Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum

Sound: 5
Graphics: 4
Story: 7
Gameplay: 4
Commands: 5
Fun: 5
Time to load / lag: 9
Bugs / Problems: 9
Final (my score, my rules - these is not math, punk) - 5

2039 -- San Francisco, California

You're Tex Murphy, soft-boiled gumshoe & former celebrity -- and now you've gone point-and-click.
Six years on from making your name uncovering the doomsday 'Overlord' initiative, things are back to business as usual.
You're hired by the world's richest man to find his kidnapped daughter & stolen property -- and that's where things get interesting -- from the mean streets, through Mayan ruins, and onward to Mars.

A more traditional adventure game that its predecessor, this Access Software title never quite achieves the greatness of it's contemporaries from 1992, like some similar Sierra games.
It's still mostly about getting the right keywords from an ever-wackier cast of interviewees -- but now you choose your options from a list.
Point and click your way through canned responses & the occasional cutscene or minigame. Gone is your flying car & navigating a map -- but now you get a lot of digitized voice acting, and a lot more neo-noir/sci-fi atmosphere.

There's more mystery to uncover, more to do, and more to love in this sequel.
It's ultimately a mixed bag.

This is one of those reviews where if steam had a mixed review option, I would choose that. The story is actually really cool, feels like a mix between a noir hard-boiled detective story, with a grand adventure, and it kinda works in its tongue-in-cheek humor. The puzzles though are very hit or miss, some are actually intuitive, especially in the first half, but then when you see that some puzzles are reliant on specific things being uncovered first, and some can even get you stuck in the game, it dampens the experience a bit. The most annoying ones are two puzzles late in the game, one I had to open a 5 walkthroughs just to find out how to SKIP that part because I could never solve it. So why am I still giving it a recommended? Because I still had fun playing it, even though it was mostly annoying. There was still a charm to the design, and the story and characters really still had some things going for it.

TLDR; only play this game if you wanna see this awesome story while trudging along puzzles that did not age well.

Great classic point and click

I absolutely love the Tex Murphy adventures. I've played through them many times. I'm horrified that they cancelled "The Poison Pawn."

This game is just absolutely not fun to play. And this is coming from someone who actually enjoyed "Mean Streets", despite some of that game's flaws.... like having to fly all over the place. I wrote down every clue. That was fun for me. This game is not. Whether it's having to save/load over and over while crossing quick sand, or hoverboarding around lasers, this game is just incredibly tedious to play. I can't imagine there was a developer that really thought people would enjoy some of the grind of this game. The story was excellent, but I highly recommend watching a youtube video and then moving on to "Under a Killing Moon."

Good game and I do recommend for the adventure 's fans. Beware of possible Unwinnable situations. Save often.

I didn't find this one as fun as Mean Streets. While some of the semi-annoying things were removed from this one, but I found myself missing them maybe because they added to the experience. This one has a couple technical problems though. You aren't told how to quit the game (ctrl+q), sounds pop, and the cursor is a bit wonky, but that pretty much it.

Loveable nostalgic experience! Game runs on DOSBOX and is like 27MB in size. Classic point-and-click adventure set in a dystopian post-WW3 era. You play as Tex Murphy, private detective. It absolutely feels like a mixture between Blade Runner and Total Recall and I love it! It borrowed heavily from these two movies but offers enough unique content to stand on it's own.

Martian Memorandum features a very simple interface with big buttons on the bottom of the screen. Just click on either "LOOK", "OPEN", "USE" etc. and then on the object to interact. Unique for it's time is the usage of some FMV sequences starring real actors. Dialogue sequences play a big role in this game. Chosing the wrong dialogue option leads to uncooperative behaviour. There are also a few "action sequences" like using a hoverboard to pass through a security area with pressure plates and lasers or traversing a ventilation shaft in full 3D!

What I didn't like:
- most of the music tracks don't fit the atmosphere at all and are somewhat upbeat. Some tracks feature some smooth synthesizers though and give off a nice cyberpunk feeling. But, like I said, most tracks don't fit. The very basic SoundBlaster 16 emulation in DOSBOX doesn't help either.
- the mouse controls are somewhat clunky.

I very much enjoyed this game and recommend it to anyone who is fond of adventure and / or retro-games.

CrazyPyro's review sums it up well. Good for nostalgia. Much more playable than Mean Streets. Even works on Linux (even without Proton), which is nice. Not up to modern gaming and cultural standards in many ways, if that's what you're looking for...but if you're here, chances are that's not what you're looking for.

Not as good a story as Mean Streets, but still very well written. There is no flight sim, which gives it a positive, but the real-world pen-and-paper clue collecting of the first game has been replaced by conversation topics unlocking in menus as you discover them, which gives it a negative. So it comes out even for me and I'd say this game is exactly on par with Mean Streets. If old, slow games aren't your thing, but you want to check out Tex Murphy, jump ahead to any of the later titles, but if you're interested in what are solid detective games with glaring flaws, the first two Tex's are still pretty remarkable.

