Here is number 3 - massively long. Very detailed (German thoroughness 
)
Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure
*This game is 90s: a trashy trench coat wearer chases his memories – and takes us with him into the B-movie adventure game era*
(….there is a long intro that actually has not much to do with Tex or Tesla Effect, I left that out as this review is really long anyway)
The Tex Murphy franchise also uses FMV and from 1994 with a freely explorable 3D environment – we don’t therefore just click our way from screen to screen, but walk around streets and in buildings and are able to look around.
Tesla Effect also uses this technique: like in a combat game, we use WASD to walk around and “target” interesting points with our mouse, which can be anything from a hotel door to a sofa cushion. But any combat game would be ashamed if it looked anything like the Tesla Effect environment, as it is pretty ugly.
Of course, 52 years ago WWIII happened and in New San Francisco it isn’t nearly as colourful as with Guybrush in the Carribean. But a little bit of a more modern 3D effect would have been nice.
However, luckily we are not playing the new Tex Murphy adventure for the its 3D capabilities, but of course for the trashy cult video dialogues with mutants, holograms, crazy types, neighbours, hotel owners, hot dames and downtrodden cops. Immediately we forget the clumsily pixelated street scene, because the actors give their all. The “overacting” by which I mean the exaggerated mimicry and gestures are typical of the past – and are experienced even better in HD, because we don’t see rolling eyes and gaping mouths not just 3 to 10 pixels wide – we see it like it is a movie. And those who know the old Tex Murphy games, gets the casting cherry on the top: the original developer Chris Jones again plays the down on his luck, loveable and now 16 years older private eye. And everywhere he meets old acquaintaces: Louie, the man with the proper mutant looks, still works in the diner on the corner, we meet the grumpy pawnshop owner Rook Garner, our good friend Archie Ellis and more people – but we don’t want to give too much away. Those names don’t mean anything to you (any more)? Then Tesla Effect will lose some of it’s “reunion” charm for you. But you aren’t left completely in the dark, as the game is full of flashbacks: for example, Tex discoveres a crowbar or a black book, which makes him remember getting beaten up or a femme fatale and promptly we see a video sequence from the appropriate previous game. These numerous flashbacks do demonstrate how far video quality has come on in the past few years.
These memories are not just nice gimmicks, but fit nicely into the story: because Tex wakes up with a sore head in his office, suffering from large memory problems. He does know that there was a shootout the night before – but not what he got up to for the past 7 years. And as he goes about talking to neighbours, his landlord and other friends, three things become clear.
First: Tex behaviour seems to have changed considerably during the past few years. Second: His beloved Chelsee was killed in a speeder accident. Third: His last case before the blackout somehow had to do with, yes you guessed it, Nikola Tesla. But how can it be, more than 100 years after his death?
And so we march through good old Chandler Avenue, we visit hotels, restaurants. Most of the buildings are still closed when the game first starts, they open as we progress through the game and solve puzzles. An example from the early stages (we don’t want to give too much away): Tex thinks that the shooters were watching him from the building next door. In order to get in to that building he needs a ladder. He finds out where he can find one in his conversations with Louie, but not how he can get the swipe card for entry into the building. This is typical of the game: Dialogue, find a key, open the door to find an item that will give you the solution to the next step. We find notes with more or less tricky codes, PIN numbers, passwords. Especially at the beginning there are some old and more boring stock puzzles but they are fun and get better as the game progresses.
Less fun are the sections where we have to collect x number of pieces to make a whole, for example we have to find 9 baseball cards in a house and in order to find them all, we have to open loads of cupboard doors and drawers. We found 8 of them very quickly, but the 9th droves us crazy. Three thorough walks through all six rooms to finally find the thing in a “blank” underneath a “blank”. But we do get compensated with a nice puzzle to use the cards in. But it is also easy to overlook an item in Chandler Avenue. If this kind of thing drives you nuts, then you should not play in “gamer” mode, which means that the items you seek have sparkles dancing around them when you point your torch at them. It isn’t great though that you have to make that choice at the beginning of the game and can’t change it later on. You would have to start over, which seems unnecessary.
Another minus is that Tesla Effect is not dubbed and has no text in German – there are subtitles but they are very shabbily translated. For example a hot nurses outfit so becomes a nuns habit and as someone points a gun at Tex’ head, he shouts: “don’t point that thing up here!” which is translated as “don’t point this out, that case here!” It may be involuntarily funny but if you rely on those translations you won’t understand a lot. In fact it the whole thing is very cryptic, including the multiple choices given.
However, it is in any case important to have knowledge of American culture and language. You could probably manage to play right through without problems but you would lose a lot of fun with the wordplay. “Dial M for Moron” would make no sense unless you know that the English speaking version is called “Dial M for Murder”, which of course is not the case in the German version. Other things do work without such knowledge.
Especially the enthusiasm of the lead actor leads to us having fun too.
