I is playing the ADVENTURE GAME!!!

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Today I purchased the "2003 Adventure Game of the Year", a little number called "Syberia". This is the first adventure game I've purchased in, what, two years? The last being Longest Journey, and the similarity being: BOTH games have chick protagonists ("protagonettes"). The other similarity probably being that I'll never finish either of them, so let me get my SYBERIA MINI-REVIEW out of the way before I even get close to getting halfway through and quitting:

CONS (I'll do CONS first, saving the best news for last):
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Lots of niggling little things, include:

1. Still, nobody's figured out a way to make graphic adventure people walk like humans. Unless you know any humans who RUN up to a flight of stairs, then STOP, then SLOWLY TURN to orient themselves perpendicular to the staircase, then DAINTILY STEP UP each step.

2. I didn't like having the game explode on me after I'd forgotten to hit "save" for a couple hours, necessitating about a half hour of "redo".

3. I also didn't like having to download a patch to get the characters to stop talking over each other in conversations.

4. Various slight conversational discontinuities, and also, she says "No need to go down there", even when "down there" is a door right in front of her. "Down there"?

5. They still haven't figured out how to have people interrupt each other in a conversation and have it sound natural. Character A: "But I..." (long pause) Character B: "Listen bitch, you better (etc.)"

6. Quality of dialogue ranges from slightly amusing to extremely irritating. The most irritating characters, funnily enough, are the people who call her on her cell phone. From her mother to her boyfriend to her boss to her girlfriend, everyone is just as annoying as can be. I've started to cringe now whenever *MY* cellphone rings.

7. Probably a few other little things which keep me from totally going berzerk OMG over the game -- a reaction I'd really like to have to an adventure game, and also a reaction I've yet to have to an adventure game.


PROS
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1. Artwork is beaaauuuutastic. Like, real catch-your-breath moments when the next room comes up. Wow.

2. Sound (other than the aforementioned voices) is also excellent.

3. Much of the game centers around mechanical robots and toys and stuff, and some of the little (and big) gadgetry is just really neat to watch.

4. Puzzles and story flow well together. No "hunt the pixel" puzzles, no mindreading, and so far has avoided my main problem with Longest Journey, which was that every couple rooms or so, you had to either read a huuuge tome, or listen to some various NPC pontificate for minutes at a time. There's definitely reading and listening to be done in Syberia, but nowhere near to the taxing extent TLJ exposed you.

5. It's got that ageless adventure-game "pull". You just... can't... stop... playing. I think I installed the game around 2 PM, and it's now 11:30 PM. I took an hour, hour and a half off for dinner, and had an hour in there where I had to download the patch and redo that segment that I lost, but other than that? Sit at computer. Move chick around screen. Remember to breathe.

Overall, I am finding playing this game a positive experience. I will give the first quarter (or third, or wherever I am in it) of the game *** out of ****. If this rating has occasion to change, I will update you accordingly.

I will also let you know when I quit, so you'll know when to stop waiting for said update.