Tex Murphy: Mean Streets

[b]TLDR[/b] A noir detective adventure with amusing camp and varied ideas, undermined by frustrating action mechanics and clunky controls that didn’t age well. [8/20⭐, 11h🏅, 2/5💡] [b]Context[/b] Mean Streets is a 1989 post-apocalyptic neo-noir game where you play as a private investigator looking into a series of suspicious scientist deaths. Although fundamentally a graphic adventure, it mixes in several action-oriented mechanics which, while ambitious for the time, are so poorly executed that they turn the game into a frustrating experience (not the only [url=https://steamcommunity.com/id/macwh/recommended/32310/]offender[/url] from that year). [b]Writing[/b] You are hired by the daughter of a scientist presumed to have committed suicide. As you begin following leads, you discover that other scientists connected to the same project have suffered similarly suspicious fates, eventually uncovering a larger conspiracy. Most interactions take place through interrogations with NPCs, and the dialogue is written in an exaggerated, almost campy manner. Whether this is an intentional parody of B-movies or simply an unintentional product of the era, I genuinely couldn’t tell, but I found the over-the-top writing entertaining enough. [b]Aesthetics[/b] The graphics are very much what you would expect from a 1989 game, although I did enjoy the digitised NPC sprites and animations. The soundtrack is reduced but fits the noir atmosphere well, and the limited voice acting is decent for the period. [b]Gameplay[/b] The gameplay mixes a number of ideas. At its core, you travel between locations to gather clues and items that unlock progress elsewhere. Moving between places requires piloting a vehicle, which is honestly an awful experience (thankfully there is an autopilot option, although even that is slow enough to become frustrating). Once at a location, you may interrogate NPCs through a text parser (probably the most interesting part, although interactions are mostly reduced to asking about names); survive gunfights (awful); or explore environments through a verb-based interface (almost unbearable due to the rudimentary controls). On top of that, you also need to manage money — used for bribes and informants — and ammunition. In theory, this sounds like a rich and varied set of mechanics. In practice, most of them are clunky and have aged particularly badly. The game is not especially difficult, but even basic actions like moving between locations or exploration sequences feel like chores. There is an option to make gunfights easier, but that does little to make them any more enjoyable. You can die in several ways — gunfights, environmental hazards, or threatening the wrong NPC — and must reload a previous save. I did not encounter dead ends, though I suspect poor resource management could potentially create them. You can save while in your vehicle, and there is no auto-save. [b]Value[/b] It took me about 11 hours to finish the game, though I have to admit a significant portion of that was spent letting the vehicle run on autopilot while I did something else. The progression is fairly non-linear, since there are multiple ways to discover locations and hints. There are no achievements; this is the original 1989 version running on Boxer. [quote][i]For more puzzle-game reviews and curated lists check out the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43326007-The-Clueless-Adventurer-Puzzle-Trove/]Puzzle Trove[/url].[/i][/quote]

Pra quem curte ou sente nostalgia pela era dos jogos de DOS é um jogaço. Me lembra muito o da Carmen Sandiego, com algumas coisas a mais.

Old School search and click. Interesting story. Puzzles are good. they get better for each game in the series

Old but gold! Has aged really well for the most part and is a lot of fun. Good atmospheres and lots of ideas for its day.

Holy hell this game sucks

Yes.

I'd honestly recommend to just skip this one and play the sequels, 75% of this game is just flying slowly from one place to another with no payoff and barely anything to be called a story.

Got around to streaming and playing this and I wasn't entirely certain what to expect with this game, but I'll try my best to be fair both considering the time it was made, but also by certain modern standards where applicable and fair. Tex Murphy: Mean Streets is the first of the Tex Murphy series. The latest, being a kickstarted project named "Tesla Effect" that I know little about as I try to enter all these games without prior knowledge. That said, much of the prologue is contained in the instructions due to limitations at the time. Like any mystery, this starts with a death, a PI and a young woman begging you to listen to her. The young woman's father was a scientist named Carl Linsky and he was found dead in the river after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. The police and Tex initially think suicide, however, she begs him that it can't be the case since Carl nearly drowned in that river and was terrified of going anywhere near it so him committing suicide there was extremely unusual. Armed with this knowledge, you get taken down a rabbit-hole of science experiments, a political party and a suspiciously high number of scientists committing suicide. I'll keep the rest a secret, but beyond the mystery of Carl Linsky's death, there's a lot of dark humour in this noir-style Sci-fi detective game and for a deeper look, here's my first part of the game: https://youtu.be/OuVKPzfsio0 Continuing on however, I do have a few issues, but also some praises. Now the "FMV" factor of this game is pretty light as it's about as much motion as the infamous "Plumbers don't wear ties", but where that game failed to do anything competently, this game excelled in many of those areas. The mystery has you hooked, your contacts are semi-animated on your video phone and you have a large variety of things to talk to people about that the instruction booklet even recommends to you. Beyond that, the mystery unfolds organically and for entertainment value when investigating you have the typical options for a early point-and-click game "look, move, take, use, on/off" but you have "taste" as an option too, leaving to some hilarious dialog which either makes Tex seem crazy or the computer just starts calling you a stupid. You also get some other fun bits of dialog like when tasting a painting Tex says "Art is a matter of taste, right?" and many other similar bad jokes. You can also get electrocuted from licking light switches which I do not recommend anyone do. I was surprised that there are a number of shooting segments in this game. 3rd-person 2D side-scrolling shooting which was quite fun, but kind of annoying as it seemed there was a never-ending supply of enemies in every location and they were all the same with the same weapons, but you had cover and they never fire down to moving through gunfire is actually fairly easy and fun. To cover the negative, the issues I have are the usual ones seen in many point-and-click games where at times it isn't too obvious where you need to go or what clue you may not have picked up on, but that's a minor thing. The other though, which is pretty big, is the flying. Now I am sooooo damn glad that they have it where you have a autopilot to take you to a destination, however, it isn't perfect and every location you have to fly to in real time which really drags the game down and meant I had to cut off large segments of my stream because of how all you're seeing is that you pass vague shapes. You also have the sound of the engine (which you can disable) but there isn't much else and extra long trips, especially when you aren't certain where to go, can be draining, but that's about it for negativity imo. This is a world where apparently nuclear war happened, mutants and heavily armed fascists are on the streets and most surprising yet! Michael J. Fox is president! 9/10 I licked a light switch and it's taste was shocking.