My (rather amateur-ish) review:



After 16 years and a geeker-joy inducing intro sequence, I stand in the hallowed halls of Tex's office once again, feeling at home instantly, as if I'd never left. The graphics are functional, the sound design is extraordinary but what really draws me into the game is Chris Jones, who once again takes on the mantle (or fedora in this case) of Tex Murphy. His acting is spot on, making it quite clear that Chris Jones IS Tex Murphy.

The story line is intriguing, what happened to Tex after the events of Overseer, were is Chelsee and why do the inhabitants of Chandler Ave. react to Tex in a rather unfriendly, sometimes even fearful manner?

The mystery is revealed in bits and pieces, different story paths offering more backstory than others. Speaking of which, as promised Tesla Effect offers three unique paths and five different endings.

Though not all is rosy in Post-WWWIII SF, as mentioned, the graphics are serviceable and fit the overall atmosphere of the game quite nicely, the human characters in the FMV sequences fit in quite well. Sadly, some low-res textures mar the overall quality of the graphics, fortunately this seems to only concern non-essential textures. Everything else, most importantly all the nostalgic callbacks to previous games are rendered in the highest possible quality.

Add to that some rather frustrating moments in the game, without spoiling anything, I ran into a rather annoying insect, which was just circling around, seemingly harmless, until it flew into my back. Suffice to say that I saw Tex's gravestone quite more often than I wanted to. Some of the puzzles are not really intuitive as well, even with Tex's optional description of the puzzle.

Tesla Effect offers, as is standard for Tex games by now, two distinct difficulty levels, the Casual mode offering a flashlight highlighting important objects and an intuitive hint system. The latter does offer too many hints at once, compare to the hint systems from UAKM and TPD, which only offered step-by-step hints, but this is probably a matter of personal taste.

All in all, the game is utterly enjoyable, it offers even new Tex players a starting point to enjoy the adventures of San Francisco's favourite punching-ball.

If I had to give the game a rating, it would receive an 8.5 out of 10, it is not a perfect game but then again, I'm sure no one expected it to be. It is what it is, it does what it does and what it does it i doing well. It is a fun ride through the middle of the 21 century.

So again an 8.5/10.

I hope you have enjoyed my review.

There are two things that are standing out to me right now. First is the non-FMV graphics (I.E. the gamespace). I'm finding them extremely bad for a modern day game. The graphics are even worse when you come across a usable item. They stand out pretty bad against their grainy, low-res backdrop.

The second is the "eye" that you click to reveal details is almost always active, and once you click on something it doesn't change. Almost every single thing in the game is a hotspot. Entire buildings, the ground, etc. It almost always feels like you should click something and when you do, he just repeats the same line he said the last 12 times.

I'm early in, so I won't comment on anything else. Given the price, if the game keeps its pacing and fun level, it will have been worth it. I had fairly moderate expectations... and I'm pretty surprised at how bad the graphics are in non-FMV areas.

I'm not going to rehash the issues with the devs, but they desperately need a PR person. Every time someone from BFG speaks, they make the situation worse. Trust in a company is significant when assessing value of a game. Some backers are going to pay less on future BFG titles, I suspect, as a result.

edit:

FYI, nice review. I'm not meaning to disagree with you, rather just offer the quick observations I have made as well. I'm worried about how choice is going to play out, but I won't mention anything until I've played further.

Based on the fact that we have hopefully resolved prior issues, have indicated we are working on any other remaining issues (related to game access and performance), and have now been paying close attention to the community, we hope it will restore your faith in Big Finish Games. After all, we are a small, yet dedicated and passionate team who has immense faith in our backers, and we believe that is reflected in the final product, which is over 20 hours of gameplay, 5.5 hours of full motion video, 3 unique story paths and 5 endings, all for under $20 ($15 of you were a backer). We also sincerely hope that a 48 hour period of miscommunication is not considered worthy of undoing over 2 years of hard work, love, sacrifice and dedication from a small team of developers who's #1 priority was delivering a stellar gaming experience to 7,000 loyal fans, and the general public. We may not have (nor can afford) a dedicated PR team to address backers concerns, and hope that it is appreciated that many of us are pulling double duty to address people directly. As such we probably use less buzz words and robotic responses than the typical PR spin that other larger companies deliver, which in many cases can result in a much more disassociated experience. When you talk with us, you are talking with the folks who deliver the experience to you in many facets and we are proud of our work, and proud of everybody's support! So thank you for those who are sticking by us!

As for the original poster, thank you for the review. We appreciate your thoughts and your score and are glad you enjoyed it!

Very well said, I look forward to jumping back into a new Tex game that meant so much to me all of those years ago and which brought me to GOG in the first place to be able to play again on a modern machine.

I think your hard work has paid off. I'm only five hours through so far but I think it may be the best adventure game I have played for a couple of years. I'm really enjoying it.

I agree with the 8.5 but because the game brings back so much nostalgia, i would give it an extra 0.5 for a total of 9/10. I do find the Tesla Reactor level puzzles to be a bit tedious though. Flaws aside, it's still an excellent game and a great sequel to the Tex series.