Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon

This is showing its age, but that's a good thing here, it's worth adjusting to it for this one. James Earl Jones is in this, so you know it's good.

Даже у плохих FMV-квестов есть неуловимый шарм, который не отпускает и спустя десятилетия, пускай и ценой кровоточащих от ужасно сжатого видео глаз. А Under a killing Moon квест вообще-то хороший, хотя, как говорил Чапаев, есть нюанс. От этого нюанса очень сильно пригорает, называется он: дебильное управление перемещением. 1994 год, уже были Wolfenstein 3D и DOOM, можно же повесить передвижение по трехмерному миру от первого лица хотя бы на стрелочки, да? Нет. Катай мышь туда-сюда. Такая подстава отлично передает особенности неуклюжего детектива-неудачника Мерфи, который иной раз не вписывается в поворот и влетает лицом в стену. Однако шутки заканчиваются в 4 игровой день, когда с этим убогим управлением нужно шнырять по офисам, периодически прячась от патрульного бота, который тебя ваншотит. Еще тут ваншотят "неправильные" двери, но перед ними хотя бы можно сохраниться. С ботом - если не уверен в своих навыках перемещения в пространстве - легче по нажатию кнопки Travel просто свалить в другую локацию, сохраниться, а потом продолжить эти издевательские мытарства. Все, больше претензий по квестовой части нет. Конечно, некоторые моменты кажутся притянутыми за уши (могли бы спросить кого-нибудь где вешают датчики дыма. Спойлер: не на стене), но в целом игра толковая, герои интересные, актеры стараются в меру своих скромных возможностей. Но это управление и этот бот... я их просто ненавижу.

Very good. At first I wanted to put it down due to controls, but decided to give it a chance. After 1 hour I was hooked, so much good humour, great acting, clever one liners, mood, music, plot. Everything top notch. It was my first Tex game ever, and now I know I need to play all of them.

Real talk, there's only two reasons to recommend this game: you played it back in the '90s, or you want to see what the dawn of 3D was gaming was like. Nightdive has done an excellent job making the original game run on modern machines but have otherwise stayed out of its way. You'll get to experience the bizarre design choices of one of the actual first games played in 3D. The controls are a farce. WASD movement? Mouse look? Nah, son, that technology wasn't developed for years after Tex Murphy strode off the space station. Some highlights include: * Tank control movement done solely with the mouse. Moving the mouse forward or backwards doesn't move you, it sets your acceleration in that direction. Be prepared to crash into the far wall a lot. * Numpad 1 and 7 control brightness. The other numpad keys are not used. * Shift and CTRL to have Tex crouch and stand up, respectively. This is a gradient, not a binary, meaning you'll need to hold each down for a second or two to fully extend in either direction and there's nothing stopping you from walking half-crouched. * Right click to immediately stop moving. * CTRL+F11 and CTRL+F12 to slow down and speed up DOSbox's virtual CPU, making the game run slower/faster so you're not constantly crashing into the far wall. The content is as mid-'90s as a montage of Todd MacFarlane covers set to a soundtrack of Nine Inch Nails and the Smashing Pumpkins. Some of the humor holds up well, some of it is funny because it's so square it's bent back around on itself and become absurd. FMV is absolutely everywhere, as this game once shipped in an oversized jewel case with 4 glorious CD-ROMs just to hold it all, and is exactly as corny and clumsily green-screened as you would expect. One mid-'90s trend that Under a Killing Moon bucks, to its credit, is that a lot of the puzzles actually make a fair bit of sense. You may struggle with a leap of logic or two, but Tex's goal in a given situation can usually be deduced by the narrative--such as rigging a prop of a dangerous criminal's dead partner to scare him off. The game is blessedly light on Sierra's signature moon logic puzzles (like King's Quest expecting you guess that the gnome's name isn't "Rumpelstiltskin," spell backwards, but "Ifnkovhgroghprm," i.e. "Rumpelstiltskin," by counting each letter's position from A and instead counting that many letters backwards from Z). This game is charming as a nostalgia piece and also for showing just how far video games have come in 31 years.

