![]() That’s when your subject becomes willing to talk about the important stuff, namely your actual list of clues. They’ll always forget about it when you try again, meaning you’ll eventually find the right path down the conversation tree. One choice can lead to a new set of options, and so on until you either succeed or offend them enough to make them clam up. I don’t mean a standard three choices that show up for everyone each character has their own options, depending on the circumstance. ![]() In these sections, you choose from three vague “attitudes” for Tex to adopt. All of this gives you more information to populate your “ask about” list a set directory of topics you can inquire about when talking to characters.īut before you can run down your list, most folks want to do a little small talk. More than once, you’ll find a torn up note or memo that you can manipulate with the mouse to reconstruct the message. Objects in your inventory can be used in the world, combined with each other, and examined sometimes leading to further clues and puzzles. In the exploration phase, you’ll sniff around different locations, picking up anything that isn’t nailed down. The game bounces between first person exploration in 3D rooms and video conversations with a large cast of characters. How do I ask where he got that great suit? The previous Tex games are certainly fun, but I doubt the series would have gained a real following without this entry’s interesting blend of 2D sprites, 3D environments, and clips of real actors on bluescreens. It grandly describes how they “threw away all previous conceptions of an interactive movie” and chose to deliver you 2.3 gigs of entertainment, rather than making cuts to fit on fewer discs. The producers were duly proud of this fact, as evidenced by the manual. Under a Killing Moon follows Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum, but it’s the first in the franchise to explode across your screen in glorious full motion video. Still, both are fun, and at worst you’re getting two adventures for the price of one. The pawnshop case doesn’t have much to do with the bigger missing statue case that most of the game revolves around, leaving your first caper feeling more like an extended tutorial than part of the narrative. My only gripe with the story is that it takes a long time to get going. A handful of characters from the past games make appearances, which is fun if you recognize them, but you won’t miss much if you gave those early outings a pass. I wouldn’t say that plot takes a backseat to the jokes and banter, but it’s definitely riding shotgun, and that works just fine. The answers to those questions are satisfying, but the journey’s more important than the destination. The story is a respectable Raymond Chandler style detective tale, with enough big questions to keep you involved in the mystery. Plenty of gorgeous dames (well, budget FMV gorgeous dames), nasty crooks, and horribly disfigured mutant informants pop up along the way as you unravel the conspiracy and, predictably, attempt to save the entire world from destruction. A visit from your old mentor is followed by a string of pawn shop robberies, which eventually ties you up in a plot involving a stolen statue. ![]() Like the previous games, the setting is a future (post-nuclear) San Francisco, but the tone is firmly rooted in 1940s noir. You play as Tex Murphy, a perpetually down on his luck P.I. So, it’s a good thing that Under a Killing Moon does just that. Even if you started with a decent crime plot, you’d have to layer in a healthy amount of solid humor, self-deprecation, and dopey enthusiasm to really make a thing like that work. After all, a non-actor playing the hero in a story he made up could easily be a four-disc exercise in self-indulgence. I found that super endearing, but it didn’t send me running to the series any faster. ![]() At some point, I also learned that creator Chris Jones plays Tex in the games’ signature FMV sequences. I was a kid who loved adventure games and detective stories, yet I don’t remember even being aware of the series until I was older. I don’t know how, but I missed the Tex Murphy games completely. ![]()
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