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Overworld: Syberia

There are moments, peppered throughout Syberia, where your character’s cell phone rings and you have to talk to a person from “home” in New York City. It’s an unwelcome chore, and you’ll dislike it when it happens. But that’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel.

Syberia doesn’t have much to work with. It’s a seven year-old adventure game (its sequel is a slightly spryer five), so even though it could well be the most recent great adventure game both history and age weigh upon it. Its story, though charming and folksy, is bare: there is a master toymaker of dubious mental faculties, and he needs to be found. It never gets more complicated than that.

But Syberia raises itself to genre classic on the believability of its curious world. The toymaker, Hans, has touched every step of your journey with his masterful automatons—a completely believable premise since you are riding a mechanical train of his invention, stopping only at the points he has coursed. Of course, the places that accepted this man’s strange gifts are themselves strange, from the gear-powered town of his birth to the grand Russian experiment that was built around his ideas. Every place in the game basked in Han’s genius and withered when he moved on. Following this same sad path gives the game a complete internal consistency that stretches from its art design to its puzzle logic. It’s a tightly composed game that takes very little and composes from it a fully wrought world of rusty gears and broken men.

Whatcha Playing: Spinning GameTap’s Wheel

Talking about the greatest games gone by has made me realize something: I am totally over this release season. My two most anticipated games, Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge, have come, been played out, and re-shelved, and I have a feeling very little will touch those two titles in terms of uniqueness and ambition.

Normally I would turn to my 360 backlog in this situation, but the NXE is actually turning me off to the system (my verdict: they made some cute fluffy characters for the grandma demographic, then put them in front of a sickeningly ad-riddled interface that will look to grandma like the deck of the Enterprise. Yes, the best part is the blade-based guide system, but that used to be the entire dashboard. The whole thing is an exercise in corporate cynicism, flushing a well-meaning and needed update straight down the tubes).

So instead I’ll turn to the next best thing, GameTap. I love GameTap because it gives me access to a lot of weird, weird games for a monthly fee that is unreasonably low. It also has this little GottaGettaGame spinner which picks something out at random for you. This is by far the best thing about the service. So let’s give it a spin and see what I have to play today:

Awesome, something I’ve never heard of. Time to do some research!

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.

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