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So, I think it's time I posted a rant about this game on the forums since I have been raging over it to some people on IRC and whatnot already. =)
Considering I'm on a netbook for now I am going through some older games that I didn't get the opportunity to play and this so happened to include the highly acclaimed adventure game from 2002 "Syberia".
The title holds an astonishing 85% aggregate score on Metacritic which is what made me pick it up so readily. It is being praised for its interesting story, nice visuals and non-frustrating (albeit easy) puzzles.
OK, I agree with all of the above BUT nobody seemed to have commented on the utterly, utterly SHIT game design that makes it an ABSOLUTE CHORE to play through. It would have been EASY to improve the game tenfold by tweaking it in certain ways. I shall explain my gripes with it below.
Syberia is fairly short already - probably 6 hours long - BUT what if I told you that 5 hours of that will be spent on running through EMPTY screens that are pure filler at a snail's pace?
Your character moves around like a fly caught in tar, turning takes about as much time as it would take the Titanic and if you encounter stairs you are doomed - the protagonist has to align herself with the scenery so the animations play out correctly and then the designers haven't spared us the joy of showing how we climb at least a few steps up or down every time, which is unskippable - in certain cases you have to watch the WHOLE stair climbing animation.
In any proper adventure game you have screens filled with various objects you can examine and there's always something to do - usually puzzles are close together as well. Not here - most screens are utter, utter filler with not a single thing to explore or click on and the poor, poor script requires you to run back and forth like a million times.
Let me give you an example of one "puzzle" that made me quit the game after 10 minutes last night because I couldn't handle such bullshit at the time (meanwhile I finished the game - I didn't want to give up =).
So, you have this huge airship looming in the background and you know you have to take it. It's been clear from the moment you arrived at a certain location and came up in several pieces of dialog. The way Syberia works you only get certain dialog options after some stuff happens though, so you can't talk about the airship directly at first.
Anyways, you start this particular "puzzle" talking to a guy. Fine, you have to go to the airship. You go there THROUGH 3 UNSKIPPABLE EMPTY SCREENS INCLUDING A STAIR CLIMBING SEQUENCE, click on the door, oops, it's locked. Now you have to RUN BACK through exactly the same screens and talk to the guy again. All of the sudden you can talk to him about the airship THAT WAS THERE IN THE BACKGROUND AND WAS MENTIONED IN CONVERSATIONS BEFORE and he will give you the key to it - SO HE FUCKING HAD IT ALL ALONG? Why didn't the designers decide to give you the key straight away? No idea! But OK, now you're running to the airship one more time (three screens + stair climbing), open the door aaaand THE AIRSHIP DOESN'T WORK AS YOU FIND OUT ONE SCREEN LATER. What do you have to do to make it work? Yes! Go BACK TO THE SAME FUCKING GUY THROUGH THE SAME FUCKING 4 SCREENS (now it's 4) AND TALK TO HIM! He had the key, he knew the airship wasn't working, the designers just had to make you run back and forth for absolutely NO fucking reason. I myself could have smoothly and seamlessly integrated proper dialog options that would have resulted in you obtaining the key and realizing the airship was broken THE FIRST TIME AROUND.
And this is only ONE instance of such bullshit - not even "puzzle" stuff, just utter pointless busywork. In the previous location you had to run between THREE different NPCs being like 6 empty screens apart with multiple unskippable stair climbing sequences.
After that it would get better, surely? Nope! Later on in the game, for instance, you have to talk to some old opera singer sitting at the end of a pier in front of a hotel. So, you go there (through several empty screens), talk to her, she tells you to ring the bell to call her valet. You do that, the valet doesn't come so you run BACK to him - he didn't hear the bell - you run back outside and move the bell closer to the hotel, ring it, he still doesn't come - you have to run back to him AGAIN after which he automatically fetches the old lady anyway. WHY WAS THIS NECESSARY? And going in and out of the hotel includes a lengthy sequence of your character putting something on.
It's the very definition of bad game design and no matter how nice the visuals were and still are and how interesting the story might be - this is absolutely unforgivable bullshit that could have been solved in no time but then the game would have been like 1 hour long, I guess. I understand the appeal of exploration and taking in beautifully rendered landscapes but NOT when you are forced to see the same stuff over and over again and can't skip absolutely any of it.
My guess is that at the end of the 90s and beginning of the 2000s adventure gaming was scraping the bottom of the barrel and people were jumping on even a WHIFF of a good adventure game but these days good adventure games are coming back through various channels including indie developers and this just makes me sad, especially if it is considered such a "must-play" title. For an actually GOOD adventure game that I finished a few days ago try out Gemini Rue. It's intentionally retro but has features none of the bullshit I mentioned above...
*sigh*
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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell
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