You'll still be doing a lot of talking with characters in the game, asking them about all sorts of things to both give you more information about certain scenarios and situations, and to also catalyze the game to continue. It plays like most any adventure title has over the past twenty years, it's just a lot prettier. But it makes for an enjoyable adventure title that doesn't revolve around what makes most games playable, such as combat, but rather a more laidback atmosphere that stresses thought and puzzle-solving abilities over such gaming staples as stat-building and stealth. It is a place of myth, where mammoths live thousands and thousands of years after they were "known" to become extinct on Earth, and grass grows regularly, even through the thick layer of snow that rests on the ground.
Kate puts an odd amount of faith into Hans, who wants to find a place she knows no explorer has ever seen, nor has any cartographer noted it on a map. Of course, graphics aside, what would be an adventure title without a good story? Syberia II has that too, with your quest, as hotshot New York attorney Kate Walker, revolving around the last dream of a man named Hans, whose final wish it is to find a place called Syberia. Lighting and shadow effects are done with extreme precision, setting real mood to your surroundings, whether it be the dark, old-feeling train you start your adventure on, or the snowy, dreary feeling that the opening town in the game, Rosenbourg, provides you with. The character animations, and the characters themselves are nothing to write home about, but the environment in which they interact is stunning. While the idea of adventure games has remained the same over the years, being best described as an interactive story, the graphics and interface of Syberia II are unreal, with the pre-rendered backgrounds being amongst the most beautiful I've seen on any console. But trying to select hot spots, particularly with a controller, is a miserable experience, making even the most simple brain teasers lessons in frustration.Adventure gaming, dawning from text adventure titles from the days of yore, has grown by leaps and bounds - at least graphically. A hint of physics enhances their tactile nature, making them feel all the more tangible and even slightly playful. Most of them involve tinkering with satisfyingly mechanical and mostly logical conundrums, all gears and levers and enigmatic buttons. These issues even get in the way of the one bright spot in this otherwise dreary adventure: puzzles. Regardless of whether you use mouse and keyboard or, as recommended, a controller, Kate moves like a tank through mud, her poorly animated body struggling to even walk up stairs, and that’s when the camera isn’t doing it’s best to obscure everything. Navigating these environments is also a terrible chore. Things do admittedly pick up once Kate hits Baranour, an abandoned amusement park that evokes Pripyat’s haunting fairground, but even that ruin misses the mark, never quite reaching the heights of striking Aralbad or the imposing Romansburg monastery. Much of the game is spent sauntering around a vaguely medieval village dominated by a non-descript dock and an equally forgettable ferry-wonders are few and far between. Gone are the gorgeous pre-rendered scenes of the previous games, replaced with plain, often downright ugly, three-dimensional environments. The move to 3D has done the game no favours.
0 kommentar(er)
