Syberia: The World Before Review (kenny_abelha)
This is a review from someone who did not play ANY the past games:
Looking at the reviews(negative) Kate used to be an adventurous person that found joy in the thrill of adventure, well... she is not in this game.
I don't mean that "she is gay now so not here" type of thing that I read a lot, she is cautious, depressed, uncertain, scared, and there is no problem with a character being that as long as you have a balance with other characters and we don't... The Dana Roze thing is an extension of the main character and how she learns about everything, so it is not enough... and with the whole Vagaren = Jews in WWII, Dana has a fair share of depressing moments too.
I don't care that Kate is gay, what I do care is that she does not care about her dead girlfriend, between her death and the end of the game her name is brought 2x and Kate has 1 scene with her again and there is absolutely nothing else... and those 2 times you can choose other options when explaining to people... if anything, it does feel that it was not a decision made with any intent except marketing.
This game, first and foremost, had a story to tell, a message to get to the public so the game cannot be hard otherwise people won't finish it and it is clear to me in the priority of what they developed:
1. Graphics
2. Story
3. Interactivity
4. Puzzles
1.Graphics
The game is really pretty and everything has a lot of care into the creation and it shows when every shot is prolonged to show the amazing graphics of a bush, a square, a rock which gets really boring, really fast in trying to get more information from the world.
2. Story
The story has the feeling of a personal story to me, and then put in a game format, since how it starts and how it ends feel disconnected from everything else, and because it is a personal story, it is incredibly short for a game, so you need a sidequest like a trip around the world for something that does not change the game or the story for that matter at all. And it certainly shows when everything regarding Dana is better game-wise and story-wise than Kate, since there was more freedom of creativity with the character, with the exception of the resistance bit, that again felt as a personal message since the characters are elevated so they can all be important and together.
3. Interactivity
And every object you pick can be rotated 3D, another trend for awhile, to show how good the graphics are.
After rotating the object you can click on it for an additional information, a key after being clicked is given the incredible information of it being a mechanical key... again, a boring mechanic to show how good the graphics are.
Which is a great follow up to my next point...
4.Puzzles
This game hardly has any puzzles, most of them are click, drag, click the other part, drag, click the third part, twist, etc.
It follows the "our graphics are awesome" and real logical puzzles are not here, there are 2 head scratches that I found fun, the rest cannot be considered puzzles, just QTEs.
This game got the bad trends of modern gaming, and I can't say that this is a bad follow up from the before games, but I can say that it is a bad and boring point & click game.