Other than story elements, puzzles are really where adventure games shine… or should shine. Visually the game isn’t bad… but I had to check to see that it was a recent release… for some reason (could be the time between the release of Syberia 2 and this release) I thought this was a re-release… turns out, nope… that’s just the way it looks. Other characters have annoying qualities as well… continually being referred to as “Kate… Kate Walker” after the third or fourth time gets a little tiring. Horrible line delivery can completely remove you from the immersion a game is aiming for. Now don’t get me wrong… many of the voice actors are fine (not great… but fine)… but Dr Olga just really got on my nerves. Secondly was the scripting and voice acting. It’s almost a false sense of freedom of movement in this manner.

Syberia 3’s 3D world means you have the freedom to move your character around… but that freedom is severely limited by objects in the world (sometimes as small as a box or some fruit or similar)… the end result is you character appears to be running on the spot as you slide them ever closer to the location that will release them from the object they are running against.

Point and click games work well because your movement is restricted to the 2D image the creators give you to move in, you click on a location and it will either move you there or tell you it can’t. This was the first thing that made me think playing this game might feel like a grind. In the case of Syberia 3, it has a lineage, a lineage in that very familiar point and click adventure game format… but Syberia 3 has opted for a more “modern” approach in which you can walk around the 3D world yourself. There have been a few adventure games popping up of late that try to recreate the fun of those classic games, some succeed (Paradigm is a great example of this) some fail. Then first person shooters came and changed the landscape, other games came and took their slice of the pie too. Lucasarts and Sierra put out real gems of the genre. Adventure games used to be the bread and butter of gaming.