Syberia

Posted by Dodongo on Thursday, March 25, 2004

Syberia Fatty.jpg
“Get out of the fucking pool, fatty!”

As I mentioned before, my wife and I are currently playing the adventure game Syberia. It’s gotten rave reviews and adventure game of the year awards, but so far it’s very mediocre. Good story, great graphics and sound, terrible gameplay. The designers were so enamored of their beautiful scenery that they make you walk through 5 scenery screens to get to a screen with something to interact with. They never give you an overhead map so you can jump from place to place; you always have to take the long way.

Most of the puzzles are inane and/or annoying. For example, I needed to get an oar out of a docked boat but Kate didn’t want to wade out and get it so I had to get a piece of wood to knock it out of the boat. Then Kate refused to touch the oar because it was slimy so I had to talk this retarded kid (literally) into picking it up for me. Good times!

I should preface this by telling you I’ve never been a fan of adventure games where you get most of your information from reading books and having long winded conversations. If I wanted to read a book, I’d read a book; I play adventure games when I want to solve puzzles and watch cut scenes. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by genuinely great adventure games like Grim Fandango, The Curse of Monkey Island, and Sam and Max. Maybe I just can’t understand the subtleties of these murky European adventure games. Or maybe the pool of new adventure titles is so shallow that clunky, boring games like this get accolades.

Perhaps this one will get better. I’ll let you know if it does. I just want to finish it so I can give Beyond Good and Evil a go…

10 Comments »

226

Comment by Jeff

3/25/2004 @ 8:42 pm

Hey Tim is it ok with you if I resize this screenshot? It kinda blew up the site. Or do we need the size to appreciate the fat man’s fattitude?

227

Comment by Ryan

3/25/2004 @ 9:12 pm

Is that Siskel and Ebert in the water? Oh, wait. Siskel died.

228

Comment by TimF

3/25/2004 @ 11:50 pm

Of course! Resize my picture. What size is optimal for EatMyBomb? This one is 4″x3″ at 200ppi. I noticed your links disappeared. I thought that was funny.

229

Comment by Jeff

3/25/2004 @ 11:58 pm

All fixy. Try to shoot for 500×375 for screenshots. Actually if you upload something larger, you can just set the thumbnail size during the file upload process. But if you scale it before uploading it takes up less space on the site.

230

Comment by tfranklin

3/26/2004 @ 11:24 am

The original was 11″x8.5″! It seemed like I had been sizing everything 4″x3″ in the past so it must have been the resolution.

231

Comment by Mike

3/26/2004 @ 12:35 pm

I definitely envy you for playing adventure games with your wife. That’s something I hope to ascend to at some point in my life. The closest I have been to doing that is having my girlfriend sit on the bed studying while I play. I actually knew this girl who watched me play Hitman 2 for a couple hours, that was fantastic.

Do you have any others suggestions for girlfriend friendly adventure games?

232

Comment by TimF

3/26/2004 @ 4:19 pm

Oh yeah. The good ones my wife and I have played are: Sam and Max Hit the Road, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, The Dig, The Curse of Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango. Basically, all of the Lucasarts adventure games. Aside from the recent Escape from Monkey Island, they’re all great. You can still get the older ones for Mac or PC-Dos. If you haven’t played Grim Fandango or Monkey Island 3: The Curse of Monkey Island go to amazon right now and buy them both. They’re amazing and sell for $10 each new.

If you have the patience for old games with chunky graphics, then the Quest for Glory series is worth playing. It’s a Kings Quest style adventure game but has some unique features. You can choose to be a theif, magician, or fighter and can develop skills such as climbing, throwing, magic use, sword use, etc. Your character also gets tired and has to find a safe place to sleep. I remember waiting until night and breaking in to houses to steal things. Great fun!

Check out www.justadventure.com

(slap)

233

Comment by TimF

3/26/2004 @ 4:28 pm

Oh, if you have a SNES or a SNES emulator and two USB gamepads, I highly recommend playing Secret of Mana with the wife. It’s a 3-player cooperative, Zelda style game, but with magic and weapon tech trees. If you play with 1 or 2 players, the other two are computer controlled.

234

Comment by Mike

3/29/2004 @ 2:43 pm

Fellas, that’s some hot shit. I have the whole Xbox mod for emulation, and I love co-op games on the console. I’m gonna hook up some Secret of Mana asap.
I remember hearing such things about Monkey Island, but Jeff will tell you that I do have little patience for low end graphics unless its NES or the like.

My friend Loren actually works at Lucasarts and he will be happy to hear how many Lucasarts games you play. We’re still trying to get the Sam and Max that he worked on out of him even though they cancelled the project.

235

Comment by tfranklin

3/29/2004 @ 3:15 pm

The graphics for Monkey Island 3 are still good. It was done in 2-D cartoon style so it looks great. I think it looks better than Monkey Island 4 which had clunky 3-D graphics.

Definitely bug your friend about Sam and Max and while you’re at it, get me an audio editing job at Lucasarts… and some coffee…

Yeah, I remember when Lucasarts put out good games… Now they put out 3 shitty Star Wars games for every one good one. If Sam and Max 2 is finished, then why not sell it? Write “Sam and Max 2″ on the disc with sharpie, put it in a paper envelope, and sell it for $10 off lucasarts.com. People would still buy it, Adventure gamers are proactive types that have to search for new games because they’re always under promoted.

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