Tex Murphy Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect

[Jools]

I am really intrigued by this game, but it seems to be getting "mixed" reaction. Is it really that easy -and- short? How long, roughly, would it take to complete it?

 

[taxalot]

I have completed it last week.

I really do not know what to think. It felt great and terrible at the same time. So I guess I'll just do what terrible games journalist do :

WHAT I LIKED
-Very good story
-Interesting characters
-Very solid presentation for such a low budget game
-It's so fucking great to have Tex back. So. Fucking. Great.
-Decent length for an indie game
-The game play at its core is a no-concession-made Tex Murphy. FMVs, exploration, puzzles. It's all there.
-It's fucking great to have Tex Back.
-Might pave the way for more games.


HOWEVER
- Classical "point & click mode" puzzle design is bad. It is either ridiculously easy, or stupid. Several instances in the game, the game will ask you to find a number of items hidden in some huge place just for the sake of it. It is quite reminiscent of playing a hidden object game in 3D.
-Some of it doesn't make sense either and sends you back to the worse ideas of adventure games. For example, the game asks you to find another hammer right after you already used one (which conveniently disappeared of your inventory after being used).
-The game has three lengthy sequences where you are alone in some place with nothing to do but fix puzzles. This is reminiscent of 7th Guest and Myst. It happened in the old Tex Murphy games but this time it seemed to be the focus of it all. Those are not my favorite sequences.
-It has a terrible sliding painting puzzle with an even more terrible justification for it.
-It's a much much smaller scale game than the old Texs. Few areas. Few items to use.
-You can tell they rushed the last parts of the game.

In the balance, it feels pretty negative. But it is impossible to play this game without a bias. All in all, I thought this was the worse Tex Murphy game, and a mediocre adventure game. BUT, it IS a Tex Murphy game and one made on a small budget, it is also a miracle that this game exists at all. So somehow, despite all of its flaws, I absolutely loved and it was a pleasure doing two playthroughs. But my love for it will not make me not see its huge apparent flaws.

 

[Wizfall]

It's not a hard game and of respectable length for an adventure game (i don't feel it was short).
It's a Tex Murphy game and i liked it a lot (it's a true sequel).
The characters and general atmosphere are so good IMO it make the game a blast despite quite poor puzzles.

I discovered the Tex Murphy series quite recently because i never liked FMV games but Under a Killing Moon changed my mind.
So i strongly suggest you to play under a Killing Moon first (or to watch a video walkthrough), Tex Murphy games have something special but you have to see it by yourself (if you like the humor/style).

 

[cvv]

stuff

I hear you. But I don't agree with most of your objections.

The thing is, this game is supposed to be a credible TM succesor for nostalgiafag TM fans. That was the KS pitch and that's what people contributed their moneyz for. It was not built to revive the adventure genre with a new vision.

Yes not all puzzles are brilliant and the game can be annoying with the pixel hunt. But TM games are supposed to be stuffed with puzzles and classical adventure games in general are supposed to be about looking for objects, among other things. It's sort of strange people are complaining about those two elements now. It's like buying a Civilization game and then complaining there's diplomacy - yes, the diplomacy part is not perfect but its problem is not the fact it's there.

I don't know, maybe it's true after all that the classical adventure gameplay is outdated and obsolete. That would be a fair discussion. But I don't think it's fair to rebuke the Tesla Effect for sticking to all the old adventurish Tex Murphy guns. It has its genuine problems but the puzzles and object hunt are not among them as far as I'm concerned.

 

[taxalot]

I might be wrong, but I don't remember the old tex games requiring me to find 9 baseball cards in a huge house, 5 planks in a small garden, etc. There was some bad pixel hunt in them, granted, but this is orchestrated, pointless and made on purpose pixel hunt. I remember Pandora Directive, UAKM, and even Overseer to have much much better puzzle design.

 

[Metro]

There was some REALLY bad pixel hunting in Mean Streets.

 

[Sceptic]

I remember UAKM to have much much better puzzle design.

You remember poorly.

I mean I agree with some of your criticism, especially with respect to hidden object hunting, but UKM's puzzles were even worse than TE's. And since UKM did everything else worse I find it very unfair to claim that TE is the worst Tex game.

 

[ghostdog]

Indeed, the temple in the end of Pandora was pretty brutal. Navigate the fucking maze to find all the scattered objects in order to solve 3-4 rather hard puzzles. I really had to brace myself when I replayed it to get a different ending and I knew the puzzle solutions by then. And yeah, don't get me started on the goddamned fireballs.

The puzzle with the diagram from travel destinations was the worst offender though, it was pure madness.

All and all though PD had good puzzle design imo. A lot of different stuff to do, good pace between exploration, dialog and puzzles and most of them logical. They just needed to make a review and scrap/edit some of them, but since they offer a casual mod they probably made some of them brutal on purpose.

 

[Sceptic]

It has its genuine problems but the puzzles and object hunt are not among them as far as I'm concerned.

