Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum

BottomLine @ the top: This game has aged better than Mean Streets but was still a pain to play. Recommended only to P&C historians and people who want to see the progression of the Tex Murphy series. Pros --------------------------------------- -The main pro of this game is its nostalgia factor. I myself did not play this nor any of the other Tex Murphy games in the 90's. However the style of the gameplay and its various 90's in jokes and takes on the future (things like an aerobics studio on Mars, a novelty wave machine in the background of an apartment, an IBM PC as a workstation, and referring to an under construction skyscraper as "The New Sears Tower”, and your car being a flying Dodge Daytona) are enjoyable for me. -This game is from an era where video games were nowhere near the major industry they are today. It gives it a kind of anything goes feeling. You can tell the developers had fun with things like character designs and how the overall story lacks a serious tone. -This game came out 2 years after Mean Streets and it is a marked improvement across the board in terms of interface, graphics, music/sounds, and animations. This game has much more of a "point and click feel" to it than did Mean Streets. -Unlike Mean Streets save slots can be given typed in descriptions instead of just "GAME001, GAME002, etc.". -Also, lots of save slots. There are P&C games today that still don't get this right. -Early use of an item location/info "help" button -Updated the "futuristic" in car fax machine to a "more futuristic" wrist mounted fax ;). -No stupid arcade style car flying like Mean Streets -No stupid arcade style action sequences like Mean Streets Meh. --------------------------------------- -The voice recordings and short video animations were probably very impressive back when the game came out. Today however they are very low quality. They also only play for some dialogue and characters. -Dialogue tree choices are frustrating but are more interactive than Mean Streets was. -Writing isn't amazing. Cons --------------------------------------- -Setup was a pain to get this game to work right. Mouse control is glitchy and not smooth at all. If you're a DOSBox expert it might be fixable, but I just decided to deal with it. -Extreme pixel hunting and backtracking. -The "goto" command is clunky and utilized inconsistently. Sometimes you can just walk to a new screen/room. Other times you must use the "goto" command. -Same inconsistency when interacting with objects. Sometimes you must be right next to an object to pick it up, other times it could be on the other side of the screen and you can pick it up without having to be next to it. -Unforgiving game. Easy to forget an item or screw up a dialogue tree. -Puzzles like the quicksand, laser maze, and ductwork maze were most likely very frustrating back in the day. They still are. -Restarts to the beginning of the game upon death instead of offering up a reload game screen. -Text is hard to read when written on the background instead of a solid color text window. -Very anti-climactic ending. Overall, I struggled to finish this one. I just wanted it to be over so I could move on to the next Tex Murphy game which is apparently more in line with the overall FMV style of subsequent titles. I stuck to the walkthrough and hammered it out, not wanting to deal with the pixel hunting, backtracking, and multiple dialogue tree dead ends. This game should only be picked up on sale and played by p&c aficionados who appreciate the history of P&C games who don't mind dealing with the same frustrations gamers in the 90's did. Even though this was a slough to get through, I am still looking forward to finally playing Under a Killing Moon! [hr][/hr] [b][u][i]For more point & click goodness, check out our P&C fan Steam group, The Coalition of Point & Clickers!:[/i][/u][/b] [list][*] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/CPANDC] Coalition of Point & Clickers Main Page [/url][*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34690626/] Coalition of Point & Clickers Curator [/url][/list] 👑 [b][u][i]Powered by HoI 4 Deu Curators group in German / English[/i][/u][/b] 👑⠀⠀⠀[list][*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/30388691/] Follow Main group [/url][*][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40282064/] Follow Second group [/url][/list]

Martian Memorandum has a great story and it removes some of the useless gameplay features from Mean Streets (the flying between locations and the gun fights). This time the new informations (people and places) are stored by the game, so you don't have to write them down. However, there are two big cons : - some of the puzzles can be solved only by trial and error - you can reach a point where you can no longer finish the game : if you get to Mars and while you were on Earth you didn't find out about a certain character, then you can no longer progress.

The second game of the Tex Muphy series did less genre crossover and had a great strength with its LucasArts-era classic adventure design. Graphically it's a solid retro adventure FMV mix, the only downside being missing hotspots: even when hovering the mouse over interactible objects there is no cursor feedback whatsoever which made and still makes the game terribly hasslesome on a first playthrough due to easily missing out on interacting with key items on the quite blurry screen. A walkthrough or a frustration tolerance made out of steel might be required for new players. Truth be told, the entire gamedesign is extremely oldschool due to the inherent actual age of the game and it might prove too much of a bother altogether to newer gamers. Personally it took me way back and having a nostalgia bonus it was a lot of fun revisiting this nigh forgotten gem. It's not the best entry of the series though, things really started picking up with The Pandora Directive, but that's something to tell for another review.