I was [b]3 years old[/b] when this game came out! LOL I was looking around for detective games recommendation after spending some time with L.A Noire, and this game was mentioned a lot, so I decided to give it a try. It's a great FMV/point and click game, and it's cheesy lol But I am going to be completely honest, the control sucks so bad! I think devs back then still trying to figure out how to move in a 3D environment.

I played this game when it first came out in '94. Loved it then, love it now. It's dated now, but look passed it. If you like detective games/movies, you'll probably like this one.

Ultimate 90s campiness and goofiness. I loved this game, took my time with it and beat it today. I felt pretty sad when the credits rolled around. It has all that 90s jank you expect from a prototypical 3D adventure action game—the movement is strange, at least in this port you need to use the mouse to move around, so moving the mouse forward goes forward, but the way you turn your mouse also turns your character, but then you use arrow keys to look up and down. There is a bit of visual stutter that can happen, the game also sometimes will randomly crash, or at least dosbox does. Could be a freak event or something to do with the CPU cycles, not entirely sure. Sometimes theres a bit of those pixel hunting headaches or confusing game logic that doesn't follow, like the solutions to puzzles seem really abstract or random or you have that reaction of, 'well how was I meant to see that?' or 'how was I supposed to know that?'. As much ♥♥♥♥ as I'm talking here, the game is amazing. For anyone who loves those classic aggressively retro wannabe modern games, those mid 90s FMV games that feel more like an interactive film than a video game of its own merit, this is a quintessential example. The characters are loveable and fun and quirky, theres lots of pop culture references that went way over my head as I was born in 2006 (this game was more designed for my father's generation than mine!). Tex himself is a cynical, wacky, nonchalant and wannabe macho man, your classic laid back suave cool detective or James Bond type of character. The acting isn't amazing in terms of realism all the time, but it has so much passion and love baked into it, it just makes you smile. The graphics are really stunning for the time; if I recall, this game was developed across 1993, published 1994. Yet, we have functioning 3d landscapes with quite a lot of detail (I don't know if this steam version provided higher resolution textures, but some of the textures and scenes look stunning for the day, just look at the Day 6 Arboretum, or the Knickerbocker, or the Bastion of Sanctity, even just Chandler Avenue itself). I could go on for a while about this game, but I didn't expect it to pull me in so much. The story wraps up in a kind of cliche way, turns out we gotta sort out some religious cult that's created some ultra futuristic space station place called the Moon Child and they're taking all the genetically pure (probably some metaphor for white supremacy or Christians vs Islam, something like that) and they're gunna wash away all the unpure and come back to Earth 40 years later, like Noah's ark. This humble P.I. has to stop them! Anyways, enough yapping. If you like cheesy 90s interactive FMV movie games with those 2.5D graphics (3d rendered landscapes but sprites for most objects and characters), and like to solve puzzles (bear with the 90s jank and game logic, most of it's not too hard and I could solve it on my own), then this game is for you!

Hilarious and a great mystery. ---{ Gameplay }--- Peak X Great Good Meh Watch water come a to boil instead Makes your body convulse ---{ Graphics }--- This is reality Beautiful X Good Mid Bad MS-DOS Eyes Bleed ---{ Audio }--- Transcendent Great X Good Mid Bad I am now deaf ---{ Computer Specs }--- X Check if you can run Paint Potato Decent Fast Rich boi Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- Just press 'W' Easy X Normal Significant Effort Sifu NES Hard ---{ Story }--- No Story Bad Average Good X Great It'll change your life ---{ Game Time }--- Long enough for a cup of coffee Short X Average Long To infinity and beyond ---{ Bang For Your Buck }--- It's free! X Worth more than the price Worth the price Not quite worth the money Asking double or more what it's worth If you are The Joker and ran out of lighter fluid ---{ Bugs }--- Never seen any X Minor bugs Can get annoying Rather Glitchy This game is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ 9 / 10 }---

the note in the countess's mansion will never mark as completed but it's okay so don't drive yourself crazy trying to get it right, the other notes need to be assembled precisely though look up Unofficial movement patch in the discussions to make the game use WASD for navigation one of my favourite adventure games :)

I like this.