Well, I finished it... and loved it! All the Tex Murphy charm is there.
Quite a big exploration area with many thing to do, including mini puzzles. Some of them were tricky but none was impossible, I didn't use the hints.
I have just 2 GB of RAM and the first video was far from fluent, but the rest played with no problem. The quality of the the FMV is Stunning. I had to put the lowest quality to have a smooth movement; the locations are good, a little step forward from what we already know.
It has all the classic Tex Murphy elemments, but it is just too short, more like a demo. I want the whole game! There are a few laughs in the dumb UaKM humour that I loved.
It is only available in English and run in Windows. The specifications given are quite high, they may loose some players.
Now I plan to play it againg soon, writing anything that can be improved and also using different options in the dialogue.
It's too soon, but it may become the greatest Tex Murphy game ever (and that of course means being the best game)
Quite a big exploration area with many thing to do, including mini puzzles. Some of them were tricky but none was impossible, I didn't use the hints.
I have just 2 GB of RAM and the first video was far from fluent, but the rest played with no problem. The quality of the the FMV is Stunning. I had to put the lowest quality to have a smooth movement; the locations are good, a little step forward from what we already know.
It has all the classic Tex Murphy elemments, but it is just too short, more like a demo. I want the whole game! There are a few laughs in the dumb UaKM humour that I loved.
It is only available in English and run in Windows. The specifications given are quite high, they may loose some players.
Now I plan to play it againg soon, writing anything that can be improved and also using different options in the dialogue.
It's too soon, but it may become the greatest Tex Murphy game ever (and that of course means being the best game)
Finished it just now.. played everything on high on a fairly old laptop (4years) worked fine. no gliching or lag. Loved how the game played, "shooter" feal to it.. however there were somthing wrong with it.. like things were to close, knida got some eyestrain watching it. other then that, the onley think that enoyed me was the noise from that wall gismo. Overall a really good Demo.. as said earlyer its not a proper beta but rather an old school demo .
.Probably an FOV problem. Often this sort of thing is adjustable by poking around in the game's configuration files.dread wrote:Finished it just now.. played everything on high on a fairly old laptop (4years) worked fine. no gliching or lag. Loved how the game played, "shooter" feal to it.. however there were somthing wrong with it.. like things were to close, knida got some eyestrain watching it. other then that, the onley think that enoyed me was the noise from that wall gismo. Overall a really good Demo.. as said earlyer its not a proper beta but rather an old school demo
Jen was having a green screen problem and it had to do with the on board video interfering with the main video card. She solved it here: http://www.bigfinishgames.com/beta-disc ... o-spoilersJoel wrote:I'm not getting any visuals in the cinema tics, only sound and a green screen. Is this intentional for now to keep the download small?
Managed to report about 8 bugs in total.
2 Art related issues.
3 Subtitle issues not matching their associated dialogue
1 Feature Request (FOV Slider because the 50-60 FOV is unacceptable frankly- its fine on a console but not on a PC)
2 Programming bugs, 1 of them being a major crash, somewhat related to the Green Screen Issue but I think more severe.
I let a LOT of minor nit picky issues slide, such as the flashlight clipping everything, I assume the devs well and truly know about that issue.
Overall impressions:
What I liked:
+ Fantastically Acted, really happy with actor choice.
+ Good use of puzzles, every one of them superbly designed, I didn't skip any of them, they were great fun
+ Story seems very well written
+ Really liked the humor
+ The City Scenes look amazing
What I didn't like:
- The "Narrator" can be really annoying at times when you're really struggling to figure something out
- Some of the minor props and environment pieces are sub-par, (the logs on the bridge are an eyesore). Some really poor use of Textures. Which is really odd because the rest of the game looks really good high quality textures ect.
- The UI could've been designed better. I didn't like that you can't just drag and drop items onto each other to combine them like in Overseer. It feels really clunky. Hell I reckon you could replace the entire inventory system with a hotbar- it really doesn't need to be a separate UI. (didn't report this because bit too late in development to address this).
- The varying quality in some of the FMVs, half of them are really amazing HD quality, others are well below 720p and have a lot of artifacting, its mainly the scenes which are taken entirely from Unity.
- No gamma controls.. I didn't report this but the game is really really dark, meaning playing during the day is not really an option due to glare. I couldn't see any of the objects on the ground half the time.
My biggest concern right now, is that really the Beta should've been more of the game. This game still needs a LOT of work and a lot of QA.
My overall impressions though were actually pretty positive overall.. but because of the No-Spoiler tag I can't mention them. I mainly want to dish out what I felt were major concerns with this project as this is a beta and we're supposed to be testing it to its extreme.
I'd urge people during their test sweeps to try and rub up against everything they possibly can because I noticed the collision detection is extremely wonky. All it takes is for them to not put any detection on 1 mesh and you'll fall through the game environment. So be mindful that there could be an issue out there. I didn't manage to find one.. but I think I came close at one point.
So yeah that was 1 sweep so far. I might give it another go when I'm not swamped with work lol. Really enjoyed myself. Hopefully the final release goes a lot less buggy though, I just hope they give us more to work with, because this isn't supposed to be a demo, there are some serious issues with this game and we need to bite them in the butt now before its too late.
