It's 2014 and there's a new Tex Murphy game.
This is the thought that continued to tumble through my brain while playing Tesla Effect.
A new Tex Murphy game. In 2014. If you're a fan of the series, that's about all you need to know and by now you've probably already played it, for everyone else keep reading. There's a barrel of monkeys in it for you.
One might have thought Big Finish Games would reinvent Tex somehow; make changes to the Tex formula that was last seen in the late 1990's when adventure games were going dormant. But it's all here. It's as if there was no gap between Overseer -- released in 1998! -- and Tesla Effect. Players navigate the game world in a 3D space and interact with characters via ambiguous dialogue choices and then lists of topics. Puzzles are everywhere and even the most straightforward progress is often blocked by some seemingly inconsequential or tacked-on brain teaser. Tex's observations and one-liners descriptions about objects in the environment are groan worthy and occasionally hilarious.
This adherence to the conventions and timeline of Tex Murphy adventures is echoed in the set-up for the game. The last thing Tex remembers being shot at the end of Overseer along with his would-be girlfriend Chelsea. Like the player, Tex has no recollection of the intervening years, seven years he spent as a bad-ass private investigator who would do anything for a dollar and as the story moves forward bits and pieces are rolled out about what happened during that missing time; who Tex was and more about the secret/missing/maybe non-existent Tesla cache.
Tesla in this case is Nikola Tesla, famed inventor, visionary, and eventual penniless recluse. There are nuggets of "truth" about the Tesla cache -- some think that the trove of Tesla papers were scooped by the US government upon Tesla's death -- but some is completely fabricated. The mystique surrounding Tesla is a ripe peach to plunder for story creation because the man himself was so shrouded in mystery and half-truth. The fact Tesla Effect is woven with Tesla lore means there's no predicting where the story will go.
That's the best part of Tesla Effect: there's little hope of knowing what's coming. Some of the story delivery feels a little stilted because there are a few times when Tex narrates what's happening and why he's suddenly exploring a new area as he tries to reclaim seven years of his memories. The use of Chapters offsets some of this. It's as if turning the page can put Tex somewhere else with one or two sentences. Deep in an Amazonian jungle exploring a hive of giant bees and using a mech to blast a door open? Yeah, maybe that does happen.
Full-motion video definitely fell out of favour in the late '90s but it wouldn't have if it looked this good. While the environments feel somewhat flat and lifeless -- cardboard cut-outs is an apt description and yet another holdover from other Tex games -- the quality of the video is some of the best ever seen in a game. Familiar faces pop-up and the acting conveys this weird sense of fun, like the actors enjoy inhabiting these characters, especially Chris Jones.
Jones embodies Tex to the point where if I saw him on the street, it'd be like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when Moriarty escaped the holodeck. (Kind of the same feeling I had when Sam Lake, a.k.a. Max Payne, made an appearance at a press conference.) And really, I like to imagine that Chris Jones does go around dressed as Tex just to see what'll happen. Or may it's really Tex that's acting like Chris Jones in real life?
But back to my point, the style and characters ping nostalgia at every turn for fans of the series, which is pinged all the more with items strewn along Chandler Avenue that offer flashbacks to previous games.
I fully admit that this nostalgia weighed heavily on my enjoyment of the game. Without a connection to Tex and the previous games, I think my patience with some of the extended puzzle sequences would have snapped. And some of those sequences are lengthy. Admittedly, I was playing on "Gamer Mode" where access to hints is disabled so I spent a lot of time backtracking and wondering, "Okay, now what?" so your own experience may be different.
If a review comes down to whether or not I'd recommend a game to a friend, and that's you, dear reader, then Tesla Effect is a game I'd tell you to play. $20 on Steam is a steal.
- Aaron Simmer
The Good:.
- Finally some answers for a cliffhanger 16 years ago!
- Awesome full-motion video
- Such a welcome blast from the past
- $20 on Steam
The Bad:
- Some areas drag with extended puzzle sequences and some of the most mundane tasks turn into extended pixel hunts
