SYBERIA

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

Another French (albeit French-Canadian) point and click adventure
- this one written by Benoit Sokal who was responsible for that
reasonable effort "Amerzone" some years ago. French point and
click efforts were always known as being weird in the days when
this type of game was common and in that respect "Syberia" does
not let one down.

First things first - it's the best example of its genre that I can
immediately recall. It's certainly better than the third Gabriel
Knight, which is the last adventure game I actually enjoyed.  The
plot briefly concerns the search for a missing toy inventor.  This
gentleman - a genius at making automatons - is revealed as the
unexpected heir to a factory that a major US multinational wants
to buy. Your character is a young lawyer named Kate Walker and the
search for the heir takes you to the Swiss Mountains, a University
town and the wilds of Russia. Contact is maintained with certain
incidental characters like mum and fianc‚e by mobile phone calls
and these help to flesh out the character and her background. I
found her fianc‚e a singularly wet character who probably deserves
his ultimate fate. You never actually go to Syberia which is a
mysterious island but the game leaves plenty of room for a sequel.

The game looks absolutely ravishing - these are some of the
best-rendered graphics I've seen anywhere. The control system is a
breeze. All puzzles are totally logical and easy to solve if you
abide by the adventurer's code - go everywhere, exhaust
conversations, examine your surroundings. It is normal in
Lucasarts adventures and the like to have some clues that are so
inane or devoid from logical thought that one wonders how you were
ever supposed to have solved them.  Not here - and there are no
mazes, tile puzzles or clues that involve perfect pitch or the
lack of it. Only straightforward logical problems that may make
the game seem too easy to the hardened. If you want to call that a
criticism - well and good. So what's the element of "weirdness"?
The clockwork toys and automatons of course!

If there is a criticism it's that the very end of the game makes
me feel that a chapter was cut short as the character one is
searching for suddenly turns up out of the blue in a location he
has not visited for 20 years and for no good reason. That's all -
otherwise 9/10. Why can't they make more of them like this?














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