Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive

Together with Gabriel Knight 2 this is the best FMV Game out there. And definitely one of the best most intense adventures ever.

One of the best and hardest classic adventures. It is better than Under A Killing Moon in every way. The story is long, maybe too much, but it is good conspiracy story. The fun fact is, even in 2043 people still use CDs and faxes and nobody has a mobile phone:) Unfortunately, yet again there are some stupid action and timed sequences, which are just irritating. Also, I don't understand why almost every adventure game must end in an underground temple full of traps and stupid puzzles. Actors are kinda B-movie types but this just adds to the pulp atmosphere:) 3D environment is much better than in UAKM and even today looks quite fine except for ridiculous flat textures in open doors that are supposed to give you an illusion of adjoining room (3D engine is capable only of tiny maps so every room is separated).

First off let me just say before I start gushing about how amazing the game is, that the game does have problems. Bugs exist when playing on modern OS'es, but to be fair they're easily worked around - there's a few gameplay based bugs, but nothing which really halted my progress. Aside from that my game crashed twice through my playthrough of the GOG version, but each time it actually recognized the crash and asked me if I wanted to pick up where I left off, so I'd consider that a non-issue. There's also the fact that due to the low resolution, the game looks incredibly dated in parts - which in itself I'd expect wouldn't distract a buyer from this site, but it can occasionally be an issue when you're looking for that one item which you may or may not have missed to solve a puzzle. With that said, this is still an amazing game. On the surface you have a first person exploration/puzzle based adventure game, along the same lines of Under a Killing Moon (you played that already, right? get that too!) with some very witty, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, interesting puzzles for the most part, and an.. adventurous plot. To put it more succintly I'd say it's the gaming equivalent of playing a B-Movie, with all that entails. The game is semilinear at heart, offering multiple possible methods of completing some of the goals, along with two different overall gameplay difficulties and multiple endings based on key choice(s) throughout the game. It can be quite punishing in places, which is why saving often is a good thing - not only for recovery reasons but also so you can freely experiment with dialogue choices. Quite often something would pop up which made me think that saying it would get me killed, but I'd feel compelled to do so anyway - and it was usually worth it. The puzzles are for the most part logical, though some are actually quite difficult - but this just adds to the charm for me, an actual sense of satisfaction when completing something rather than the move from A -> B -> collect reward mentality prevalent in the more recent generations. In closing, I played this game through for the first time here on GOG, having played Under a Killing Moon years and years earlier when it was first released. I played this at a time when I was getting very jaded with gaming in general, finding little time to play through the games I already had, watching an ever mounting backlog of games which I couldn't bring myself to being playing grow ever longer. Then I started playing this, and got hooked very fast. This game made me remember all the things I'd forgotten that I love about gaming; despite the faults/bugs previously mentioned. It's completely deserving of the title 'Good Old Game' and I'd recommend the series to anyone remotely interested in adventure games, B-movies, or cool hats.

For me one of the best games ever, and the best Tex Murphy game for sure. Great storyline with much suspense, a interesting set of characters, cool locations, real P.I.-feeling. The only thing I didn't like was the "indianajonesesque" part at the end (I'm more into the P.I.-thing) and some of the puzzles are really extremely hard to solve without a walkthrough (there are two difficulty-levels, but on "easy" you won't see some interesting parts of the game). Other than that the game is a real hit and deserves nothing less than five stars. It's a thrilling ride from beginning to end. And as it has at least seven different endings, based on your decisions during the game, it has replay value as well. Highly recommended!

Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum started it all, Under A Killing Moon was the first step into the realm of 3D and Pandora Directive is the pinnacle of Tex Murphy's adventures. It takes everything that made UAKM so great and expands on it. More locations, more puzzles, better quality FMV and overall a longer game. Not only due to the lenght of the story, but also because of the possibility of 3 different moral roads that you can take leading to 6 different endings. TPD also has the most interesting storyline of the games, IMO. It also has many quotable lines ^_^