BottomLine @ the top: This game has aged better than Mean Streets but was still a pain to play. Recommended only to P&C historians and people who want to see the progression of the Tex Murphy series.


Pros
---------------------------------------
-The main pro of this game is its nostalgia factor. I myself did not play this nor any of the other Tex Murphy games in the 90's. However the style of the gameplay and its various 90's in jokes and takes on the future (things like an aerobics studio on Mars, a novelty wave machine in the background of an apartment, an IBM PC as a workstation, and referring to an under construction skyscraper as "The New Sears Tower”, and your car being a flying Dodge Daytona) are enjoyable for me.
-This game is from an era where video games were nowhere near the major industry they are today. It gives it a kind of anything goes feeling. You can tell the developers had fun with things like character designs and how the overall story lacks a serious tone.
-This game came out 2 years after Mean Streets and it is a marked improvement across the board in terms of interface, graphics, music/sounds, and animations. This game has much more of a "point and click feel" to it than did Mean Streets.
-Unlike Mean Streets save slots can be given typed in descriptions instead of just "GAME001, GAME002, etc.".
-Also, lots of save slots. There are P&C games today that still don't get this right.
-Early use of an item location/info "help" button
-Updated the "futuristic" in car fax machine to a "more futuristic" wrist mounted fax ;).
-No stupid arcade style car flying like Mean Streets
-No stupid arcade style action sequences like Mean Streets


Meh.
---------------------------------------
-The voice recordings and short video animations were probably very impressive back when the game came out. Today however they are very low quality. They also only play for some dialogue and characters.
-Dialogue tree choices are frustrating but are more interactive than Mean Streets was.
-Writing isn't amazing.


Cons
---------------------------------------
-Setup was a pain to get this game to work right. Mouse control is glitchy and not smooth at all. If you're a DOSBox expert it might be fixable, but I just decided to deal with it.
-Extreme pixel hunting and backtracking.
-The "goto" command is clunky and utilized inconsistently. Sometimes you can just walk to a new screen/room. Other times you must use the "goto" command.
-Same inconsistency when interacting with objects. Sometimes you must be right next to an object to pick it up, other times it could be on the other side of the screen and you can pick it up without having to be next to it.
-Unforgiving game. Easy to forget an item or screw up a dialogue tree.
-Puzzles like the quicksand, laser maze, and ductwork maze were most likely very frustrating back in the day. They still are.
-Restarts to the beginning of the game upon death instead of offering up a reload game screen.
-Text is hard to read when written on the background instead of a solid color text window.
-Very anti-climactic ending.


Overall, I struggled to finish this one. I just wanted it to be over so I could move on to the next Tex Murphy game which is apparently more in line with the overall FMV style of subsequent titles. I stuck to the walkthrough and hammered it out, not wanting to deal with the pixel hunting, backtracking, and multiple dialogue tree dead ends. This game should only be picked up on sale and played by p&c aficionados who appreciate the history of P&C games who don't mind dealing with the same frustrations gamers in the 90's did. Even though this was a slough to get through, I am still looking forward to finally playing Under a Killing Moon!

[hr][/hr]

For more point & click goodness, check out our P&C fan Steam group, The Coalition of Point & Clickers!:

• Coalition of Point & Clickers Main Page
• Coalition of Point & Clickers Curator

• Follow Main group
[*] Follow Second group

Tags: Adventure - P&C - Point&Click
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Mouse cursor constantly gets stuck. Does not use a standard classic p&c interface. Could not find my inventory. Use of FMV making for better portraits does not really qualify as a worthy tradeoff for the shortcomings.

I would say that this is way too clunky to bother with. Even Sierra games with their moon logic and their death traps had a reactive engine in which you could readily explore. I constantly was being returned generic message boxes for incorrection action/hotspot interaction. The audio was better than most tex murphy games as well, with a proper retro sounding track but it did not have that trademark soundblaster type quality to it that I am used to and am fond of.

Altogether there might be a niche of nostalgia gamers or people who want to study this for its historical value, but as an entertainment product for a new audience I can confidently say that it is not worth fishing for walkthroughs for, or troubleshooting issues with the dosbox emulation for. Removing permanently for declutter.

Martian Memorandum deviates from the formula established in Mean Streets by playing more like a traditional point and click, MM has more that it's fair share of puzzels and unfair deaths so be sure to save ofter. There's even a game breaking "bug" where you can screw yourself if you don't get certain details on a certain power plant while still on earth.

How many years ago it was that my father got a pagage of demonstration material from random companies? I can't remember. But it opened the door to this game and a few VHS cassetes. Both opened doors to gaming and anime. At the time I didn't care. I played this game until disk 3 had an error that broke the game. Gads... what? 24 years later... I'm past disk 3. And into anime. Who knew? Oh, and that anime was a demo VHS of Macross II.

