The Doctor does not play puzzle-adventure games because they are “relaxing.” The Doctor plays them because there is something deeply satisfying about a clockpunk automaton named Oscar following you across half of Europe on a train powered by sheer mechanical stubbornness. Syberia, Benoît Sokal’s masterwork of wind-up melancholy, has been given the full remaster treatment, and the updated version is sitting right there on Steam judging you for every FPS-bro game you bought instead.

If you somehow missed the original: you play as Kate Walker, a Manhattan lawyer who arrives in a tiny Alpine village to finalize a factory acquisition, only to discover the inventor she’s looking for has wandered off on a quixotic mission involving woolly mammoths and a place called Syberia. The world Sokal built is ClockPunk in its bones: brass automatons, hand-wound mechanisms, a whole civilization built on springs and ingenuity instead of steam or diesel. It is gorgeous and a little heartbreaking and it has absolutely zero exploding helicopters, which is the correct amount. Oscar, the automaton companion, remains one of the better written non-human characters in gaming, and I will not be taking questions on this point.

The Omega7Red Formulae declares this one ΩΩΩΩ½. If you have never played it, the remaster is the version to start with. If you have played it, you already know. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a good clockwork train comes close.

Via: Steam