2 Art related issues.
3 Subtitle issues not matching their associated dialogue
1 Feature Request (FOV Slider because the 50-60 FOV is unacceptable frankly- its fine on a console but not on a PC)
2 Programming bugs, 1 of them being a major crash, somewhat related to the Green Screen Issue but I think more severe.
I let a LOT of minor nit picky issues slide, such as the flashlight clipping everything, I assume the devs well and truly know about that issue.
Overall impressions:
What I liked:
+ Fantastically Acted, really happy with actor choice.
+ Good use of puzzles, every one of them superbly designed, I didn't skip any of them, they were great fun
+ Story seems very well written
+ Really liked the humor
+ The City Scenes look amazing
What I didn't like:
- The "Narrator" can be really annoying at times when you're really struggling to figure something out
- Some of the minor props and environment pieces are sub-par, (the logs on the bridge are an eyesore). Some really poor use of Textures. Which is really odd because the rest of the game looks really good high quality textures ect.
- The UI could've been designed better. I didn't like that you can't just drag and drop items onto each other to combine them like in Overseer. It feels really clunky. Hell I reckon you could replace the entire inventory system with a hotbar- it really doesn't need to be a separate UI. (didn't report this because bit too late in development to address this).
- The varying quality in some of the FMVs, half of them are really amazing HD quality, others are well below 720p and have a lot of artifacting, its mainly the scenes which are taken entirely from Unity.
- No gamma controls.. I didn't report this but the game is really really dark, meaning playing during the day is not really an option due to glare. I couldn't see any of the objects on the ground half the time.
My biggest concern right now, is that really the Beta should've been more of the game. This game still needs a LOT of work and a lot of QA.
My overall impressions though were actually pretty positive overall.. but because of the No-Spoiler tag I can't mention them. I mainly want to dish out what I felt were major concerns with this project as this is a beta and we're supposed to be testing it to its extreme.
I'd urge people during their test sweeps to try and rub up against everything they possibly can because I noticed the collision detection is extremely wonky. All it takes is for them to not put any detection on 1 mesh and you'll fall through the game environment. So be mindful that there could be an issue out there. I didn't manage to find one.. but I think I came close at one point.
So yeah that was 1 sweep so far. I might give it another go when I'm not swamped with work lol. Really enjoyed myself. Hopefully the final release goes a lot less buggy though, I just hope they give us more to work with, because this isn't supposed to be a demo, there are some serious issues with this game and we need to bite them in the butt now before its too late.
Thanks for thatMatthew Buckstein wrote:Jen was having a green screen problem and it had to do with the on board video interfering with the main video card. She solved it here: http://www.bigfinishgames.com/beta-disc ... o-spoilersJoel wrote:I'm not getting any visuals in the cinema tics, only sound and a green screen. Is this intentional for now to keep the download small?
I'll check it out.
I agree that Smart Alex was not my cup of tea.Jen wrote:I'm glad I'm not the only one with issues of the "narrator". Honestly I didn't care for Smart Alex. He's a PDA/smartphone, not a sentient sidekick. Besides it's always been just me and Tex. This buttinski is unwelcome IMHO.
No disrespect to Kevin Murphy of course. He's a super cool guy!
However, I think the video in the cut scenes looked amazing. Overall, I was very impressed.
Yes probably is, that should be adjustable in the setting, since having the same FOV on PC that you have on console gives a lot of people nausea.Frogacuda wrote:Probably an FOV problem. Often this sort of thing is adjustable by poking around in the game's configuration files.dread wrote:Finished it just now.. played everything on high on a fairly old laptop (4years) worked fine. no gliching or lag. Loved how the game played, "shooter" feal to it.. however there were somthing wrong with it.. like things were to close, knida got some eyestrain watching it. other then that, the onley think that enoyed me was the noise from that wall gismo. Overall a really good Demo.. as said earlyer its not a proper beta but rather an old school demo
I agree 100%. I feel like I'm being insulted and berated. I know Tex is bumbling, but I don't need a third party telling me I'm an idiot. (Mind you, I love Kevin Murphy; I just think his delivery makes him sound like a real dick.) I am hoping it will be an option I can turn off or limit, and I can just read it. I'm on this adventure with TEX and as TEX. Therefore, his voice is the only one I want to hear in my head.mr_cyberpunk wrote:yeah I should add I'm a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. But even then, please stop riffing on everything I do. Its making me really miss James Earl Jones.
The textures could definitely be better. I think I was giving too much leeway on that issue since they are much better than the previous games, but I agree that they are not up to current standards. I doubt there is time to remedy that, but I do like how the locations in general look thus far.
On the plus side, you really do feel like this is a "Tex Murphy" game. It has the same detective feel, sound, and ambiance. I thought the difficulty was good if not a little too easy, but I play in casual mode. Also, I'm very glad to have the puzzle skip option. However, I will at least try them all once. And I'm biased on this particular topic... but the video looks amazing! The resolution is crisp and clear, and it's seamlessly integrated with the game environments. Which helps to not only to richly illustrate the story, but it makes you feel like you are a part of the story.
Cathy
