My review on how bad controls can ruin a great game…
Syberia 3 is the third instalment of the Syberia series, the games featuring our amazing female hero called Kate Walker. The game has clear steampunk influences and the developer, Microids, does everything it can to bring us a great story.
Being published on PC, PS4, Xbox One and soon also the Nintendo Switch, this game was originally plagued by delay after delay, originally intended for release in 2009, it got struck by lack of finances throughout the years and then finally the white smoke cleared and it was to be released after B. Sokal signed a contract to make the storyline for the third Syberia game!
As a disclaimer, I have never played the original games, so I honestly can not compare or give my impression on the originals or how they compare, both story-wise or control-wise.
This game starts off with Kate Walker finding herself adrift on a boat, being rescued by the Youkol, a tribe of nomads. When you pass the original intro, you start off in some sort of hospital room where you lie next to a Youkol boy, this is where you learn the basics of the storyline. It also teaches you that you need to solve puzzles in order to advance in the story, at first by fixing a box that allows you to open the door.
On the table, there is a knife that you can use to open up the box and from there on out, a nice story starts, you are stuck in what basically appears to be a crazy house, you need to find your way out and back into the main storyline.
This is however where everything goes wrong, while the graphics are really beautiful, the controls are horrible. Often struck by lag and framedrops, chunky controls and not working controls…
It was so horrible, it even ended up ruining the story for me, which is a real shame…
At times, I was going through parts of the main room, the camera viewpoint changed and I ended back up in the previous part of the room, simply because it did not react properly. This was incredibly disturbing as any scene change had you look for which way you were heading before.
Throughout that part, it was clear to me that the backgrounds were not static but each time built up through the graphics engine, this possibly causing the lag and the disturbing way of playing this game.
What also caught my attention, the lack of matching voice overs… This may seem like a ridiculous remark, but at one point, I was in front of two clearly older characters, but only one of them actually sounded his age, the other guy had a voice actor that felt really young and I hate to say it, details like this bug me! If you make him look old, at least make his voice sound the age he is supposed to represent, not a youngster that looks like he is 60 plus…
In conclusion, this game looked incredibly promising, but it failed to deliver, aside from all the negative comments I mentioned, I do think this game has everything it needs to become a hit game, it just fails to deliver…
Everything considered, I am giving it a lenient 60%, the game was promising, but all the small problems and lack of fluidity while playing, they lowered my initial 70% by 10, I just can not justify a higher score…
