An FPS with a great character where you can "judge" the enemies and decide if you arrest them, or just shoot them. Sounds cool, right? Well, prepare to be disappointed. This is a generic game where there's not much motivation to go on: the story is not too interesting, the action is not very exciting, all the stages look the same... It looks and feels like a quickly assembled budget game that hasn't aged well. If you are a Judge Dredd fan you may be interested because familiar characters show up, but if you are just a regular gamer, it's probably a good idea to try the demo before buying a game you may not like at all.
If you are a fan of Waxworks and Elvira, this adventure game may interest you. It feels more 'primitive' because of the technical limitations PCs had twenty years ago, but you'll feel Horrorsoft trademark all over it. As you can see in the screenshots, the PC version (the game was also released for the Amiga) runs in 16-colour EGA mode, and there's no sound to speak of. But even if it's an old game (1989), it has good design and your instructions can be entered not only by typing them but also by pointing and clicking (there's a list of verbs on the right side). Basically, your mission consists of stopping all the 'evil people' in your home village. You start off chasing people, but soon you'll be fighting sobrenatural opponents. There are quite a few scares to be had with this game! As in other Horrorsoft adventures, you'll die often, and in very different ways, so always remember to save!
The absolute best in its genre. Back when the FMV craze was a blank check to annoy players with low interactivity and cheap actors, one adventure got everything just right. Who could have expected so much depth from an FMV game? TPD seems to follow the blueprint used for Under a Killing Moon as a starting point, but everything feels less limited now. You start in the same office, on the same street, but very soon you’ll notice that many new exits and locations are available. Also, you have access to innumerable items and puzzles. You can find a puzzle almost everywhere, and many of them are really clever. Even if you get stumped at some point, you won’t be stuck there for long, as the priceless hint system from UAKM is back! Once more, full 3D enviroments allow for exploration on a level absent in most adventures. Two difficulty levels are available: Entertainment (for casual gamers) and Game Players (with additional puzzles and content). Also, your choices during the game send you through different moral paths that lead to six different endings, some poignant, and some just over the top (Tex Murphy becomes a circus clown?). The Pandora Directive especially benefits from the talents of a professional filmmaker, Adrian Carr. The sequences in UAKM were good, but they still had a staged feeling, like a line reading at worst. Now, you can feel the difference not only because of the improved “cinematic angles”, but also when you see the performances given by the actors, both professional and non-professional. You just have to compare the opening sequence in UAKM, with the stilted, heavily grunting and possibly confused Brian Keith, to the distinguished appearance made by Kevin McCarthy in the opening sequence in this game. Chris Jones is back, better than ever, as Tex Murphy, and some supporting roles are filled in by TV veterans like Northern Exposure’s Barry Corbin (who has a great scene as a trigger-happy NSA agent), the beautiful Tanya Roberts, and even Wilford Brimley’s brother playing a famous conspiracy theorist! This game is just like UAKM, only bigger and better. Still, you don’t need to play UAKM to enjoy this game. This one was my first Tex Murphy game, and I didn’t know who he was at the time, but I found out very soon that I was experiencing something special!
One time, during the 90s, full-motion-video (FMV) adventures had a chance. Thanks to CD-ROM improved storage capacity, everybody and their uncle tried to imitate The 7th Guest and Myst, and jump on the FMV craze. Many of them thought filming amateur actors in front of a green screen was enough, and many less-than-compelling games were released. But somewhere in Salt Lake City, this was the perfect opportunity for a group of designers that had been creating adventure games with digitized graphics for a long time. Somehow, they had managed to cram digitized speech and graphics in floppy-disk games! Free from space constraints, they could now focus on great design. And they certainly did! The main diference with other FMV games, apart from the great design, is in the full-3D environments. While other titles allowed you to just move through pre-rendered animations, in UAKM you could literally move anywhere, like in a regular FPS (no shooting here, though). There's nothing like the feeling of discovery you get when you interact with the environment in unexpected ways! Imagine ducking next to a table and finding a note taped under the drawer and you'll see what I mean. This game also foreshadows the puzzle extravaganza at the heart of the next title, The Pandora Directive. Also, there's a cast of well-known B actors (James Earl Jones provides the narration!) and Access Software employees (with the surprisingly good Chris Jones as Tex Murphy) doing a decent job. There's also a handy built-in hint system which is really helpful to avoid those "I don't know what to do now!" moments. This is one of the best games of the 90s. If more games like this had been made, FMV wouldn't be reviled now. Maybe even the adventure game as a genre would still be here today.
