Adventure Gamers - Forums

Are there any Benoit Sokal games other than the Syberia games that are worth playing?
I have heard Amerzone is pretty good and I remember it from a while back.

While Paradise and Sinking Island were not that well received what do you think of them?
Were they still artistically creative like Syberia? What was lacking? Or did you always like them? Perhaps they have aged well?

Just interested in this designer’s games outside of the Syberia series (though feel free to discuss these games too).

Also, has Aquarica been cancelled for good? The artwork that was shown looks very interesting!

The main problem with all of Sokal’s games in my view is that he consistently makes a lot of very beautiful environments/locales…but the interactivity of said areas is always lacking.  The Syberia games had this issue as well, but it was somewhat mitigated by the sheer uniqueness of the atmosphere of that series.  Paradise and Sinking Island from an artistic perspective are still very pretty to look at, but the actual locations aren’t anything mindblowing from an atmosphere perspective.  There are also very similar puzzles streamed throughout his games, which makes you feel like you’re just playing a retread.

This is not to say that Paradise and Sinking Island are bad games, they are enjoyable in my opinion, but nothing spectacular.  Don’t know about Aquarica’s status and never got around to playing Amerzone.

I liked both Sinking island and Amerzone. Sinking island´s artistic style is similar to Syberia games and it has interesting gameplay where you have to combine facts and evidence you discover through the game to discover the culprit. Amerzone is more about solitary exploration, they are both good games in my opinion but of course they are not as good as Syberia, and I didn´t enjoy Paradise.

The Syberia games I would recommend to any fans of the genre, really. As for Sinking Island, I though that game and the story in it was very ... bland.

Paradise I played a lot of, but then encountered a game breaking bug, and didn’t feel like starting all over. But what I played of it was good - not the best I’ve played, but certainly better than Sinking Island, in my opinion.

Thanks for the opinions!

Monolith - 04 March 2013 03:42 PM

To this day I still remember Sinking Island perfectly. For something that shouldn’t have been so memorable, it did a good job. Very Sokal feel with some pretty fun detective gameplay mechanics. The story could of done with more ‘HOLY SHIT’, but it probably wouldn’t have worked so well. That was an interesting game.

Really?! I’d be very interested to learn more. It’s no exaggeration to say I thought Sinking Island was one of the worst adventure games I’ve EVER played. I only kept playing because, well, I’m a mystery nut, and you don’t get to be that way if you can leave a mystery before you know the solution  

Now I’m not interested in point scoring here - I’m not saying you were wrong to enjoy it. I’m a grumpy swine and I accept that I have ridiculously arbitrary standards for mysteries. But I’m having a hard time seeing what might have been interesting about it. This isn’t just academic: I write mysteries and advise writers, and it’s really hard to get good information on how non-writers experience mysteries. What particularly jumped out at you about it?

For my part, I thought that the tone of the mystery didn’t match with the extravagance of the setting. A sinking Art Deco hotel is JUST my sort of thing, but the mystery was rather sordid and character based if I remember. Not that there isn’t any place for that kind of plot, but it seemed a mismatch with the setting. I was also annoyed with the puzzles: why was there any incriminating evidence to be found at all? Why on earth did the murderer hide stuff he didn’t want found? THE INEXORABLY RISING OCEAN WAS RIGHT THERE!!!

Sorry to derail the thread! In answer to the original question, I quite like Amerzone, probably more than the Syberias (in fact, I think I got bored with Syberia 2 and gave up).

This is a topic I have thought about and even written about quite a bit.

And I think I have some non-standard opinions in this area.

Amerzone is quite good, but is quite different. It is a Myst-like with a decent difficulty. It can be somewhat tedious at times, but it is interesting how it is in the same universe as Syberia and it has a interesting overall story. Not that it has any glaring flaws, but I think it is only decent at what it tries to be, a Myst-like.

Sinking Island fails completely as what Sokal does best. There is nothing wrong with the environment/world/story of Sinking Island but you have pretty much seen everything at 30 minutes in. And of the rather small world, half of it (the guest rooms of the hotel) are all very similar. Personally I just find the investigative style of interviewing everyone over and over again boring, and going over the same environments over and over again equality boring. Basically talking to someone, then go click on all the waste baskets again, because maybe now someone has left something.

Paradise is misunderstood. It is the most story oriented Sokal adventure and the one with undeniable the best story. It starts out incredibly slow (and boring), and this is 100% necessary for the story. To me it is the absolute best Sokal adventure and is a more mature, developed Syberia. Yes there are loads of bugs, and I had to keep changing settings and installed and uninstalling patches, but it is still playable.

here is a paragraph I wrote awhile ago about the game:
At first, after finishing the game, I had a lot of negative opinions of the plot, and it does not really rap anything up and ends very abruptly and surprisingly, but as more time goes on I respect Mr. Sokal’s vision far more and (after much thought) come to understand why it was so powerful and simply excellent. This power is all the more poignant because you start off the game so subtly and sheltered from the war, the outside word, and even yourself, within the prince’s harem. Which is possibly even to the detriment of the games success; The beginning is so subtle that many users might give up and pass off the game as mediocre before the game has really even begun, something I did a few years back the first time I attempted to play it.

I wrote an article that goes into some detail on all the settings that you can fiddle with to get it working and a possible optimal setting configuration that might allow you to play through everything without any trouble. Here: http://wisnoskij.blogspot.ca/2011/04/paradise-benoit-sokal.html

TimovieMan - 05 March 2013 02:33 PM

That’s why I ask: how can this possibly be necessary for the story???

Slow starts are fine in my book, but there always needs to be *something* that captivates you, and holds your interest, so you’ll gladly continue. Paradise didn’t have that, imo, which makes it a failure…

Pace is part of a story. Nothing going on, and nothing drawing you onwards is incredibly boring, but still part of Sokal’s story. No one ever said that all good stories had to be entertaining in all parts of themselves or even in every part of themselves.

that being said, it is entirely possible that he could of done a better job in the first few hours of the adventure that made it more entertaining while not taking away from his overall story. I simply do not know; But believe that at the very least it would be hard to do this without taking away from the ending. All I know is that I struggled and played the game all the way through and think it is his best work, and 100% acknowledge that I would expect most people to give up before it got interesting.

TimovieMan - 05 March 2013 03:17 PM

They don’t have to be entertaining at all, they just need to have an element that keeps your interest up, whether that’s the premise, or an intriguing character, or even just the proverbial carrot dangling in front of you. If a story has something, anything to keep your attention, then the pace can be as slow as it wants…

I would say you need that to guarantee a audience that does not leave, that does not mean that you need it for the story to simply exist or even that all stories worth telling can be written so that they are interesting at all times. I simply do not know.