Syberia - Review english


Syberia Release date Germany: 07/2002 Developer/publisher: Microids Canada Boxshots Homepage Download trailer 7,8 MB Download demo E 103 MB Biography Benoît Sokal (french) A review by slydos 28th July 2002 After Amerzone, Syberia is the second adventure game from comic author Benoît Sokal. And it is a logical advancement. While we are walking very lonely in Amerzone in 1st-person-perspective through the South American jungle and have only few interlocutors, in Syberia we accompany Kate Walker in 3rd person perspective on a journey through already more populated places across Europe. However exactly as in Amerzone we use unbelievable machines and apparatuses to travel, experience stories about rare birds and must solve an egg puzzle. Exactly like Amerzone Syberia is a fictitious country, which isn't found on any map. And exactly like Amerzone Syberia is the dream of a man, whom we learn to understand and dream with him.		Click on pictures to enlarge Kate Walker Main menu

Story Kate Walker is an American barrister, who was sent to the French alpine village Valadilène, to buy for a client the old automaton factory owned for generations by the Voralbergs. Kate is young and establishes with her beautiful eurasisan face lineaments for us players a soul relationship to the strange places which can be discovered later. Kate and her boss planned only a short stay, in order to sign the contract, but everything is different in Valadilène. The owner of the automat factory, Anna Voralberg, died and her dead-believed brother Hans seems to be still alive. By her investigations for the missing inheritor Hans, Kate is envolved ever more into the story and the fate of the family Voralberg and the search becomes her own, personal thing. The more she gets to know about the strange happenings of the past, the further she withdraws from her life in New York, represented by her friend Olivia, her boss, her mother and her fiancé Dan, who appear by cell phone again and again as voices from the "normal" world. Syberia is a dramatic story full of tragic, hope and despair, excitingly and very humorously told. One quickly identifies with Kate Walker, sharing her feelings such as amazement, curiosity, annoyance, obstinacy, joy, compassion, pride... The game becomes experience. Installation The game comes on two CDROMs. If you want to avoid the, even with this game, annoying CD changes at the beginning of each game session, you should select the full installation of 1100 MB. Minimum you need 400 MB on hard disk or you can also select 600 MB. The installation runs automatically and smoothly. One then reaches the nicely animated main menu and can begin a new game from there. Start Apart from the usual menu options "New game", "Load", "Credits", "Quit" and "Options" (you can adjust sound settings and graphics quality here, switch on/off sub-titles) there is another menu option "Video sequences". At the beginning this department is still empty however during the game it fills with already watched video sequences which you can re-watch. It is worthwhile to have a look here later in order to watch e.g. the intro movie again: It is raining. Kate Walker incredulously observes a bizarre funeral procession, which is accompanied by not a living soul. Anna Voralberg's coffin is transported on a horse car to the cemetery, led by a small mechanical drummer and accompanied by a crowd of by jerks moving robots. Sad violin sounds support the strange scene. Kate takes her suit-case and continues her way to the hotel. Over the hotel entrance another robot starts moving and draws rattling-squeaking its cylinder hat. Kate enters the hotel and the game begins. Controls/handling Syberia is exclusively mouse-controlled. You can get to the main menu by right clicking with the mouse, what opens the inventory and here you can click the menu-button. Unlimited svegames can be stored and are supplied with a picture and the time of saving. The cursor in form of an ellipse, shines like a small gloriole, if you can move to another screen. The cursor takes other forms, if you can interact, e.g. speak with a person or use an object. The interactive areas that indicate that you can leave a location are unfortunately often so large that you can hardly differentiate between two exits on the one hand, and on the other hand can overlook easily hotspots that lie near this area. Doubleclicking with the left mouse button lets Kate run faster, in places where this is possible and allowed. In the library e.g. and in other rooms she doesn't do it and you also have to renounce it when stair climbing. Stair climbing and other such actions are shortened however directly, by showing Kate only at the beginning and then again at the end of such an animation sequence. If Kate climbs stairs, it doesn't work as smoothly as with all other game animations. She then often must place herself with little steps into the