Review of Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon by Lucien21

Tex is a down on his luck PI in the Raymond Chandler mold, dressed in an overcoat and fedora clad, his love of the ladies and drinking is only matched by his goofiness and ineptitude.

Somehow he always solves the case though.

In a post nuclear war San Francisco, Tex can be found in Chandler street. A mutant friendly neighbourhood filled with interesting characters, from the beautiful Chelsee to the old grumpy Pawnshop owner Rook.

You start the game broke and looking for work, an old friend posps by for a friendly warning and the local pawnshop is robbed. So what starts as a simple break in spirals out into multiple locations and a world threatening plot.

The game is presented in two main style with all the conversation and cut scenes etc filmed in Full motion video while all of the movement and locations are in 3D. This allows you to move the mouse around in movement mode and search the 3D locations for clues and interact with object. Once you hit the space bar to enter interaction mode you can look, pick up or generally fiddle with the environment. (I think at one point I may have been labled as a freak who likes to take down pictures from the walls). In this mode you can also examine and combine inventory items to solve the various devious puzzles that are thrown your way.

Clues etc can be found to interrogate the characters who inhabit the world so each new clue means going around them and watching the cut scenes as you ask them the new tidbit of information to gleam more clues to get you to new locations with more puzzles etc etc. All this until you finally reach the endgame and save the world.

The acting for the most part is hammy and overblown, but Chris Jones breaths so much wit and charm in the main character that the acting and humour all make perfect sense while you are playing it. Watch as Murphy stumbles into situations, prat falls and walks into pillars. It’s hilarious stuff.

Although the game is pretty straightforward there are a couple of issues with the puzzles. There are a couple of times where walking through the wrong door is instant death so save the game often. The movement can be a bit floaty and difficult to manouver in a hurry so avoiding the droid guard in GRS is annoying as hell and finally it is perfectly possible to make it to the end of the game and miss one or more vital inventory item which makes it impossible to finish the game without reloading an earlier save and then sitting through the whole shell game sequence again.

Tex Murphy is a delight to watch and a lot of fun to play.