![]() ![]() Again, in and of themselves, these aren’t issues I’m overly concerned with (bugs can be patched, or you can work around them, and cumbersome controls for a point-and-click are less of an issue than they’d be for a FPS), but with this game working so hard on its storytelling and atmosphere, each little technical fault pulls at the game’s fabric, slowly unravelling the work that has been done to focus the player on Sokal’s creativity.Īs I said, I’m a fan who has been on board with Syberia many, many times over the years. It’s also not the most robust development project, with frequent bugs that forced me to reset, and a control system that is simply cumbersome from start to finish. ![]() I’m not the kind of guy who usually cares about these things I have difficulty telling 60fps from 30fps, to be honest, as long as it’s steady, but in this case, my eyes were hurting at stages from the shuddering frame rate. The smallest rooms putter on okay, but bigger rooms, or environments with more people and stuff going on inside them, have a habit of bringing the framerate down to a near stop. Unfortunately, the engine can’t keep up with ambition, and it really stutters at times. There’s little actual threat presented throughout the game this is a point-and-click adventure in its purest sense, but its ability to make you think that there’s danger out there is quite masterful. Again, there’s a vague sense of the sinister infusing every detail in those environments, and I highly recommend playing through the game in as few sittings as possible, as the gradual build-up of that atmosphere, coupled with the small environments, becomes quite claustrophobic. The new game takes the opportunities presented by the advancement in game development technology to give Sokal’s vision more depth, and the environments and characters tell compelling stories by themselves than the environments of the previous Syberia titles. His worlds and narrative are small and confined, but meticulous in their detail you’ll spend ages wandering around the smallest of environments trying to figure out the labyrinthine process to complete a puzzle, and then you’ll sit back and realise that, yes, you really did just spend half an hour in a single room. Rather, it’s an antique of Lovecraftian menace that is nightmarish not only because it doesn’t work (trapping you in a place you don’t want to be), but also because you know what is waiting through that door isn’t much better. In Sokal’s world, a key isn’t just a key. His ability to infuse a vague sense of the sinister and the supernatural into the most mundane aspects, making everything feel quite contextual, is subtle and masterful. ![]() Sokal himself hasn’t been so active in recent years, but Syberia 3, if it’s going to be worth anything to you, will be exciting for his involvement. As a consequence, there is nothing in this one for people who don’t remember their time with the previous two games with the deepest nostalgia. ![]() Aside from a decent visual upgrade, this game very much feels like it was developed at the same time as Syberia 2 and only just now discovered. The problem is that there’s not a moment in the game that comes across as modern, either. Penned by the series creator, Benoît Sokal, the game very much feels like it’s a direct continuation of its predecessors. Thankfully, for us fans of the first two games, we have Syberia 3. This included Kate Walker, the protagonist, and in a character-driven adventure game, leaving her story at the end of the second act is like getting halfway through a book only to discover that the second half is all blank pages because the author couldn’t be bothered to finish it. Syberia 2 was first released in 2004 that’s 13 years ago, for people who are counting, and ended on a note making it clear that a third game needed to be made, in order to finish the stories of the game’s various characters. Syberia is hardly a household name, but there is a long-suffering community for it, and they’re going to be happy that Syberia 3 came around. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |