Tex Murphy - Project Fedora Kickstarter

[TheLastBaron]

I have finals right now so I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but my mom has. She played all the old games, even the DOS ones, so I bought her it for Mother's day. She likes it, but I don't know how much that means.

[feelthedarkness]

Mean Streets, and Martian Memorandum were so good. I never dug on the FMV stuff. That was a dark era for games. 

[juv3nal]

I've had a crack at it, but not long (maybe 25 mins?). I liked what I saw, but I don't have anything against FMV. I just have a ton of game stuff on my plate at the moment. There's a giant bomb quick look somewhere if you're curious.

[syntheticgerbil]

I gave my download code to my Dad because he loves Tex Murphy. I don't really have time right now anyway.

 

I'll just wait for the blu-ray in the mail and play it then. That Giant Bomb quick look has me totally psyched, I don't know what's with half of the comments saying it looks like crap or needs to be an endurance run. Whatever haters.

[mikemariano]

I gave my download code to my Dad because he loves Tex Murphy.

 

Come to think of it, Tex Murphy games are basically non-stop dad jokes.

[mikemariano]

I just beat Tesla Effect.  It was fun, and the team is really good at balancing their gameplay with their FMV.

 

It's definitely a dad game, though.  You do some simple puzzles, then dress up like a detective and make some wisecracks.

 

I ended up with Taylor at the end.  There are multiple paths through this game, but I'm not sure how they differ.

[Twig]

I've never played a Tex Murphy game, but always been Sort Of Interested! Any idea how the older games hold up in terms of just feeling like good games to play? Is the design of the Tex Murphy games the kind where you can die by doing the wrong thing (i.e., Sierra) or where you can just do whatever until you solve the puzzles (i.e., LucasArts)? Or do I have the genre all wrong?!

[mikemariano]

I haven't played Under A Killing Moon or Pandora Directive since the last century—even then the controls were a little stiff, though to give them credit they were doing full-3D first-person that predated Quake.  Once the games got going they were similar to how Tesla Effect plays.

 

I never played the non-3D/FMV early two games: Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum.  I also never played Overseer, the most recent game before Tesla Effect that was a quasi-remake of Mean Streets.

 

There are a lot of cheap deaths in the Tex Murphy games, though—it is very much more Sierra-style.  Even in Tesla Effect I died before realizing what was going on at times.  Tex Murphy puzzles are a combination of environmental puzzles and arbitrary Puzzle Agent-like logic puzzles.

[Twig]

Oh wow I thought they were all FMV games. Interesting.

I actually have Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum on GOG, now that I think about it. They may have been free at one point, or super cheap. I will try that out and hopefully the oldness doesn't drive me away.

I'm not too upset about cheap deaths as long as I know it can happen beforehand. I mean, as long as I know it's that type of game. Save often, etc. 

Anyway, thanks!

[syntheticgerbil]

Well I think they original touted Martian Memorandum (and to some extents Mean Streets) as an FMV game for heavily featuring video recorded actors and speech.

 

However, the Tex Murphy series are maybe not exactly what people think of when they think of FMV games because there's very little of the Dragon's Lair type decision making and on the rails type stuff of many Sega CD games. I sort of forgot how most FMV games played though of the garbage I did touch. I don't think most of them had the full 3D run around and dig through stuff engine that is sort of like Gone Home in many respects.

[Twig]

I didn't know anything about Tex Murphy until they were released on GOG. The first thing I heard was they were "FMV point and click adventure games", which may not be completely accurate (I assume because they're FMV they have some differences in how they're played), but I definitely never got the impression they were Dragon's Lair types of games!

[feelthedarkness]

MS & MM are both late 80s style adventure game style, but a bit clunkier than Sierra/Lucasarts. Mean Streets is particularly weird, because half the game is also a 3d flight sim in ultra low poly future California. I get the impression they sold it to a publisher as being based on the company's earlier success: Echelon. MS also has a classic adventure game arcade sequences, that are mercifully fairly rare. I loved it as a kid, but I imagine it will be pretty challenging now. It has 4 distinct modes: Flight Sim, interview/interrogation, 3rd person adventure, and side scrolling minimalist NARC.

 

MM as I remember is just all 3rd person adventure game, with conversations. 

 

Access Software had REAL SOUND, a program that was just (ultra low bitrate) digitized music and human voice right at the beginning of the era of sound cards.

[syntheticgerbil]

I visited my dad for his birthday. He is stuck on some soundwave puzzle with three dials. He can't click the dials fast and precisely enough before the timer is out and he refuses to skip the puzzle. Gotta be nice to dads so that they can finish games in ways their old motor skills can handle.

 

But yeah, point and click FMV adventures sounds about right. They are definitely much more interactive, well acted, and better designed than Gabriel Knight 2, known as the only other good FMV adventure. For the record, I like Mean Streets in all of it's broken ugly glory. Something about typing in the right subjects to characters and then alternating room searches felt like a nice mesh in between the easy action sequences. Luckily you can just use auto coordinates for the flight simulator part, slowly passing all of that bothersome control scheme.