Playing through Syberia... not improving my thoughts on the DS

By Jonathan Stark · February 12, 2009

The DS has become a port system. This is... well, I'm not sure what it means. Sometimes I'm grateful, because it brings me (and a new generation of gamers) classics like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 4.

Other times it fucks things up royally. Like in Syberia.

Let me save the rant for the review. I'll just say that when a puzzle is nigh unsolvable because there's a pop up menu that pops up OVER THE BUTTON YOU'RE TRYING TO CLICK ON there's something wrong with your game.

I think Life just wants me to write another frothing rant. Because Life thinks they are funny.

Comments 6

zippdementia Blogger Feb 12, 2009

Seriously. I'm not sure I can physically finish this game. It's incredibly broken. Some of the puzzles are quite unsolveable unless the stars are in the right alignment.

This is, quite literally, the WORST game I've ever played. It doesn't help that all the fans of the PC game keep pointing out to me everything they took out of the DS version, including ALL the voice overs, ALL the music, HALF the characters, HALF the story, and all of the character development for Kate Walker.

They also removed a good number of the puzzles and changed the order of going to places, but did such a poor job of this that the game is constantly breaking.

wolfqueen001 Feb 12, 2009

Uh-oh. I sense a super negative 1/10 coming! =D

Your experience with this seems kind of similar to EmP's with that Ankh port. It just doesn't seem that these kinds of adventure games aren't really made for the DS (unless maybe if they're made exclusively for hte DS).

zippdementia Blogger Feb 12, 2009

Right now, it's a 1 for sure. I'm quite stuck, only about ten minutes into the game. And it's not the usual, "hey, I don't know where to go," deal. It's "why won't this box which I'm obviously supposed to open, open?"

I keep clicking, but nothing happens.

I'm gonna keep trying... I've posted on walkthrough sites. See, that's the other problem. They took out so much in this version that old walkthroughs don't apply at all. So I can't even progress by cheating my way through the ridiculous unsolveable puzzles.

zippdementia Blogger Feb 12, 2009

You know, I think the DS could be a great adventuring platform. The touch-screen makes it potentially easy to do the whole "click" thing that is inherent to adventure games.

I mean, Trace Memory, aside from being boring and stodgy, was pretty good. It had great gameplay. I've heard similar things about Hotel Dusk, though I've never played it.

But porting Syberia, a memory hog of a game, to the miniscule DS was a baaaaaad idea.

EmP Staff Feb 13, 2009

There's good ports and bad ports of adventures games. Runaway: good. Ankh: bad. Last King/Paradise: good. Syberia: bad.

Point and click is back in fashion, so expect a lot of DS ports for this genre. And expect most of them to be on the wrong side of shoddy.

zippdementia Blogger Feb 13, 2009

I'm giving the game another few days to see if it picks up any. But seriously... they removed so much of the story that it's pretty much become a "game" of just walking around and solving puzzles... except you can't solve them.

I try not to review games before finishing them, but sometimes it's just SO bad that nothing can save it. And in this case, I already know there's nothing waiting to surprise me. 'Cause they took it out.