I have not played Tex Murphy games until this one. I’ve planned to for years now and I had all of them on GOG since forever, but… I need to be in a certain mood to enjoy FMV adventure games, especially older ones. Finally, I got in the mood to play Tesla Effect. Good news is that I still want to check the rest of the series. Bad news… This one isn’t good.
Tex Murphy series went through a few changes in the early years, until finding their voice in the popular at the time genre of FMV adventure games, using real actors and 3D environments to tell their stories. Tesla Effect just updates all of those ideas to more modern standards. It’s still definitely influenced by Blade Runner, Tex is still somewhat naive and idealistic for a private investigator and cartoonish comedy still constantly shows up during the otherwise serious storytelling.
The game starts somewhat unevenly, but mostly charming and entertaining. There’s a genuinely interesting mystery to unfold, you talk to lots of characters, freely explore a small and simplistic but nicely done street, do the usual adventuring things and it all clicks. Some of the dialogue choices right from the start are questionable in their vague descriptions of what each choice means and the fact that the game is essentially unplayable on higher than 1080p resolutions (UI and text becomes unreadable), which sours the mood even in the early hours. But otherwise, the opening chapters/days of the game are where the game is at its best.
The more you play, the more annoying things get. It starts with little annoyances, like an obnoxious Simon Says “puzzle”. Then, it’s pixel hunting and a bunch of meaningless puzzles in a row. Starting from the midpoint, almost all fun conversations with NPCs are gone and instead of “investigating” Tex just runs around bland huge locations, solving problems in the most uninteresting ways. And the plot by that point is also just a mess that doesn’t really go anywhere, with the questionable decision to have separate ending paths, that don’t seem to line up with character motivations.
In the end, the game is just a chore to go through. It loses its charm, it loses the momentum and becomes something that is just not possible to recommend. Hopefully, the next game, a remake of the first title in the series, remaking the previous remake, is far better than Tesla Effect. Because, even if you do lust for fun FMV adventure games, there are far better choices to go with nowadays, with the genre having a bit of a revival.