Tex Murphy: Mean Streets + Martian Memorandum

I wish I could recommend these two games. They apply the private eye genre to a futuristic sci-fi setting better than Blade Runner. Detective work is ripe for adventure gaming (e.g. Gabriel Knight), and the two earliest Tex Murphy cases add a detailed, fully realized semi-post-apocalyptic world to the mix. In Mean Streets (the better of the two) and what I've played of Martian Memorandum, the mysteries are also genuinely good -- intricately plotted, with varied characters and tense twists and turns. Much of the gameplay resembles another oldie, J.B. Harold Murder Club. Questioning suspects, together with some room-searching, uncovers evidence and opens new locations and conversation keywords. There's lots of scenery to look at and interact with; the resulting text shows a quirky, sometimes silly sense of humor. The arcade shooting sequences aren't too tough to get through, but sadly, what really renders Mean Streets unplayable is how it turns into a flight simulator whenever you change scenes. You must pilot your sci-fi car over a landscape made of the worst sort of 1980s "3D" graphics. Even if you leave it to the autopilot, you must still wait...and wait...up to minutes at a time just to go from A to B. It certainly doesn't complement adventure gaming, and it's just plain awful. A fatal flaw, probably even for diehards. Mean Streets was remade about ten years later as Tex Murphy: Overseer. I haven't played it yet, but I'd suggest you go straight to that one. Martian Memorandum ditched the flight sim, yet got worse in most other respects. Dead ends (absent in Mean Streets) are at the heart of it. However, it's debatable whether the one that did me in was a deliberate dead end or a glitch. Blurry graphics, and my failure to make the "logical" decision to click GET on a dead body, played a part. Bad enough back in the old days, who wants to bother with dead ends today? Associated with dead ends is another problem: nonsensical dialogue trees. Only one specific path will make a character open up for questioning (and sometimes you get only one chance), yet the "correct" choices are typically illogical, and usually look no better than the others. Reminding the cop he owes you a free lunch will fail, yet mocking him for being lazy and eating donuts will succeed. The above lack of quality is reflected everywhere, starting with an uglier, sluggish interface. Lots of typos and bad grammar increase the amateurish feel. The text-only inventory, void of explanations, is worse than ever. You'll soon forget what you're supposed to do with "PAPER" and "DOCUMENTS". Nor has the command system's clumsy use of verbs improved. Click MOVE to, er, press a switch to open a door (for which the OPEN command does nothing). Better to leave these two mysteries in the cold case file, sorry to say.

Tex Murphy 1-2 is a set of adventure games that share characters and a setting, but don't bear much resemblance to eachother otherwise. As such, this review will cover both games individually before declaring their value as a package. STORY 1; (5/5): The story of Mean Streets is pretty simple and straightforward once you know all of it, but it's the process of finding it all out piece by piece that makes the tale interesting. The characters all have unique personalities and are interesting in their own way, and there are many jokes to be had at their expense. The story makes the world worth exploring, which is all an adventure game could ever hope for. VISUALS 1; (4/5): For 1991, this looks pretty good. It's not pretty, but the thematic backgrounds are all nice and the talking heads are a nice touch even when they don't speak aloud. The only complaint I can realistically make is about the weird colors you see when flying about in your air-car. Why are the bridges purple? What are those funky pyramids? What's that big yellow spot on the ground? SOUNDS 1; (3/5) For 1991, this is okay. There's a tiny bit of good voice acting, but other than that the sounds are mostly unimpressive. Come to that, there's not very much sound at all. GAMEPLAY 1; (3/5): The story is good, but the gameplay is not, primarily for three reasons. 1st, there are a number of puzzles in the game that you have to complete within a time limit. It's never fun to be timed in any game, but it's especially bad in adventure games where you reap the most benefit from taking the time to explore everything, not to mention games in which your character's movement speed is comparable to that of a drunken snail. 2nd, the adventure-gaming and interrogation is broken up with side-scrolling shootout minigames. These minigames can be arbitrarily hard even on the lowest difficulty level, and there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid them. 3rd, flying the car is boring. You just float in the air until you reach your destination, and then land. There's nothing to add variety to it except the distance you travel, and the scenery below you isn't pretty enough to be enthralled with. My suggestion is that you just turn on the autopilot and bring a book. That said, the game is fun when you're actually busy talking to people and tampering with your environment. This is one of the few adventure games I've played which I think can really be considered "free-roaming." The objectives you need to complete for the end of the game can be done in any order you like. Think of it like this; you are sitting at the edge of a spiderweb. Every person you talk to is a link in the web's weave. Because of this setup, the relationships between the different characters effectively allow you to get the same information from at least 2 different sources, always, and that gives you a fair amount of freedom in how to conduct your investigation. The only problem is the lack of money, but that can be resolved by hocking the miscellaneous objects that you "find" while adventuring and by being careful who you spend bribe-money on. STORY 2; (4/5): The second game's story is about the same as the first in terms of complexity, but since the gameplay is arranged differently it doesn't have as much force. In the first game you can piece together the clues and figure out the truth on your own readily enough, but in the second game you don't discover the whole story until the last minute. Points off for that. There are also fewer quirky characters; more points off. VISUALS 2; (3/5): Given that this is still an old game, I don't have any real complaints to offer. However, since the gameplay got rearranged, it's not as easy to find hidden objects any more; now you have to play "Hunt the Pixel." This problem is somewhat mitigated by the Help button, but it's still a serious problem that you can't really see your environment all that well. SOUNDS 2; (4/5): Significant improvements over the first game. There's now some decent midi music for every area you enter, with a nice noir sound to it. There's also more voice acting. For the early '90's, this is great. I'm not giving it a 5, though, because sound effects are still generally negligible. GAMEPLAY 2; (3/5): The development team took the time to remove the annoying shootout and flying minigames. That's good. Then they streamlined the game's command system and added mouse functionality to make it easier to use. That's good too. Then they designed the game to be almost completely linear, and included a number of different sections of the game where it's possible to screw up the game completely and make it impossible to progress without reloading an old save, and I'm not discussing situations where your character simply dies. That's very very bad. Quite aside from the fact that the joy of exploring and social networks is now reduced by the smaller number of people and linear gameplay, it's always annoying when you screw up something vital and don't know it. For instance, at the beginning of the game, you run into this secretary character who you MUST take out on a date and who MUST have the time of her life with you, or you can't finish the game. If you fail, the game does not end and you don't recieve any message to the effect that you cannot continue. Plus, the second TM game has added a dialogue-tree system in which you can try to persuade people to talk to you by pursuing different dialogue options. Since there's generally only one "right" path in the dialogue tree (which may or may not include presenting an item at a specific time), you may have to run through the same conversation with someone several times in order to get them to talk to you. That gets old fast. Mitigating some of these problems is the inclusion of a "help" button which tells you about all the different items in the area you can interact with and gives you hints on how to manipulate them. However, due to previously mentioned visual issues, you may find yourself becoming totally dependent on the help button to progress. OVERALL VALUE FOR PRICE; (4/5): This is a novel sort of game package, and if you're into mysteries or adventure games I'd certainly recommend it. That said, you should beware of the risks you run when you play these games. Save early, save often, save in multiple slots.