Score given is 73/100.
)Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure
*This game is 90s: a trashy trench coat wearer chases his memories – and takes us with him into the B-movie adventure game era*
(….there is a long intro that actually has not much to do with Tex or Tesla Effect, I left that out as this review is really long anyway)
The Tex Murphy franchise also uses FMV and from 1994 with a freely explorable 3D environment – we don’t therefore just click our way from screen to screen, but walk around streets and in buildings and are able to look around.
Tesla Effect also uses this technique: like in a combat game, we use WASD to walk around and “target” interesting points with our mouse, which can be anything from a hotel door to a sofa cushion. But any combat game would be ashamed if it looked anything like the Tesla Effect environment, as it is pretty ugly.
Of course, 52 years ago WWIII happened and in New San Francisco it isn’t nearly as colourful as with Guybrush in the Carribean. But a little bit of a more modern 3D effect would have been nice.
However, luckily we are not playing the new Tex Murphy adventure for the its 3D capabilities, but of course for the trashy cult video dialogues with mutants, holograms, crazy types, neighbours, hotel owners, hot dames and downtrodden cops. Immediately we forget the clumsily pixelated street scene, because the actors give their all. The “overacting” by which I mean the exaggerated mimicry and gestures are typical of the past – and are experienced even better in HD, because we don’t see rolling eyes and gaping mouths not just 3 to 10 pixels wide – we see it like it is a movie. And those who know the old Tex Murphy games, gets the casting cherry on the top: the original developer Chris Jones again plays the down on his luck, loveable and now 16 years older private eye. And everywhere he meets old acquaintaces: Louie, the man with the proper mutant looks, still works in the diner on the corner, we meet the grumpy pawnshop owner Rook Garner, our good friend Archie Ellis and more people – but we don’t want to give too much away. Those names don’t mean anything to you (any more)? Then Tesla Effect will lose some of it’s “reunion” charm for you. But you aren’t left completely in the dark, as the game is full of flashbacks: for example, Tex discoveres a crowbar or a black book, which makes him remember getting beaten up or a femme fatale and promptly we see a video sequence from the appropriate previous game. These numerous flashbacks do demonstrate how far video quality has come on in the past few years.
These memories are not just nice gimmicks, but fit nicely into the story: because Tex wakes up with a sore head in his office, suffering from large memory problems. He does know that there was a shootout the night before – but not what he got up to for the past 7 years. And as he goes about talking to neighbours, his landlord and other friends, three things become clear.
First: Tex behaviour seems to have changed considerably during the past few years. Second: His beloved Chelsee was killed in a speeder accident. Third: His last case before the blackout somehow had to do with, yes you guessed it, Nikola Tesla. But how can it be, more than 100 years after his death?
And so we march through good old Chandler Avenue, we visit hotels, restaurants. Most of the buildings are still closed when the game first starts, they open as we progress through the game and solve puzzles. An example from the early stages (we don’t want to give too much away): Tex thinks that the shooters were watching him from the building next door. In order to get in to that building he needs a ladder. He finds out where he can find one in his conversations with Louie, but not how he can get the swipe card for entry into the building. This is typical of the game: Dialogue, find a key, open the door to find an item that will give you the solution to the next step. We find notes with more or less tricky codes, PIN numbers, passwords. Especially at the beginning there are some old and more boring stock puzzles but they are fun and get better as the game progresses.
Less fun are the sections where we have to collect x number of pieces to make a whole, for example we have to find 9 baseball cards in a house and in order to find them all, we have to open loads of cupboard doors and drawers. We found 8 of them very quickly, but the 9th droves us crazy. Three thorough walks through all six rooms to finally find the thing in a “blank” underneath a “blank”. But we do get compensated with a nice puzzle to use the cards in. But it is also easy to overlook an item in Chandler Avenue. If this kind of thing drives you nuts, then you should not play in “gamer” mode, which means that the items you seek have sparkles dancing around them when you point your torch at them. It isn’t great though that you have to make that choice at the beginning of the game and can’t change it later on. You would have to start over, which seems unnecessary.
Another minus is that Tesla Effect is not dubbed and has no text in German – there are subtitles but they are very shabbily translated. For example a hot nurses outfit so becomes a nuns habit and as someone points a gun at Tex’ head, he shouts: “don’t point that thing up here!” which is translated as “don’t point this out, that case here!” It may be involuntarily funny but if you rely on those translations you won’t understand a lot. In fact it the whole thing is very cryptic, including the multiple choices given.
However, it is in any case important to have knowledge of American culture and language. You could probably manage to play right through without problems but you would lose a lot of fun with the wordplay. “Dial M for Moron” would make no sense unless you know that the English speaking version is called “Dial M for Murder”, which of course is not the case in the German version. Other things do work without such knowledge.
Especially the enthusiasm of the lead actor leads to us having fun too.
Score given is 73/100.
"When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas." Jean Harlow