Anyone know or or played the Tex Murphy series? They were a neo-noir detective series in the 90's, although a new one just came out. They're about a private investigator living in a futuristic San Francisco. If you take Blade Runner, the Maltese Falcon, and Hotel Dusk, you get Tex Murphy.

For those that don't know anything about it:
The first game was a great DOS game from 1989 called "Mean Streets". It had three gameplay styles: a flight simulator, an Ace Attorney-style questioning game (in which you'd have to ask about suspects by physically typing them into the keyboard) and a 2D action shooter (the weakest of them all, in my opinion). You even had to take your own notes, since the game didn't save them for you. This was definitely one of my favorite games of all time.

Second game was a mediocre "classic" 2D adventure game called Martian Memorandum. It might just be that 3rd person adventure games are my least favorite type of adventure game, but the gameplay combined with the sort of boring story made me not enjoy this game nearly as much.

The third game is where the series really discovered what it was. "Under a Killing Moon" was one of the first FMV games, and while the acting is pretty bad, the FMV is still better than a lot of it's competitors. Some people really like this game, but it's not one of my favorites. I tend to want a balance between serious mystery and comedy, and Under a Killing Moon puts much more emphasis on comedy (comedy that I don't care for that much most of the time). Still, it's fun to see where the series became what people know as Tex Murphy. This game was also where the Hotel Dusk-style gameplay became the main focus of the series.

Fourth game of the series was the well-done "The Pandora Directive". It found a pretty good balance between humor and seriousness, and the FMV (especially the acting) got way better. The game is also fairly long, and has some replay-ability because of branching plot lines (not much though, as the only things that change are the FMV scenes). Probably my favorite of the series since Mean Streets.

The fifth game (and the last for 16 years) was "Tex Murphy: Overseer", a remake of the plot from "Mean Streets" done in the FMV style. While I enjoyed it, my main complaints were that they didn't change the puzzles enough from the original Mean Streets and that the acting got too Melodramatic in scenes. Of more interest to fans who played Mean Streets is the story that frames this flashback. The framing story takes place after The Pandora Directive and ends in a crazy cliffhanger. At the time, the developers planned to do a trilogy of games that would continue on from this cliffhanger, but things happened and the series (and the adventure genre as a mainstream interest) died in the early 2000s.

However, a couple of years ago a new game was Kickstarted and was produced. Called "Tesla Effect", it continues on from the cliffhanger of Overseer and apparently provides a conclusion to the story. I think. (I haven't played it yet; too busy with schoolwork right now). Apparently it was pretty good though.

There were also some "radio theater" audioplays produced, as well as a series of books (two of which are currently in development). All of the games can be bought on GOG.com (and I think Steam as well). While I don't care for every entry, and I'm not always big on the humor style, I enjoy the games a lot.

Anyone here also a Tex Murphy fan?

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