If there's one person you can count on, it might not be Tex Murphy, but he'll certainly try. The original games in this package, while not the masterpieces later games would be, still include all of that fantastic Tex Murphy flavor. Explore, interrogate, gunfight, or even fly. It's Tex's world, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I came across Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum about 6 or 7 years ago as a budding teenager in a CD compilation of some Access Software classics called "Private Eye Mysteries". It came with Mean Streets, Martian Memorandum, Countdown and Crime Wave, all classic games. Mean Streets is where we first encounter future adventure game icon Tex Murphy, a down-on-his-luck private investigator from a futuristic San Francisco who's itching for a case. He got more than he bargained for. A dead man and a blonde. Tex must look into the apparent suicide of Dr. Carl Linsky, a scientist involved with a secret project. He was seen jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge and the police are determined to stick it as a suicide. But after poking around, Tex sees what they're selling and he ain't buying. So it's up to him to uncover the real truth and to save the world. Mean Streets was pretty groundbreaking for its time. It's split into three phases. The first phase you'll encounter is close to that of a flight simulator, where you have to guide Tex's hovercar to the proper destination. You can also get some leads by calling your secretary or your helpful informant (Lee Chin, I believe her name was..) which will lead you to more locations to land and look at. Depending on where you go, you may or may not encounter the next phase and that is the shooting phase. You must go from one side of a scene to another, alive. There's baddies rushing you with guns and you got a limited amount of ammunition. Good luck! But if you succeed (or don't have to engage in combat at all), you'll reach an all too familiar phase. The adventure phase, where you ask questions, examine and grab objects, solve puzzles, and bypass obstacles. Sound was accomplished through a technology known as RealSound, which'd rear its head in other games. Basically, RealSound made close to realistic sounds and music through that scratchy 4.77 MHz PC speaker. Graphics depended on what mode you set. There's 16-color EGA, CGA, Hercules and I believe Monochrome as well. Martian Memorandum on the other hand, is a bit easier on the eyes and the ears. So in Mean Streets, you saved the world and got the girl. Well, unfortunately for you, the girl ran off on you and..yep...you guessed it, the rent's due and you need a case. Well my friend, consider yourself lucky because the tycoon of a Martian terraforming corporation wants you to find out where his daughter ran off to. Jackpot! That is, until he winds up dead. Time to take a vacation to Mars, where you'll be on the trail of his daughter and the priceless artifact she possesses that a madman is burning to get. And if he gets ahold of it, the Red Planet is doomed, and the Blue one may be next. Martian Memorandum is a point and click adventure. No flight sim phases, no fighting scenes except for what you have to do to accomplish an objective, but there's still the good old adventure game formula of poking around, moving objects, conquering obstacles and talking to people. Speaking of which...if you have the likes of a Sound Blaster, you'll get digitized speech, though unfortunately its not for every instance like in later Tex games like Under a Killing Moon, but it does a good job. All in all, I strongly suggest that you take a walk down Lombard Street (and Memory Lane) and pick up Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum from GOG. It's cheaper than what I paid for from that CD compilation (5.99 compared to close to $12 is always good). Now go on, grab your trenchcoat and pay the rent!