Game: Syberia

Platform: Nintendo DS

Publisher: DreamCatcher

Developer: Tetraedge Games

ESRB: T for Teen

Genre: Adventure

Players: 1

What's Hot: Interesting story, pretty backdrops

What's Not: Incredibly slow movement speed, hard to determine actionable areas

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Here is an unofficial list of things that you can do while waiting for Kate Walker, the protagonist of Syberia, to walk across any of the game's screens:

Make a sandwich.

Grow wheat, harvest it, mill it and use the flour to bake bread for your sandwich.

Raise a pig, slaughter it, cure it and carve the ham for your sandwich.

Go get me a sandwich.

Pastrami on rye with onions, thanks.

Um, potato salad, no, chips.

Does it come with a soda?

Then Diet Coke.

With lemon!

And a cookie!

Where was I? Oh, right, Kate. Yeah, she's slow. I mean, really, really, really slow. Back when the game was released on the PC, the graphics were lush enough to where you didn't mind that she crossed the screen at a pace used to measure the length of geographical eras. Now, with the same graphics shoved on to the DS's tiny screens, Kate's measured pace makes you wonder why you should care about her antics if she clearly can't muster up enough energy to move across the room with any urgency.

This isn’t to say that the story is uninteresting. Kate is in France to arrange the sale of a toy company when the owner of the company inconveniently ups and dies. Upon investigating the death, Kate learns that the company owner's long dead brother isn’t quite so dead so it's up to Kate to track him down and get the deal done. There are also mammoths. And robots. Sorry, automatons. It's an intriguing story and it's doled out in little bits and pieces, as most adventure game stories are, so you want to find out what's happening—you just don't want to wait around to do so.

If the game's speed were the only issue, you could make do. Maybe read a book while Kate is shuffling through the environments, or knit a sweater, but unfortunately, sloth is just one of the deadly sins available here. The game is controlled solely with the stylus, however lacking a proper cursor it's hard to tell which areas of the environments are actionable. By selecting the eye icon and dragging it over the screen you can tell where Kate can go and what she can mess around with, however these changes in the cursor can be elusive and sometimes don't give the full picture of what Kate can do in a room, leading to many frustrated moments and pointless backtracking. As an extra frustration, not all of the puzzles and conversations from the PC version are here, so if you're looking for help from a walkthrough, prepared to be confused. When you do come to a lever that needs pulling, or a wheel that needs turning, the game has a tough time registering that you've pulled or turned the item du jour, leading to incessant scribbling and wheel turning. In these cases, being quick to anger is the only speedy thing about the game.

Even inventory management can be maddening. Several taps are needed to open your inventory and then simply tapping a readable item isn't enough to read it. No, you have to take the item, put it in the special reading box and then tap the "Read" button. It's not the most intuitive of systems but at the same time, it gives you the opportunity to consult the manual several times and appreciate the work of the writer who slaved over it.

The pretty graphics from the PC game have come over, almost entirely intact. I say "almost" because Kate looks kind of oddly androgynous. The backgrounds sure are pretty though, when they're not obscured by your hands as you feverishly drag the eye cursor around looking for a way to pull that frackin' level. The audio is deep and moody, for about five seconds until the clip starts looping, at which point it becomes moody and annoying.

It is not impossible to enjoy Syberia, you'll just need a lot of patience to do so. For most people though, there comes a point where you'll watch Kate walk across a screen that she can't do anything but traverse and think to yourself "what else can I do while waiting for her?" I'd suggest playing a better game.

Questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you .