Have you ever wanted to play Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness but without Lara Croft and without all of the gothic stuff? Because that’s exactly what Syberia: The World Before feels like. The fourth game in a series I am admittedly unfamiliar with, I recently played the first couple of hours at a prev💟iew event, and while I c🎉an’t comment on how well it meshes with the rest of the series, the game has a nifty amount of charm, and the gameplay itself feels like it has some potential.
Your first question might be how it can be like Angel of Darkness, the Lara Croft ꦡGoth Simulator, if it both lacks Lara Croft and any sort of gothic edge. That’s a fair question, but put Lara in a sensible outfit instead of double denim and sunglasses then ask her to explore a city, and you get Syberia: The World Before. There’s some puzzle solving, some exploring, and ♛a lot of being jolly posh about things (Kate Walker, the protagonist, is actually American, but she’s clearly styled on Lara’s stiff upper lip), so it feels like Lara’s most urban adventure with all of the edge sucked out of it.
Unfortunately, with the edge goes the personality. The designs are cute enough in Syberia - it&rsq🥂uo;s like, steampunk, kind of? - but I’m not sure I know anything about what the game has to say, what it thinks✤, or how it feels. It’s set in a different reality to our own just… because. Because robot tram drivers are fun, I guess. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s hard to get especially excited about it either.
There’s also a robot hedgehog who, well, bear with me. I think he’s a character from one of the previous games, seeing as you have his little mechanical heart in your pocket. It’s less morbid than it sounds, I promise. Anyway, you find a sphere in an antiques shop, solve a puzzle, and it turns into a hedgehog. Plop the heart inside, and voila. He then runs 🍰off, seemingly not in control of his new body, leading you on a chase around the city before disappearing into the sewers. Video games, eh?
This one sequence highlights everything Syberia does well, and everywhere it falls short. The puzzle itself is complicated enough that so𒉰me other press at the event needed help solving it, but simple enough that I could complete it unaided. That isn’t the humble brag it sounds like - I play a lot of puzzle adventure games, and while I’m below average at most games, I’m above average at stuff like this, and I found it fair💯ly straightforward. There are two codes and three mechanisms; solve the codes of the first two mechanisms to get a key for the third.
When the hedgehog co💧mes to life - I don’t think whoever owned the heart was originally a hedgehog,ꦡ since that’s what the robot is, but the game doesn’t make that clear - the intrigue of the puzzle descends into some fairly stilted acting and an arduous journey around the city to search for the hedgehog in three different spots, each time just going through the motions of clicking on cabinets and suitcases. Syberia’s charm is odd - when nothing is happening, it’s quite dull, but there’s a serenity to it. When it tries to throw action at you, it doesn’t really land.
For example, it opens on a classic point and click game, asking you to find the right antique shop using the clues on a map and a phonebook. It’s boring, but it’s the right kind of boring. It’s soothing. It’s like a crossword. Actually going to the shop, ostensibly the more interesting part of the game, feels mo🤡re lifeless, with stock characters going through stilted dialogue exchanges with no real reason. The story revolves around an old painting of a girl who looks like you, and I mean.. sure. You’re both adult women. You both look like Elizabeth Olsen in that regard, but no one is stopping in the street to shout “Scarlet Witch!” at you. Is that because it’s set in the vague early-‘00s-slash-alternate-steampunk-reality? Maybe, but it’s also because you and the woman in the𒀰 picture only look alike because the game has decided you need to.
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel about a game that was most fun when I wasn’t doi🐲ng the actual fun stuff, but I think I want to see more, especially since the girl in the painting, and 1937, the year it was painted, feature far more in the full experience. The little hedgehog can stay in the sewer the whole game for all I care, but I’d love another phone book puzzle right about now.