Syberia – Remastered Review – Old Wine, Newish Bottle

Siberia – updated review

For gamers who don't know his story, the late developer Benoit Sokal Siberia was one of many puzzle adventure games released after Myst. Unlike the classic adventure games of the early 1990s – think The Secret of Monkey Island – Myst and its imitators had “photorealistic” graphics and a more serious tone. Puzzles often depended on activating mechanisms and could be frustratingly obtuse. 2002s Siberia was definitely in that wheelhouse, with a punk vibe and quirky storytelling. “Siberia” at one time gained many fans thanks to several sequels. Now the game has been remastered for modern audiences.

Squeaky gears

“Siberia” tells the story of a New York lawyer named Keith Walker. She is sent to a fictional village in the French Alps to find inventor Hans Voralberg. He needs to sign an agreement for the sale of a machine gun production plant in the city. This assignment takes Kate on an extended journey through Eastern Europe. Voralberg is an eccentric guy who believes that the last living mammoths live on the island of Siberia. Kate is accompanied by Oscar, one of Voralberg's automatons. Kate gets to know the village by watching a procession of machine guns make its way through the town. It is an evocative, disturbing and surreal image.

After this introduction, Kate begins to explore the city, meeting its sometimes quirky inhabitants and gathering information about Voralberg. “Siberia” makes several significant changes to the original, but does not affect the narrative or characters. Unfortunately, it also misses a chance to improve the game's sometimes glacial pace and time-consuming returns. To be fair, these problems still exist in recent puzzle adventure games.

Puzzle solving

If you're a fan of the original, you'll probably want to know what's new. The static environments and fixed camera of the original have been replaced with fully 3D graphics and a rotating camera. Almost everything has been improved visually, including textures and significant improvements to lighting and weather effects. I wouldn't say it feels like a game from 2025, but it's a huge difference from the 2002 original.

However, not everything looks good. To begin with, many of the original's cutscenes have been improved, but not remade. They look washed out and rather primitive, and it's a little strange that they haven't been completely redesigned. Overall, the character models – at least the human ones – are left a few steps behind. I don’t know if the voice acting has been redone, but the quality is excellent. Kate in particular lacks energy and variety in her performance.

The art, design and architecture remain impressive, and it's nice to see more textural detail and be able to explore a little more. The world isn't particularly alive, and it still feels like a series of stages, but at least it's more engaging.

Motor heads

When it comes to puzzles, Syberia falls somewhere between simple and incredibly obtuse. The original had one or two infuriating puzzles, but these have been reworked to offer more clues without handing the player the solution right away. The game has a guided mode that helps the player and an unguided mode that doesn't do much.

However, many of Siberia's puzzles still fall into the category of simple but fun puzzles. I have a personal bias against busy work and immersion-breaking puzzles, like having to look for a key to wind up a mechanism just to ring the bell at a hotel reception. Vanity Punk Gear offers a variety of machine-centric puzzles, which means a lot of time exploring the environment for clues and details.

The setting and story premise of Syberia were interesting in 2002 and remain so in Syberia Remastered. With improved graphics and a range of quality-of-life features, today's gamers will find it accessible. Unfortunately, the game's pacing, clean cutscenes and general approach to puzzles mean that some parts of Syberia Remastered feel stuck in the past. Fans of the original will enjoy revisiting this new version, but I'm not sure new gamers will be as interested.

***PC code provided by publisher for review***