correct position to go on. You cannot control and move Kate so freely, as you perhaps might wish to. She moves within a reduced frame and on given paths, there is only little freedom to choose. Thus the developers of course prevented, that our heroine can disappear from our view, as it happens sometimes in games with larger freedom of movement. Unfortunately the freedom of investigating and examening the scenarios is likewise reduced by the fact that only objects are emphasized, which are really necessary for the game process. So we can experience Kate's thoughts and comments on robots, humans, machines and environments only indirectly over conversations with other characters. That would have made the game much more complex, would have led the gamer perhaps on a wrong side path and would prevent him from a single-track hurry through the beautiful scenarios. A little reconciliation for this offer are some non-player-characters, which don't serve the progress of the game and are only an enlivening addition. With the NPC's you can speak by leftclicking and then Kate's note pad appears with the possible discussion topics. If a new topic is added to the note pad, one gets an acoustic signal and the note pad icon appears simultaneously for a short moment. It is not indicated, if you've already discussed a topic with a person, and so it can happen that you have to listen to longer texts again. That can be prevented by the Escape-key, which is to break off actually only the current sentence, unfortunately however often terminates the whole conversation. With Escape or right mouse button one can also stop video sequences. If you nevertheless should still need explanations for the easy to learn controls, all functions are sufficiently described in the small manual. Inventory The inventory can be opened with a right-click and takes approx. 1/3 of the screen. Taken up objects are stored here automatically and we can for the first time see a text description of the item, since hotspots are not described with texts on the screen. Inventory objects cannot be combined with each other. A left click selects an object and also shows an icon in the bottom left corner of the screen. Two objects are present from the beginning: Kate's note pad with the discussion topics and her cell phone, which we can use at any time, in order to call one of the stored or other numbers. There are always only few objects in the inventory, and they are used most of the time within one chapter and disappear afterwards from the inventory. The inventory contains not only objects but also documents, like newspaper cuttings, letters or books. If you clicks right beside the letter symbol on an arrow, then the document inventory opens. Here you can select again by icon whether you would like to read it in zoom mode or use it in the game. Documents remain up to the end in the inventory and are not deleted like other objects after a chapter is completed. Puzzles The puzzles of Syberia belong, with two or three exceptions, into the category "very easy" and are suitable in the best way for beginners and genre newbies, particularly also for children, for whom there is no age restriction. As already described, object/inventory puzzles are limited to a chapter. So it's clear that the relative small number of inventory items imust be used within a limited area. In addition one can interact only with objects and areas, which are absolutely necessary for getting ahead. So you will be able to go on in the story fluently and without large brain teasers. Puzzles can often be solved only if certain dialogues were led and certain places visited. There are also some light, always absolutely logical mechanical puzzles, which are well integrated into the story. Up to a certain point the puzzles are solvable in different order, however the game is in principle rather linear. In any case players should put their fingers off a complete solution, since the degree of difficulty of the entire game is so easy that one would continue to shorten thereby the anyway short gaming length. Graphics One can describe the graphics with one word: Fantastic! The prerendered 2D-backgrounds are splendourful, even if they show decay or destruction. To each of the 4 main locations there is a large number of scenes, which are used although sometimes only for short passing through, but unusually detailed and complex designed. The rainy French alpine village Valadilène, decaying German Barrockstadt with its university and the beautiful green house railway station, the given up industrial complex Komkolzgrad somewhere in the former USSR and the formerly flowering health resort Aralbad, that reminds of the beginning 20th century. All places have seen better days however everywhere there is also beauty in the middle of decay, what could not have better supported the basic tendency of the game lying between melancholy and hope. Every detail was designed