Actually I do think they are, but not in the same way taxalot and others do. The hidden object hunt is a valid criticism IMO - it's definitely worse in TE than in any of the other games, including UKM where it was pretty bad. The puzzles themselves I thought were a problem at first because they were WAY too easy, but I changed my mind as I kept playing. Yes the first ones are pathetic, but by the time you get to Sesen they get a little more interesting, and some of the ones at the Tesla Society are genuinely challenging and well done. The painting is perhaps the only puzzle I genuinely wished wasn't there, but harping on it is a bad case of Old Man Murray syndrome, where you fixate on a single puzzle, which happens to be the weakest in the entire quite long and content-packed game, and extrapolate in order to pretend that the entire game is like this. It's not. I said it earlier, I think puzzles are not as solid as TPD (which DID have the best ones in the series - I don't know why the Temple is viewed so negatively, and besides that wasn't the game's highlight, Day 7 was) but they're solid enough, somewhere on par with Overseer's, and most definitely better than UKM's, which were either pure mind-numbing trial-and-error or blatantly obvious inventory manipulation where the only difficulty was finding that one object hidden (Sounds familiar?) on the botom side of a table in an office cubicle. But in any case none of this matters because we did pay to another Tex Murphy FMV game, not for a reinvention of the wheel. And quite honestly, considering how some other Kickstarters have tried to reinvent their "old school point and click adventure" (*cough*) I'm glad Tesla Effect stuck to the series' traditional design, even if this involves recycling some flaws too.

On a completely unrelated topic - has there been any news lately about the boxed copies? mindx2 commie

 

[mindx2]

On a completely unrelated topic - has there been any news lately about the boxed copies? mindx2 commie

I was always more of a LucasArts fan so I'm a little embarrassed to say I didn't Kickstart this one... . So no boxed copy of this one for me

 

[commie]

On a completely unrelated topic - has there been any news lately about the boxed copies? mindx2 commie

Not that I know....I know they were finalising about a month ago, and knowing they are a small team and across the ocean I gave them some leeway. I sent them an email yesterday for clarification.

 

[Sceptic]

Not that I know....I know they were finalising about a month ago, and knowing they are a small team and across the ocean I gave them some leeway.

Yeah I can wait. I was only wondering because the delivery address changed around the time they sent the update saying they were finalising it, so I wanted to make sure everyone else hadn't received theirs while mine shipped to the wrong address :p

 

[Sceptic]

Not that I know....I know they were finalising about a month ago, and knowing they are a small team and across the ocean I gave them some leeway. I sent them an email yesterday for clarification.

I just got another KS update from them.

We are still in the midst of gathering all the Kickstarter incentives. Once all the Kickstarter incentives have arrived at BFG, we will send out an email notification to update your shipping address one final time! This should be sometime in the fall, so keep checking emails from Big Finish Games.

 

[Boleskine]

Fuck me, I still haven't played Tesla Effect. I hope I have enough time to finally get around to it during August.

 

[taxalot]

Area 51 would have been perfect without that stupid monster forcing you to exit every few seconds... This was clearly awful.

 

[trustno1code]

I'm hoping it did well too, because I don't want this to be the last Tex Murphy game ;_;

From that last update:

Be sure to visit www.aaronconners.net for updates on two future novels. The first, to be released later this year, will pick up from the end of The Pandora Directive and relate Tex’s exciting adventures leading up to Tesla Effect. This story may only be available as a novel (it can’t be an FMV game, not without a time machine for the actors), but it just might end up being adapted into a unique interactive experience (stay tuned for details!). The second novel will be Tex Murphy’s grand finale and, hopefully, the basis for the final and greatest Tex Murphy game of all!

Whatever a "unique interactive experience" is (maybe some sort of text adventure / CYOA thing?), smells like another Tex Kickstarter somewhere down the line. Hopefully it also means Tesla has been selling well enough at least for them to stay in the game.

 

[Jaesun]

If they do another Kickstarter count me in.

 

[trustno1code]

OMG FMV GOTY

 

[taxalot]

I hate to think the next Tex game is going to be the last according to that update.

 

[belated]

-60% on GOG today
http://af.gog.com/news/gem_promo_tesla_effect_a_tex_murphy_adventure?as=1649904300

 

[Sceptic]

First GOG, now Steam. 50% off Tesla Effect on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/261510/

 

[Astral Rag]

Just discovered a graphic enhancement mod for Tesla Effect:

http://www.bigfinishgames.com/mod-tesla-effect-0



Will try it out later.

 

[Sceptic]

Clearly all Tesla Effect needed to become a modern adventure game was bloom, and this mod delivers.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Oh lulz it only runs on Nvidia cards. Let me guess, the "mod" just fiddles around with Nvidia control panel settings and forces them on.

Ninja: hah, and I thought I was joking. It's actually just Nvidia Inspector pre-configured.

 

[Jaesun]

I don't have a Nvidia card! FUCK YOU! I am VERY Butthurt!

 

[Sceptic]

OMG FMV GOTY [/MEDIA]

Oh god the random blurbs I thought they couldn't get any funnier after the Bechdel test one.... and then I got the Metacritic

".... yes it's a game"

to whoever did this and managed to sound as annoying as that &^&#^$%# annoying Smart Alex in the game itself.