Tex Murphy: Overseer
First thing first: You need the K-Lite codec and FFDSHOW to be able to play this without issues. That being said, Tex Murphy: Overseer is the 5th Tex Murphy game and probably one of the best FMV games ever released, featuring actual gameplay with lots and lots of dialogues.
Overseer is basically a remake of Mean Streets without the ridiculous flight simulator and it ends with a cliffhanger which was resolved 15 years later with Tesla Effect.
A sci-fi noir adventure of old at its best.
– Real player with 37.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best FMV Classic Games.
I think i reached my limit in this game. I keep getting error messages as i am at Gideons house using the poles to try and get across the pressure sensitive floor. As a kid i played this game and would get stuck all the time because we didnt have a strategy guide online to follow like i do now. Makes it a lot easier but it is also a clear MUST if your going to play this game. Anyone thats says its cheating and they never used it is a liar OR they spent YEARS trying to beat this game. If they can fix the game i will finish it. As of now i am S.O.L. !
– Real player with 34.4 hrs in game
The Bunker
Decent story marred by ultra-linear gameplay and lack of basic features
“The Bunker” is a fairly decent post-apocalyptic thriller movie - turned into a deplorably poor game that repeats all the mistakes of the “interactive movies” of the 90s, a time when these products were expected to sell on the basis of their full-motion video alone, and gameplay was an afterthought.
The premise is fairly interesting. After a nuclear strike hit Great Britain, people try to survive in bunkers, and you are the youngest resident in one of these, having been born just when the attack happened. The game starts with all other residents already dead and you being the last survivor, clinging to your daily routine because you don’t know anything else. When a system failure requires you to break out of that routine and enter long abandoned parts of the facility, disturbing memories of your past resurface.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best FMV Psychological Horror Games.
TLDR
This is an introspective story on a well-explored topic: the Lone Survivor in a dystopic world. It’s done pretty well too, and has a good soundtrack for the presentation, but it’s not a game as the gamer community would define. The Bunker is an interactive story, where choices matter and actions have consequences.
DEETS
First, a few notes about the interactive aspects.
1.) Most of the choices you make will be in regards to finding cookies, as opposed to survival. It’s easy to miss the few minor collectables in the game if you’re not looking for them, and it’s not always intuitive to look where they may appear. Darkened corners, minor minutia of background details, and simple but unannounced puzzles are all a factor in various scenes.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum
The second game of the Tex Muphy series did less genre crossover and had a great strength with its LucasArts-era classic adventure design. Graphically it’s a solid retro adventure FMV mix, the only downside being missing hotspots: even when hovering the mouse over interactible objects there is no cursor feedback whatsoever which made and still makes the game terribly hasslesome on a first playthrough due to easily missing out on interacting with key items on the quite blurry screen. A walkthrough or a frustration tolerance made out of steel might be required for new players. Truth be told, the entire gamedesign is extremely oldschool due to the inherent actual age of the game and it might prove too much of a bother altogether to newer gamers.
– Real player with 78.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best FMV Classic Games.
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!
– Real player with 16.1 hrs in game
The Light Remake
I enjoyed this game. You start in an abandoned Russian facility that is in a state of crumbling disrepair. You explore the various floors and learn about what happened through a series of notes found along the way. Played from a first person perspective, part of the game is above ground and part is an especially dark maze-like underground bunker. You have the option of a flashlight and/or a lighter to guide you and your choice will have an effect on the ending you experience. The sound track enhances the feeling of being alone and, in the bunker, the sounds increased my sense of stress and panic as I kept circling in the dark.
– Real player with 7.1 hrs in game
Nice walking sim, with a much deeper story and message than expected.
Short, but at the price, it feels worth it tome. On sale? Yeah, grab it if you like walking sims with very good visuals, moody and appropriate music and game audio, and a few relatively easy puzzles.
Take screenshots, or notes, you have no way to review notes you already read to see the clues they may offer. Puzzle solutions are not so in-your-face that they are totally obvious, many ore in notes or on walls.
Ran well enough on my MSI GS75 Stealth laptop (i7 9750/2070 RTX MaxQ/ 16 GB DDR4), though it did make the fans run up a wee bit. I expect the game will run slightly better on my desktop. No major issues, just a few visual artifacts here and there (some clipping and visible seams if I tried to find them), and the claw game was a bit of a PITa trying to pick up the item that drops from it (pushed the item away from the game machine, and had to pause the game and continue from the main menu to get the game to let me pick it up). So a few minor issues, no major bugs or glitches in my first playthrough.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon
When Under a Killing Moon debuted in 1994 it was a marvel, the first story-based adventure game to incorporate both 3D first person movement and FMV (Full Motion Video). When it showed up on Steam at a bargain price I decided to replay it and see how it held up against the recent spate of indie-made story games that I’ve been playing. The verdict - it’s still pretty amazing.
Sure, the graphics are pixellated and the controls are a little…odd. But the production values are stellar - great sound, acting, writing, and game design. The mouse-based movement control took a little getting used to, but actually worked much better than the fidgety controls in recent games like Edith Finch and Stories Untold, which just about drove me mad.
