Review of Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive by Doom
Great and epic, but a remake wouldn't hurt at all
Access are among the most dedicated adventure developers, I always knew that. Even when adventures started turning into a niche genre, the team continued writing complex stories, creating fully interactive worlds and designing puzzles that made your hair turn gray. You can tell how much fun Chris Jones had creating those Tex Murphy “interactive movies” by just, well, watching him acting as Tex. In Pandora he proved to be not just a campy amateur, but a good enough drama actor, and Adrian Carr - a great director. In fact acting in general significantly improved since the last time, making it one of the most rewarding FMV experiences up to date.
While the game still follows B-movie tropes, with jokes and gags scattered around, it is more story-heavy and serious in tone than the previous installments. The non-linearity and multiple paths add new layers to a cliched sci-fi conspiracy plot, and writing really shines during dialogues and Tex’s narration. He has something funny to say about every tiny object on the screen - and there are tons of 3D locations in this game. Imagine how much work went into making.
It took me not just over 20 hours, but over 20 years to finish! And while I love long, complex adventures, this way wasn’t paved with flowers, oh no. Last time I played it, I was about half through the game when I got hopelessly stuck on a long and confusing timed sequence and finally quit in frustration. This time around I fought through this part, but soon got stuck in a maze with a not very fun twist, then - on an infamously overcomplicated logic puzzle, and then there was another maze with a midsection that inevitably led you to breaking your keyboard into pieces because of the navigational problems.
And I haven’t even mentioned numerous sliding and jigsaw puzzles. Yes, I know, it’s a good oldschool frustration that used to mark true adventure spirit since the beginning of our times, but was it really necessary to fill the game of this length and scope with such unfriendly and cliched game stoppers? Of course, there’s always an easier difficulty level which makes it less frustrating, but I couldn’t bring myself to try it. As Monkey Island taught me, I want it all, all the puzzles, all the work! So let me just praise Pandora while expressing hope that it will become an even better adventure with the upcoming remaster.
Read the review »
Time Played: Over 20 hours
Difficulty: Very Hard
