Mean Streets

Many people don't know this, but this is actually the first episode of the Tex Murphy series (contrary to the common belief that it is Under a Killing Moon). No movies, no digitized speech and the whole game is just 2 MBs instead of 5 CDs, but this is one of the best adventure games you'll ever see.

Story

The year is 2033. We play a young P.I. called Tex Murphy. We've just been hired by a beautiful young woman (Sylvia Linsky) to investigate her father's death. Carl Linsky was a professor at the University of San Fransisco and had been working on a secret project. A few days after his work was completed he mysteriously jumped off the Golden Gate bridge. An eye witness saw him jump, so the Police are convinced that it was a simple suicide. As to why Sylvia is so sure that her father has been murdered (other than the one million dollars the insurance company won't pay her because of the suicide) we've no clue. But does it really matter, when the client pays 10000$ in cash and up front? I don't think so. Naturally Murphy takes the case.

Opinion

I have to admit, it takes a while to get used to this game. The first surprise was that we start the game in Murphy's speeder which in this game we have to FLY. This is a very basic flight simulator, but it's pretty unusual in an adventure game. Luckily, there's an auto pilot so all we have to know are the navigation codes to the places we want to get to and the auto pilot takes care of the rest. You can see how the whole thing looks on Pic #6.

The second surprise was that there are action sequences in the game. They're not too hard and there aren't a lot of them, but I don't usually expect a shoot'em up between two scenes in an adventure.

But the biggest surprise was that even after the first two surprises I really loved the game. You can fly around and talk to people, find out where other people live and then talk to them, or just search their apartments, etc. Just like a real investigation. It's absolutely great. As you can see the graphics aren't the best you'll ever find (and I tried to get the best pictures I saw), but the strange thing is, that it didn't bother me at all. Somehow, this game just doesn't need better graphics. The music is okay, but you can only listen to it on the PC speaker (although it was interesting to hear digitized (!) music on the speaker through Access's patent-pending RealSound system). The game uses a type-in interpreter, so every interaction is done via the keyboard. The parser only understands the full name of the people involved in the story so be sure to check your spelling. The best feature of Mean Streets is definitely its story, but I don't want to say any more about that than I already did. You have to find out for yourselves.

One of the best (murder) mysteries you'll ever see. Don't miss it!