Tex Murphy: Mean Streets + Martian Memorandum

Playing Mean Streets was a nice experience. At the beginning I started to jot down some info, because you definitely need to, otherwise you won't be able to go very far. But at some point I realised the half page I had wouldn't be enough, there was so much stuff to keep track off, I had to take a full sheet. And that was fun ! It really felt like I was interrogating the people I met, asking them about this or that, getting a feeling of accomplishment when someone gave me something to work with, and overall acting like a P.I. would. The story was compelling, the characters looked real, even if some had two head or just one eye in the middle of the head... The only problems with the game are easy to identify : the travelling and the fights. To go from one place to the other, you have to actually fly your speeder in San Francisco, L.A., etc., and it gets annoying pretty quick. As for the fights, it's just you advancing towards enemies with your gun. They also have guns, fire a lot, you have to duck, but you can't shoot while ducking, so it takes a lot of time, and getting killed thus is really frustrating. But on the whole, these two flaws are easily forgotten when you complete the game. You really feel like you've solved the case, using only your brain. OK, your gun too. Martian Memorandum took out the boring parts to keep the gameplay centred around the story, and that's an improvement. Although, an other flaw arises that didn't existed in the first game : you can die by just trying something, just like in some old Sierra games. And that's really irritating each time it happens. But that's nothing a save point cannot undo, so it's not that big an issue. This second instalment also changes the gameplay quite a lot. Whereas in Mean Streets the main focus was talking to people, here we have a point-and-click gameplay, with less emphasis on interrogations, but you still get a lot of discussions and informations from the colourful characters that people Earth and Mars. Another big difference is that you won't have to note down every piece of information you get or travel "by hand", the game will take care of all that itself. You can either consider that an improvement or a lack of immersion, but it is well-executed and grants a change of pace, so you it's not all bad. In conclusion, these two games are definitely worth your time if you like adventure games, or want to feel what it's like to be a private eye straight out of a film noir. What's more, they're not really hard and play smoothly, so you won't be pulling your hair out in despair, but rather will enjoy the ride. And don't forget what a wise man once said : Save early, save often !

These games aged badly.... Now i enjoyed the first one much more. Had kinda pulpy style to it. I got lost half way and had to use guide to finish the game. Its insane how much information you had to write down but it was kinda old school fun. Im not fan of traveling between areas in texes car. Takes ages to get from point a to point b, if you dont use guide add times 3x because you will travel a lot... Story is simple yet i enjoyed it. Also there is a bug in last section of the game make sure to slow down cycles in DOSBOX go for 1000 or something like that. This will make the game easier in shooting sections and allow you to properly finish the game without getting soft locked. Overall i had fun playing mean streets even but i would say its for curious only. You dont loose much by skiping these 2 games. So mean streets 2,5/5*. Now lets talk about a second game for a bit. I much more prefer this style of gameplay, but there are some horrible gameplay desing choices that makes this one even less enjoyable. I liked the music, enjoyed the locations and some characters were fun to look at but the story and the system of talking about topics really fails here. Also there are a lot of cheap ways to die. Almost at the end you get this weird duct climbing minigame that is just hell to navigate. Story have huge plot holes and end ups kinda abruptly. I did not like this game as much as a first one. Very bad desing, frustrating gameplay thankfully you can save anytime so do that. So for martian memorandum 1,5/5* Interesting bit of history right here. These games didnt age well at all. But they can be fun if you play them with guide. Otherwise they are not so enjoyable in this day and age. Have fun, guys :)

This game has almost come to me as an answer to my orayers. For years I wished they had made a video game of the TV show "Magnum PI" Which has an adventure/fpp mode for interviewing people, a "shooter" mode for action sequences, and a realistic driving sim where you got into Magnum's Ferrari and drove in real-time, no "skipping" or "warping" or anything. Although not featuring Tom Selleck, Mean Streets covers basically everything else. Mean Streets, while certainly dated, is an amazing game. The storyline is fantastic, and the characters are very believable. The gameplay is one of those games that cross genres, and it never stops being fun (at least to me.) The game is broken up into 4 different gameplay sections: 1 Interview/Questioning: talk to people face to face through a first-person perspective and ask questions. This kind of gameplay is similar to the interview segments of games such as the Ace Attorney series, but due to it's age you have to type subjects in manually with the keyboard. Some may see this as a hassle, but to me it almost makes it feel more immersive and realistic to me. 2 Speeder Flying: To travel throughout California, you can hop into your speeder for a realistic, real-time flight simulator. If you enjoy Microsoft Flight Simulator or games like that, you will enjoy flying here. Many do not like this mode, and if you don't like it rest assured there is an "autopilot" function so you can just relax while flying and read through your notes until you reach your destination. Once again, though, I think this makes me feel more like I'm actually Tex Murphy, flying through San Francisco. 3 Investigation/Room Search: This is pretty similar to games like Gabriel Knight, NiBiRu, Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword. Nothing really new here, but still fun! 4 Action/Shooting: In this part the game becomes a side scroller and has you shooting bad guys. Everyone hates this part, and I'll admit I'm not crazy about it, but if you change the setting to "LOW" difficulty it should be ok. The game took me a week of INTENSIVE playing to beat- much longer than many detective games. Overall, Mean Streets has become one of my favorite games of all time, ranking close to perfect games like Riven The Sequel to Myst, Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time, BIONICLE Mata Nui Online Game, and Dark Fall 2: Lights Out (All Great adventure games, if you've never played them). Mean Streets, take it or leave it, is a game everyone must play

If you put dead ends into a game like this and fail to inform me immediately when I've reached one, then two stars should be considered very generous score since you're simply wasting my time at that point. Combined with the thousands of extremely sloppy spelling mistakes -- it's obvious that they've just hit the wrong key or missed it completely, and either didn't bother to correct it or simply failed to proofread the text -- it doesn't feel at all polished. The control mechanics and music are subpar as well. The only things left are the story, and the puzzles which are a combination of decent, superfluous and trivial, and random unavoidable death traps. Too bad also that the save/load system is pretty bad considering it's such an integral part of the game.

What's more to say than that? These games have simply aged horribly, with bad random dialog trees, awful puzzles (some of the stupidest in any adventure game i've ever played), and an odd sense of space, place and intent. There's some potential here, for sure, but that's where the sequels come in. The tex murphy series may have become classic by the third iteration, but the first two aren't any good by any means. There's nothing really classic about them other than they're old and have some kind of name recognition for adventure fans. And as an adventure fan with no preconceived notions, these two games are remembered than played or better never played at all.