This bundle includes the first and second Tex Murphy adventures. Mean Streets is a flight simulator, an action game and a classic adventure game all at once. It is definitely dated, but still retains a lot of charm. It's recommended for fans to see how it all started and how many elements from the best games of the series were already there, but casual players should be aware that the story was later retold in "Tex Murphy: Overseer" in a more accessible fashion. Martian Memorandum, the follow-up, thankfully lacks the shooting and flying sections and feels more focused. It looks very similar to other adventure games created by Access at that time (Countdown), with a mixture of digitized pictures and computer graphics. Like Mean Streets, it's worth noting that this game includes real speech when you talk to some characters. Very impressive for a game that came on floppy disks! MM is an old-fashioned adventure game and includes staples of the genre like pixel-hunting and combining objects, but it also uses questioning as a way to progress through the adventure, allowing you to see the story unfolding as you interrogate different characters. The best was yet to come, with the excellent FMV games that came a few years later, but Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum are still very good games that can hold their own. If you like classic point-and-click adventures, this compilation is a must-have!
You probably have heard of (and played) the original "Prince of Persia". It was a megasuccess that was ported to almost every game system in existence, including cell phones and whatnot. This game is a very successful translation of its formula to full 3D, after the very disappointing "Prince of Persia 3D". This game is adapted for the tastes of modern, more casual gamers, so here a small mistake leading to death doesn't mean you have to replay the whole level. Ubisoft Montreal had the idea to implement a "rewind" feature that allowed to undo failed jumps and stunts so you can try them again instantly. Jordan Mechner, designer of the original game and screenwriter for "Sands of Time", took this idea and ran with it, creating one of the most memorable game experiences ever seen. The story is very well integrated in the game (with cutscenes thankfully kept to a minimum), and your banter with the female interest/sidekick, Farah, makes you care about both characters much more than in most videogames. The next games were technically better and had some improvements in the formula, but the script wasn't as involving as this one, making this the better game, and for me at least, a classic. This one is the one with the heart, and the game that I keep going back to.
Some people really love Rise of the Triad, but I didn't enjoy this game at all, even back at the time. A wannabe Doom-killer, this game feels actually like Wolfenstein 3D 2.5, with lots of b-movie flavour and silliness. The game is mindless action with virtually no plot, but lots of humour, thanks to creative director Tom Hall. Levels look and feel blocky, and it's immediately obvious why all the maps are square-like, with no curves whatsoever: the level design was of the "drag and drop on a grid" type. If you want to play this game, you have to be aware that you are going to feel like a "rat in a maze", with arbitrary traps and platforms standing in your way. The graphics consist of digitized characters taking shots at you in boxy surroundings. There are many weapons but you can only carry a few, and the most powerful ones have very limited ammunition. Still, they enable you to see the high point of the game, which is of course the amazing "ludicrous gibs!" (the enemy gets blown up in chunks). I have to admit that Rise of the Triad is not my cup of tea. Still, it's simple enough, and if you like over-the-top FPS action and brutal Prince-of-Persiaesque labyrinths full of traps (yes, there's a lot of jumping), you may want to try it. Not all players will appreciate it, so it's always a good idea to try the demo before getting the full game. This is a release from the shareware era, so the first levels were available for free!
After making a name for themselves with the early "Broken Sword" titles and other great adventure games, Revolution Software tried to go beyond the tight boundaries of the genre doing something more ambitious. In Cold Blood combines action/stealth gameplay with streamlined adventure puzzles, and is clearly inspired by the original Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil series. It may have "too much action" for the adventure crowd, and "too much adventure" for action fans, but the game is successful in delivering a more complex experience. This game is made in 'early 3D', but not in a messy way like Simon the Sorcerer 3D. Maybe the graphics look a bit dated now (the CGI cutscenes are too simple and the movement of the characters feels robotic), but at least the 'plastic' look of the world is consistent, even with pre-rendered backgrounds. The game is very long, and some parts may be frustrating for some players. Still, there are some nice design touches and the great story and atmosphere makes playing In Cold Blood worthwhile.
Simon the Sorcerer 3D was a victim of the 3D craze that hit the world after FMV finally went away. The publishers wanted a full 3D adventure, so the developers took the challenge and dove into it Headfirst (the name of the new company founded by Simon the Sorcerer's creators) even if they didn't have any experience with three dimensions. Later they mastered them, creating the great underrated gem Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, but at the time... what a mess! Simon 3D was too big, too ambitious, and the result was a buggy, clunky game with amateurish graphics that were outdated even at the time. It felt like a prototype, so playing wasn't too pleasant! Still, this is part of the original Simon the Sorcerer trilogy. If you like the humour of the first two games, maybe you'll cope with all the ugliness in Simon 3D and see for yourself the real game buried into what looks like an 'alpha' release for a game that still needed a lot of work.