– Real player with 23.0 hrs in game
Trawling through the relics of adventure gaming’s past can often be more frustrating than fun, but I’m happy I gave Tex Murphy a chance! Under a Killing Moon tells a great tale set in a near-future, post-apocalyptic world, done up in the most advanced tech 1994 could muster. Even if – unlike myself – they don’t see beauty in jerky live-action videos so low res they contain weird rainbow blotches, everybody who enjoys adventures will find something to love in the silly-serious narrative, and especially in the character of Tex Murphy: a down-on-his-luck, fedora-wearing PI torn straight from the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel. Some of the actors are pretty good, some are so bad they’re good, and some of them are just straight-up bad – tough, yet affable, yet goofy ol' Tex, though, is consistently played to perfection (perhaps that’s because he’s portrayed by Chris Jones, who is also the series' head designer). It’s easy to see why this character picked up such a cult following!
– Real player with 16.8 hrs in game
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
With 200+ hours on this account for this game; I’ll make it quicker than I want it to be and I’ll be providing a TL;DR at the bottom.
This game is beautiful. No, not just because of the graphics since that does not make a game great. I’ll admit that being made in 2007: the graphics do hold very well to this very day. I’m talking about how the game feels to play, how much lore that you can unfold in this game and a very important point I will bring up later on.
The game itself is very easy to pick up and learn the basics such as what units do what, what your base does and many other things. As you progress through the story; you’ll meet bonus objectives that you can complete for a different medal at the end (great for you completionists). The campaigns can have some very challenging moments for newer players but it will make you do what you’re supposed to do: Come up with a strategy to win.
– Real player with 1133.0 hrs in game
1995… A game named Command and Conquer appeared… and paved the way for an entire genre. It’s a name that many RTS veterans should be familiar with. The franchise had its ups and downs throughout the years. 2007, the long awaited sequel of Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun appears. Has it passed the test? Let’s see…
Visually, the game is downright gorgeous, even for today’s standards. You can tell at first glance, whether the map is situated in a still pristine Blue zone, a conflict-torn Yellow zone or in an almost unearthly Red zone. The units are also well designed and their appearance alone tells something about the respective faction. Topped off with non-excessive and neat special effects, the visuals give a good impression.
– Real player with 381.6 hrs in game
Tex Murphy: The Pandora Directive
Tex Murphy is one of those things you either had to grow up with or which you’ll probably never get.
That being said, it remains one of the least worst FMV series in existence. Some would even go as far as to call all of them a masterpiece. Personally, I won’t but there’s definitely historical merit to them and the story is indeed actually quite cool.
The acting is not as cringeworthy as the old C&C in between mission movies and has its moments, but all things considered this age pretty terrible.
– Real player with 126.2 hrs in game
Truely awesome game. Had this back in the day but forgot how good it really was. The story line is great and the puzzles are devious but not un-doable with a little logic. All in all, it took me 38 hours to complete. ( although that includes time spent going off to make a cup of tea while I thought about where to go next) . Some of you may find that the initial scenes, discussions and traveling a little tedious at first but the game does become more exciting as it goes on.
The Tex Murphey games are the leaders in this genre. IMO.
– Real player with 71.4 hrs in game
ROUGH KUTS: Night of the Living Dead
PUBLIC DOMAIN
res nullius, res communes, res publicae, res universitati
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no copyright notification on release material
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copyright renewal lapsed (up to 1978 release)
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95 years or older (USA) or 70 years after death (which ever is shorter)
great idea for public domain films. while they are free in many forms, this is another good option.
i have played through all the dlc currently. 10 dlc + base game = 11 films.
is it “horror” well, definition of horror extends greatly to many things
while some would be more considered “scifi” than horror, its more of the consensus that each film is categorized as horror film.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
i love how they made these films interactive and my decisions actually made a difference, really awesome. 10/10 would definitely recommend.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
Mechanic 8230
Mechanic 8230 is an adventure game in the genre of Point-and-click. Help Mechanic find his robot friend RO-2 and unveil secrets about this destroyed world.
— Immersion in a new world of s distant stylized world;
— Cozy “illustrative” retrofuturistic atmosphere;
— Puzzles are intertwined with a fascinating plot;
— Unique soundtracks for each level in Ambient style with elements of cyberpunk by Alexandr Zhelanov;
— Variety of levels! Each of them is unique in structure.
The Moon 2050™
This is a Sci-fi RPG in which the protagonist must save the galaxy from The Evil Professor.
The action-packed story takes place in the future, in the artificially created galaxy of The Moon 2050. At the heart of this galactic system is Black Hole Inc., founded by the eccentric inventor and scientist ‘The Evil Professor’. It was he who became the main reason for the extermination of biological beings and the destruction of planets.
The Professor, ignoring all the laws of the existence of living beings, is obsessed with the idea of creating an ideal form of life; different from the existing ones. But every attempt to create such a super-being always results in failure. He never would have imagined that all his failed experiments would end up inhabiting The Moon 2050.
One day, The Professor fired his weapon of mass extermination of biological beings at the ship on which the protagonist Harry was flying with his partner. Harry was saved, but the co-pilot was not. He disappeared and ended up in Black Hole Inc. for experimentation. Harry, worried about the loss of his partner, finds out the true reason for the loss. Harry decides to wait for the end of the haunting disappearances of biological beings, remembering that his loved ones have already disappeared in a similar way.
The player, controlling the protagonist, Harry, will have to journey to find The Evil Professor and overthrow him and all his cyborgs and robots, destroy all laboratories and generators that power Black Hole Inc., and ultimately destroy the entire evil empire.
The player will have to complete linear tasks and advance through the story saving each character, destroying enemy mobs, and looking for loot in secret places to gain access to other missions.