Picked up a copy of Syberia this week. Released back towards the end of 2002, it got a lot of good reviews but I didn't notice it until I saw it mentioned a month or two ago on Slashdot. It's a graphical adventure, similar to Grim Fandango, Monkey Isle, or the Myst series about a female lawyer who needs to seal a deal on a buyout of an old toy factory in the backlands of Europe. Artistically, it's a very moody game, much like Grim Fandango has a certain mood.

Note that while it's easy to find reviews, finding the latest game patch was difficult. The official support site is Adventure Company Games and the direct link to Syberia SP3 patch. I did hit a bug not mentioned in the patch notes (getting up to the bell tower the first time), but it wasn't a big deal because it worked after restarting my system.

So far I've played about 5 hours worth and have just finished the first town and have started the second town. The puzzles are okay, although a bit simplistic (no where near the complexity of a Myst puzzle) but woven well into the game. There's only one puzzle in the first twon where I completely missed the clue every time I went past the location. I would've liked to see more complex puzzles in the first town, which is full of automatons, but the inventory system doesn't allow you to combine items and once you've placed an item in it's proper position, you can't remove it. (This makes the puzzles pretty linear and a bit easy to solve since the correct piece in the correct spot is a bit obvious.)

Still, well worth the $20 that I paid for it and it will be interesting to see how good Syberia II is when it's released later this year.