In this, the third Tex Murphy game, Tex makes the daring move to 3D! With all the advantages and disadvantages that comes with it.
Story
Tex Murphy: PI and part-time dance instructor. He’s at least a half-boiled detective and knows how to handle himself. Yeah, he’s saved the world a couple of times but that doesn’t pay the bills for too long. Being married and then divorced since the previous game (Martian Memorandum) doesn’t help either.
We catch up with Murphy on a dreary night in his office. His old mentor has visited to tell him to keep his nose clean. Tex can take care of himself obviously, but he’s more interested in getting some work and paying for food. Or a beer.
Luckily, Tex knows how to snoop for work. Unluckily, the best paying cases are always the most dangerous.
Characters
Tex feels like he’s mellowed a bit since the previous games. He’s dealt with a lot as a PI in radiation-filled, future San Francisco but he can still crack a joke (though sometimes at the wrong time). It’s a crazy world and Tex is the best man to live in it.
In short, Tex is a likable everyman. Good guy.
The rest of the cast is as colorful as some of them are lumpy. A spot of nuclear war will do that to a society, I suppose. The game is filled with old faces, new faces, good guys, bad guys, and mutants of various persuasions. There’s also a few beautiful women that Tex can (try to) woo.
Gameplay
Under a Killing Moon does a great job of feeling like an investigation. The game is broken up into days with specific objectives but the player can investigate at their own pace in almost whatever order they choose. It’s all about finding the right clues to progress.
To find said clues, the game has two modes: Interactive Mode and Movement Mode.
Interactive Mode is where all the look, use, and talk actions happen; and functions like you would see in other point-and-click adventure games. I was initially thrown off by how much space the menus occupy but it is actually really nice. Everything you need is right where you need it so you’ll never get lost.
The only oddity is a dedicated button for watching the intro movie. I’m not entirely sure why that’s there.
To find new stuff to interact with, you need to move around. That’s where Movement Mode (toggled with spacebar) comes in. Full 3D environments require full 3D movement.
Movement is controlled with… the mouse. Walking Forward and Backward is up and down on the mouse while turning is left and right. You can strafe by holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse left or right. Clicking the right mouse button stops all movement.
To further accommodate the third dimension; Under a Killing Moon uses the up/down arrow keys to look up/down and the shift/ctrl keys to stand higher or lower respectively. Very important for inspecting the various rubbish bins and high shelves.
The whole system is a little weird but it works once you get used to it. Note that modern players will probably want to set mouse sensitivity to low or risk zooming off in random directions at the slightest nudge.
Graphics
Released in ’93-94, Under a Killing Moon improves pretty much everything over its predecessor, Martian Memorandum. The game is now 3D! And you can move (if sometimes awkwardly) in 3D around the environments! Wowsers.
And as far as early game 3D goes, it looks good! I’m particularly impressed with the texture resolution. I actually wish I could view the game at 1080p, instead of the max 640×480. If it wasn’t for the fmv resolution, this game would scale up nicely.
The digital sound and FMVs have also received a noticeable uptick from the previous game. The series has reached the point where you could play without subtitles and not miss anything. Makes for pleasant experience.
DPD and Annoyances.
The worst parts of the game have to be what I call the ‘dialog mazes’. This is where you have to ‘navigate’ a conversation with multiple choice answers. It’s nice that a lot of conversations allow for flavor choices for Tex (usually in the vein of “nice guy”, PI, sleaze) but there are a few bottleneck conversations that don’t really have any contextual clues on what to say. This forces the player to potentially retry the conversation until they get it right and the character spills the beans. This annoyance is compounded in a couple conversations where failing means Tex gets killed and then lectured by special guest star James Earl Jones.
The only other annoyance is just standard fare for adventure games: searching for items. But now in 3D! It’s mostly the small, important items that are problematic: keys, minidisks, and such. Stuff you would find pretty easily in real life but the small resolution and strange position makes it tricky. And just one item requires standing on tiptoes to see properly.
The great hint system of the previous game has been updated to help with this somewhat. You can spend gameplay points (thus lowering your final score) to find out which item is in which room but not where. All it says is “Find and Get the Key.”
Conclusion
Darn good! Even with the awkward movement controls and a couple minor annoyances; I would recommend Under a Killing Moon to anyone interested.
What I played: Roughly 5-6 hours to finish the story on the first playthrough.
Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon is available digitally on the Humble Store, green man gaming, GOG, or straight through Steam.