[h1]Описание:[/h1] Серия видеоквестов про детектива. Игры начали выпускать с 1989 года но до сих пор не один русскоязычный переводчик не добрался до серии (кроме последней части 2014 года - Tesla Effect). В игре очень трудный английский и вы не найдете руссика, поэтому не стоит тратить деньги если не владете английским в совершенстве. Поставлю палец вниз (на рейтинг он никак не влияет), чтобы вы случайно не купили игру, которой не сможете насладиться. Я не сомниваюсь игры хорошие и может когда игре будет 40 лет или 50 лет кто-то и переведет их, но сейчас насладиться не получится. К сожалению...

sadly this is utterly unplayable on windows 10

Tex Murphy《神探墨菲》系列第二部作品 30年前的点击解谜游戏，相当有年代感 你可以在游戏里直接操控主角移动，进行交互 不过游戏的操作还是比较复杂的，所有道具、地点需要选择对应的操作方式才能激活，比如get一个道具，open某个箱子，goto某个地点 另外游戏的一大特点就是融合了非常多的真人影像 大概3个小时的游戏时长，以当时的审美来看游戏质量还是挺不错的

Game soft locks! Do not recommend. The sequel "Martian Memorandum (1991)" is a huge improvement but still a very weak game. Just proves how objectively horrible the first game was. Tex Murphy games will only get good in the next game. The conditioned retro community is engrossed with these early Tex Murphy games, but from what I saw it is miles behind point & click games like "Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)". I can see how they wanted to make an interactive movie, the technology of that time was the issue, and I applaud this little 10 floppy disks game for trying but sadly this stone age retro game is hardly playable. Eye-shattering pixel hunting as well as horrible dialogue tree conversations. The conversations become frustrating trial and error as they are not obvious and have only one correct solution. So you have to replay the unstoppable little cut-scenes over and over. If you are missing an object you don't even know you need, you are literally hitting your head against the wall in vain. THE WORST OFFENDER are the dialogue trees that end up in failure and SOFT LOCK the damn game! The poster girl of this entire game, Rhonda the shmexy secretary, if you fail her conversation you miss out on critically crucial information and can't progress further. The dialogues for some reason do not repeat with her, so you are stuck! If you forgot to make a Save before talking to her, then START the whole game over sucker! It is clear the developer hates its gamers and does not respect them enough to MAKE A FIX AFTER even after 34 years!!! SKIP the first two games and jump into the humorous "Under a Killing Moon" and "The Pandora Directive" instead! You won't miss out on the story: Tex Murphy is a completely different goofy character, the world is finally fleshed out and takes a proper shape. - (thank god I only played it for 1h while the other playtime comes from sleeping. Haven't reached Rhonda's scene but thanks to Space Quest Historian for the warning in his video!) - Any game that soft locks and mistreats your time like that is absolutely not worth it!

Thoroughly enjoyed, had skipped this title in my childhood - When you die it sends you straight back to the first scene of the game. Get used to seeing that apartment. Also its quite odd not being able to look at your items once you've picked them up. By the end of the game you have an inventory full of items of long forgotten origin.

Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum（火星备忘录）在Tex Murphy第一部后面的的故事情节继续展开，遗憾的是并不像一代那样，却变得没有那么的开创了…… 游戏回归到了传统的点击冒险游戏，解谜与对话分支并存，难度有所降低，相应的，我个人觉得有些乏味。 本作的突破是采用电脑制作的人物动画和对话视频，还为随后的游戏作品树立了FMV的游戏形式（全动态影像）。

Loveable nostalgic experience! Game runs on DOSBOX and is like 27MB in size. Classic point-and-click adventure set in a dystopian post-WW3 era. You play as Tex Murphy, private detective. It absolutely feels like a [b]mixture between Blade Runner and Total Recall[/b] and I love it! It borrowed heavily from these two movies but offers enough unique content to stand on it's own. Martian Memorandum features a very simple interface with big buttons on the bottom of the screen. Just click on either "LOOK", "OPEN", "USE" etc. and then on the object to interact. Unique for it's time is the usage of some FMV sequences starring real actors. Dialogue sequences play a big role in this game. Chosing the wrong dialogue option leads to uncooperative behaviour. There are also a few "action sequences" like using a hoverboard to pass through a security area with pressure plates and lasers or traversing a ventilation shaft in full 3D! What I didn't like: - most of the music tracks don't fit the atmosphere at all and are somewhat upbeat. Some tracks feature some smooth synthesizers though and give off a nice cyberpunk feeling. But, like I said, most tracks don't fit. The very basic SoundBlaster 16 emulation in DOSBOX doesn't help either. - the mouse controls are somewhat clunky. I very much enjoyed this game and recommend it to anyone who is fond of adventure and / or retro-games.