While not to the quality you may expect... this game was meant to run on an 800x600 setting. Something today's gamers may not like. But back then... Awesome graphics. In DOS. Audio still pops, but then, it did too. Quite playable some 20 or so years later. A pont and click adventure game like back in the good old days of DOS.

I would recommend this to just about everone who is curious to what we old timers played in the past. Before Windows 95. Back to when creating boot disks with a 5.25" floppy diskette was a work of art and know how. Memmaker.exe, remeber that one? Autoexec.bat and config.sys? Mmm... precious memories.

And this one. Tex Murphy Martian Memorandum. Good times.

Better than Mean Streets.
Better story and characters and puzzles. However, I HATE THE VENTILATION SHAFT.
better look up the strategy guide online to help you get through it.
Ok, the graphics are out dated but it is still pretty fun.

In my view, this game is barely playable due to the outdated graphics. It doesnt look too bad in the screenshots, but the reality is much more pixelated.

What a great adventure game! Funny writing and the FMV actors aren't half bad. Fun fact, Mac Malden is Chris Jone's(Tex Murphy) brother IRL. The difficulty isn't crazy unlike alot of adventure games of the era(thank you help feature). Pure point and click goodness. You don't need to play the previous Tex Murph game.
Some words of advice though SAVE OFTEN and don't overwrite. Don't be worried about making a new save everytime you save. I had 30+. If you don't talk to someone or miss something before going to mars you could be stuck and if you don't have a good save to go back to you may have to restart the game!

The second in the Tex Murphy games, Martian Memorandum sees you once again as PI Tex Murphy, down on your luck despite your success with your previous case, Mean Streets. You need a job, and you need it soon. Lo and behold, Marshall Alexander, CEO of the TerraForm Corporation, hires you to find his daughter, who was abducted -- and something "else" . . .

Gone is the dialogue puzzle of the previous game, which disappointed me a bit. There are times when you need to do more than just talk to people in these screens, such as give them items in order to move the story along, and I didn't realize this until I read a guide. Granted, it's entirely possible that such was clearly mentioned in the manual that would have come with this game if you bought it hard-copy (in 1991).

Also removed from this game is the driving mechanic from Mean Streets, which was difficult at best and caused you to miss out on a lot of the previous game's flavor. Another mechanic taken out is the side-scrolling shooting gallery. I am pleased that neither of these mechanics made it into Martian Memorandum. That said, the game then becomes rather linear, but it's still a pretty neat story even today.

(NOTE: There's a portion of the game that you can actually skip because it was so mind-bendingly difficult. Google 'Tex Murphy Martian Memorandum Guide' and any guide worth its salt will explain further)

People who are genuinely interested in seeing what constituted gaming in the early dawn of the industry should have this in their library. That's the only reason I do. I grew up in the 90s, and there's nothing wrong with taking a trip down Memory Lane.

I got this game at a huge discount from its usual price, so it hardly cost me anything at all. But the time I spent playing it - 7 hours - is time I wish I could get back now.

To call the game mediocre is being generous. Thinking back on my standards around the time this game came out, I would have found it lackluster and tedious even back then. The dialogues are a meandering choose-your-own-adventure that sometimes matter and sometimes don't, and sometimes are dead-ends unless you interrupt with an inventory item. This wouldn't be too bad, were it not for the extremely low-fi voices. I give it points for being one of the first "talkie" games, but those points are taken away for the dialogue being very grating. There is also a lot of reading, which I am fine with in games, but the font style, size, and color used made it difficult to read, whether in a window or full-screen.

The graphics were a weird hybrid of detailed and abstract, so while you'd sometimes have a grainy photo of a real-life object, other times there would be two beige pixels nestle unobtrusively in a scene, that you were supposed to realize were important and click on (because it was a piece of paper or something.) And since this is before the days of highlighting, there was never an indication of what was and wasn't an important pixel, so you could click all over an object and get a generic response, not knowing that the slightly lighter pixels were the ones that would give you the clue you actually needed. This wasn't a problem unique to this game, but it was rampant within it.

And of course there were the psychic puzzles where the only way you knew what to do was die and time travel. (See if that supports your weight. It didn't? You're dead? Well, good thing you can relive that moment.) Again, this wasn't the only game to do things like this (Sierra was notorious for it), but when the rest of the game is lackluster, things like this just add to the aggravation.

After finishing the game and seeing the arguably anticlimactic ending, I was amazed that this went on to have a half dozen more sequels. (Though I've started into the next installment, and it's light-years ahead of this one in every way and will probably get a thumbs up from me.) My advice is to skip this one and go to the next in the series.

I couldnt put my fedora on so im a shitty detective
11/10