Every year people proclaim adventure games a dead genre, one with no growth and no player interest. Every year they are proven wrong by a stellar title that comes out of nowhere and blows them away. Syberia was one of these titles, featuring a strong female lead, gorgeous environments, and a storyline that captured the imagination of those who played it. Syberia was only one half of the story, however, and soon adventure gamers can look forward to being thrilled again with the winning combination of strong puzzles and a good, focused story.
Syberia introduced players to Kate Walker, a smart and sassy lawyer from New York. Hired to finalize the sale of a toy factory, she was sent to a tiny town in the mountains. When she arrived the owner had passed away, which sends Kate on a journey to find her heir and brother, Hans Voralberg. The end of the game left it clear that there was much of Kate and Hans' story to see, as Kate abandoned her New York life to help Hans search for the mythological island of Syberia. The sequel continues the journey, as Kate and Hans, with the help of the automaton Oscar, cross the Russian tundra in search of Syberia and those who know of it.
Just as the first game had four distinct locales, Syberia 2 has four distinct areas that you will explore. Each area is beautifully and imaginatively brought to life with a myriad of details and a great use of color. The visual design from the first game is definitely well and alive in the sequel, and to a certain extent it is even improved upon. The game features some graphical enhancements that the first one did not, giving you moving fog, dynamic lighting, and reflective surfaces to further bring environments to life. The character design is also taken up a notch and the character animations seem smoother and more life-like. The game is simply gorgeous, maintaining a unity of theme and design that makes each area believable.
The gameplay remains much the same as the first game. It is a point-and-click adventure game allowing the player to use mouse or keyboard. The interface is unchanged from the first game -- the pointer changes as it passes over items you can interact with and you have an inventory that contains your cell phone as well as any items or documents that you pick up along the way. One change from Syberia to Syberia 2 is the focus of the puzzles; each feels more intimately integrated with its environment and the story. The result is pleasing. You have more puzzles, many of them simple, and the larger and more difficult puzzles don't feel frustratingly vague and disconnected from the rest of the experience. While there are definitely some mindbenders in there, the fact that they feel natural rather than an arbitrary way to stop your progress makes it easier to enjoy the process of solving them.
Another change is the amount of dialog. You do a lot of talking in Syberia 2, which can lead to some going back and forth between NPCs as each trigger the other to say something new. For the most part this is a good thing, the dialog is well written and while the voice acting sometimes leaves something to be desired it's never actually bad. The writing over all, barring a few errors that can be chalked up to early translation, is excellent. There's a wealth of information about the places you go to and the new things you encounter, which succeeds in propping up the game world as a real place rather than just a space in which the player interacts with things.
Syberia 2 is also very forgiving for players who have not played the original game. An optional cut scene covers the basics from the first game and the dialog options with the NPCs from the first game lets you know what you need to know. The game also features improved pathfinding, which showed quite strongly in this build of the game. The build also ran extremely smoothly.
With its host of beautiful locations, smart puzzles, and delightful writing Syberia 2 is a game to anticipate not just for hardcore fans of the adventure game genre, but for any gamer who enjoys a good story.