carefully, however in Barrockstadt a German-language sign showed a wrong grammar and I was also told by a Russian speaking friend that also the Russian words were not set correct. That will be not noticeable to not German/Russian speaking players, but could have easily been avoided. The movements of our heroine Kate and some persons, which we will meet, are designed absolutely as in real life using the Motion Capture procedure. In addition there are great video sequences, which one can watch again through an option in the main menu. A little disturbing was, that we could hardly watch Kate's mouth movements and mimic, since one gets to see her mostly only from the rear or from the side. Sound/music The dramatic atmosphere of the game is rounded off by the outstanding varying music of a large orchestra. Times quiet, melancholic violin sound, depending upon situation become threatening á la Psycho or like waves of a surf breaker. The music is used however economically and is no self purpose. Directly from the beginning one is inspired by exactly set sounds, which make a strong contribution beside music and graphics to the total effect. While actually each small noise was placed with premeditation and exactly suitable, I noticed in Valadilène that the splashing noise was missing, when Kate runs through a puddle. I had waited for that since otherwise everything seemed so perfect, but you cannot have everything. Dialogues The dialogues in Syberia represent Kate and their interlocutors as independent personalities, following their own conceptions and ideas. Their fate and way of life become clear thereby. At the beginning we experience Kate still careful and a bit insecure, later more independent and dashing. The dialogues are modern and full humor: "Let's drink on the seizure of power by the Babushkas from the new world!" means excosmonaut Boris Charow after some word fight with Kate. One can also rate the dubbing and interpretation of most characters in Syberia from good to very well. Negative was, that some of the not so strong actors were used for several characters and the simple Momo wasn't spoken particularly suitably to the role by a woman. The German subtitles are clearly recognizable in large type characters and follow the speech speed by scrolling whenever the suitable paragraph is spoken. So one can very easily reconstruct the spoken text. Here and there are some smaller errors in the written text, e.g. Kate is called once by the notary Ms. Voralberg, although she is actually addressed of him as Ms. Walker. Result An adventure game, which one should surely recommend to genre newbies. Beginners will have entertaining hours, perfectly free of frustration with this game. For advanced puzzle lovers, who look for logical challenges, it is however too simple and offers too little freedom, however the small degree of difficulty and also the short game length of around 16 hours are compensated at least to a large part by a story full of drama and atmosphere. Syberia was planned from the start as two games, and to all who have a lot of remaining questions at the end I must say that there will definitely be a Syberia 2 in 2003. Rating: 85% Adventure-Archiv-rating system: 80% - 100% excellent game, very recommendable 70% - 79% good game, recommendable 60% - 69% satisfactory, restricted recommendable 50% - 59% sufficient (not very recommendable) 40% - 49% rather deficient (not to be recommended - for Hardcore-Adventure-Freaks and collectors only) 0% - 39% worst (don't put your fingers on it) Minimal system requirements: Pentium II 350 Mhz Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP 64 MB RAM 16 MB 3D graphic card Direct3D (DirectX8) compatible 16x CDROM-drive 400 MB space on hard disk DirectX8-compatible sound card Tested graphic cards: NVidia TNT1 - NVidia TNT2 NVidia Geforce MX - Geforce 2 Nvidia Geforce 3 3DFX Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo 3 Matrox Millenium G550 Power VR Kyro II ATI Radeon Played on: Windows XP P IV 1,6 GHz 512 MB RAM 16x DVD-ROM (Artec WRA-A40) nVidia GeForce 2MX400 64 MB graphic card Sound card DirectX-compatible		Just arrived You can switch on the clear subtitles during conversations Don't be afraid - you don't have to go through this maze! The workshop looks like a torture chamber The inventory contains objects and documents One of the video seuqences that come very near to life The library of Barrockstadt The boatman and his wife are very much taking care of business Talking to train driver Oscar is always fun Is this lonely border soldier a problem for Kate? Hans' automatons can do a lot of things, even play the organ You can browse through the documents with the arrow keys The last savegame is always on top From where does Kate know so much Russian? A luxurious pool in health resort Aralbad (a little competition to the existing "Hurst Castle") Kate is searching a very special cocktail ... More screenshots