Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive

Oh man, this took me back. So great to play this again

Great story, with multiple endings. The mood is good, the graphics were good for its time.

The best of the Tex Murphy series, truly the only one that allows alternate paths towards the final conclusion. For Tex fans its a must have.

I played Pandora after playing Under a Killing Moon, games we had 25 years ago at home. It was pretty fun, and I even think I did not complete the game at that time. I love Tex Murphy character, made me laugh quite a lot. The story is pretty good and you just want to know what's next. I did not vomit playing the game which was quite a surprise given that most FPS makes me want to puke (litteraly) so the controls were not so bad. One of the issues with those 3D first person view adventure games is that you will probably miss some objects becasue you have so many places to search and some objects are a bit too well hidden. I found the game pretty difficult but with a good hints system (UHS), the game was still fun to play. About the different endings, it would take too long to run through them all, but I went on youtube after that, you will find all scenes ... and some endings are reaally funny. If you want some fun, be really nice, or be really mean, that will be more fun. On the bad side, there was a bit too much "find the key/code to open the door" riddles but a lot of them were quite fun to solve. There is the unavoidable labyrinth stage, totally useless as usual, but hey, they give you the map, so not so bad, just boring. And a tiny bit of action towards the end of the game, which I always find useless/annoying in an adventure game.

I played this recently, not long after playing Under a Killing Moon for the first time. I really like the interactive movie style of these games and there is some decent acting. Look for Tanya Roberts, who played Donna's Mom on That 70s Show, as she plays Regan in this game. The game continues Tex's story in the sassy noir detective style, complete with some cornball humour that I enjoy. The downsides: I find it virtually impossible without the walkthrough, even on Entertainment Mode. I played on my own at first until I got stuck, then realized I had missed so much - often times you have to jump up or crouch to find an item that is in 2D on top of an object, ie you would never know it was there if you don't have the camera angled exactly right. The labyrinth parts near the end are very frustrating and I had to find a cheat map online to get through it without throwing my computer across the room. The combining of certain items is not intuitive but essential to getting through the game, much like Under a Killing Moon. I wanted to play the Mission Street/Good Tex ending, but blew that without knowing it very early on. It's not always clear when you're talking to people what responses would be considered "good" vs "neutral" vs "bad" and so I ended up doing the Mission Street Walkthrough after completing about 10% of the game and I still ended up with a Lombard St/ Neutral ending. Some puzzles are fairly easy, others not so much. I didn't play in the other mode but I can't imagine having to do some of these tasks with a timer ticking down. There are a couple times when you do have to do things very quickly, and then the controls can be annoying. Fairly well written, well acted, mostly fun game if you are comfortable using a walkthrough (or the in-game hints which dock you points). If I had played this when it came out, it likely would have taken me months to complete and I doubt it could be completed fully without some hints.