. (talk 3 minutes). Click (talk 6 minutes).

Yes, some of it was cute. But much of it was just filler. Anybody who lives in a cold region knows that people in the cold don't tend to stand around and chat. It's too cold. If they wanted to make this world full of incredibly talkative people, why not base it in the Jamaican Islands? I can easily imagine a pair of people in Montego Bay lounging by the beach, holding 2 hour long conversations about trains and stations. But here Kate is desperately looking for coal and trying to save a dying friend ... and she has time to hang out and chat for 20 minutes with the shopkeep? I don't think so.

On the other hand, if you just zip from start to finish in either of the Syberia games, it's over very quickly. There isn't a lot of "gameplay" involved. So the only way to stretch the game out and make it worth your cash is to treat it like a long graphic novel. Don't try to rush. Pour yourself a glass of wine. Chop up some cheese clices. Put on some cool background music. Then sit back and go through the scenes slowly, enjoying every nuance.

Recommended for puzzle solvers who enjoy painting-watching and who have a lot of patience. I enjoyed this a lot myself, but I can understand those who got frustrated with it and quit part way through!

Every time I dress up as a monk to sneak into a monastery where I'm not welcome, the first things I do are insult the clergy, then deface their art on the off chance that it might hold some clue I need to get something I need. If you enjoy doing these things as much as I do, then you'll LOVE this game!

The plot and puzzles in this game are so hokey, that I can't give it higher than two stars despite the absolutely gorgeous graphics. I am still in the early stages of the game, and I will ONLY continue because it's so pretty. Kate has become a whiner, and totally unbelievable as she goes so far out of her way to help a guy she doesn't even know. I can suspend disbelief, I swear, but only if I WANT to...I care so little for Kate's "dream" of helping Hans, that I just can't forgive how lame the story is.

Again, the artists who made this thing so beautiful should be commended, but that's the ONLY thing this game has going for it, and it's just not enough.

(By the way, I thought the first game was just as bad. And this time around, they didn't even bother fixing the things that made Siberia so tedious...YES, I'm talking about the fact that you have to walk through every scene 50 times to visit places in the right order. I made the mistake of buying the sequel before playing the first one, otherwise I never would have bought it! If you enjoyed Siberia, you might actually like this one as well.)

Now that I've finished it, I can't say I got what I was hoping for. As with the first, a well-developed storyline and stunning graphics make this game a standout, but adventure gamers usually want a lot more than just pretty places and interesting stories.

Puzzle play was thought provoking, and well integrated, but not by any means challenging. There's really not much more to say about the puzzles - which should, in my opinion, really be a big part of a game.

Voice acting, again, was lacking. It's not that they read the lines badly, and the dialogue was well scripted, but... there was just a certain lack of emotion in the acting. Along with this, the "gestures" that were assigned to various characters in the game were usually just absurd, and far too exaggerated. Also, the game's logic for carrying on conversations doesn't seem to be too well thought out; when you go through your dialogue notebook, locically you would go through all the choices available at that point. Unfortunately, the way it was designed just gives you the impression of hearing scripted lines, and not a natural conversation - there's a lot of repetition, and not a lot of correlation between the characters' reactions. I think the dialogue is probably the weakest point of this game.

I am not sorry that I bought the game, but I am disappointed. Even the ending, which I was really looking forward to, left a lot to be desired - and not in the same "But what happens next?" way that Syberia I did. If you bought and played the first game, then I definitely recommend this one, just to finish out the story. But it could have been much better.

The decent story involves a mysterious toy-maker named Hans Voralberg and his obsession with a lost paradise island called Syberia. You play the main character, Kate Walker, a lawyer from New York who seeks out Voralberg and helps him in his journey. You go to quaint and exotic places, which are all exquisitely rendered in 800x600, highly detailed graphics. You go through danger, mishaps, surprises, but the atmosphere of the game is always peaceful and relaxed. This is a game, like many adventure games, that is still largely influenced by MYST, the best-selling adventure game from 1993, with its laid-back, peaceful, and unthreatening style of play. This game is clearly not intended for the GRAND THEFT AUTO or MAX PAYNE crowd.

And the game is obviously not made for serious gamers either. Gameplay lacks challenge, complexity, and, typical of the adventure genre, originality. You still play the game pretty much the same way you play KING'S QUEST, a 20-year-old game that pioneered the genre: you pick up items (and keep them as your "inventory"), you talk to people you meet, you interact with external items, and you use your inventory items.

The inventory system of the SYBERIA games is one of the most primitive and underused I have ever seen. You rarely have more than 5 usable items in your inventory at any given time. And you cannot combine inventory items. This makes for very simplified gameplay. When you solve puzzles that require using the right inventory items, the paucity of items in your possession often makes the solutions pretty obvious.

If you expect puzzle-solving of the caliber of those MYST games, you will be disappointed. The puzzles in the SYBERIA games are never by a long shot as complex and challenging as in the MYST games. The toughest puzzle in the first SYBERIA game is one that involves mixing a cocktail drink, which had me stumped for half hour. In SYBERIA II, I can't think of one puzzle that can be called challenging. The most difficult puzzle is probably the one where you manipulate a mouse into obtaining an exotic fruit for you.

The lack of depth and complexity is further evidenced by the fact that, unlike a typical traditional adventure game, your character does not say anything about the things you click on the screen. For those unfamiliar about this aspect, adventure games used to be so much more fun to play because whatever you click on the screen, you hear your character comment about it, sometimes humorously, and sometimes helpful to your puzzle-solving. In the SYBERIA games, with no commentary from your character, all the pretty things you see on the screen are often just eye candies. Of course, the lack of commentary greatly reduced the amount of dialogs that needed to be recorded, saving money for the game's designers.

Adventure game fans have been vocal in their support of adventure games. But it is hard for the genre to attract any new fans, partly due to shallow titles like SYBERIA, and partly due to the inherent difficulty for the genre to evolve into better forms. It is the genre that is driving gamers away, not the other way around.