Will you be a Maldonado or a Murphy? Post-credits the player is rated on their ratiocination.
In a past life, I briefly played Tex Murphy. I had procured it at no cost but that of my bandwidth and GOG’s discretion and, in an action that now seems entirely foreign and irrational, instead of letting both the original and the sequel sit idly, unused and abandoned in my library; I actually briefly played the original. As if a foreboding forewarning, I was confronted with a perplexingly archaic flight simulator using the plus and minus keys as a vital aspect of aircar control. Tex Murphy was thus as quickly abandoned as games are now bought to never be played; lost in the annals of my online libraries. Luckily I am obligated to play a game I am reviewing; and, much to my relief, I discovered that the plus and minus keys are never used in Tesla Effect; nor is flight ever simulated.
However, certain awkwardnesses do abound: at first, finding one’s way around the menu interface is confounding in an age where one is either permanently exposed to the contents of one’s inventory, or may open one’s inventory with a flick of the cursor; in Tesla Effect, one must press a button; whilst aiming at an in-engine object if one wishes to manipulate said in-engine object with an item from one’s inventory. But, in an impressive stroke of genius, one may fast travel not only from setting to setting; but from and to areas within a single setting. The bulk of Tesla Effect is set on Chandler Avenue, an ungentrified area of (barely) futuristic San Francisco; which is more of a street than a hub world. Thus, rather than having to trudge up and down said street, one may simply click via the fast travel menu on the area one wishes to visit and be instantly transported to one’s requested destination. But this hub world is very slightly more than a street, and the snippet of a suburb that composes its whole is ugly and sparse: thus there is little aesthetic compulsion to explore.
Collectible Mike and Ike Hammer Candy Comics offer a slight motivation for more improvised exploration.
Luckily, the live action cutscenes and conversations (interposed before amusingly unconvincing CGI sets) more than make up for the bland and dated in-engine world. The performances form the perfect blend for D-Grade cinema: running the gamut from those terrified in front of the camera to those revelling in their performance and thus, regardless of skill, eliciting genuine mirth and empathy from the audience. Chris Jones (inventor and portrayer of Tex Murphy) holds the cast and the story together: imbuing his neo-noir narration with a sense of oratorical composure and passion; and regularly finding the balance between drama and comedy when acting—and usually performing the most ridiculous lines with enough ridiculousness to turn the cringeworthy into the amusing; or at least the easily dismissible.
However, the multiple choice dialogue options often lead to clearly tacked on—and insufferably awkward—one liners that are completely ignored by the receiver of the quip and, as such, destroy the flow of conversation. These awkward asides are comically emphasised by the jarring cuts from one camera angle to the next; as if just to make sure that one realises these extra lines were recorded separately—and, even more ridiculously, these asides in particular bear the telltale discrepancies in audio fidelity of badly mixed overdubbing, inconsistent acoustics, or the ever changing position of a poorly placed microphone.
Then, after these brief conversations are finished, one is often left face to face with the supporting character of the scene, and encouraged to interrogate them further: the character in question will then perform single lines of dialogue, which suffer from another form of televisual awkwardness: the transition from the subject’s static visage as they await their question, to their full motion response; the deliberate, desperate expressions before and after their line is delivered are consistently amusing; and always gloriously awkward.
But some sets are, in fact, entirely convincing; especially those in almost futuristic settings where more synthetic architecture and darker, more extreme lighting successfully cover up the budget rendering fidelity. And the cityscapes—as hover cars are attractively tracked by aerial camera—are a consistently beautiful neon blaze of contrasting skyscrapers and traffic lights and permanent nuclear night (at least that’s why I assume it was always dark).
Careful of your reply; the satisfyingly conspiracy theory-flavoured story plays out as an impressive nonlinear narrative, which guides events to several successful, fulfilling conclusions.
So far so good—until one finds oneself plodding through the final third (pre-finale): several days (levels) of ugly architecture and banal or frustrating puzzle design, with only Tex Murphy for company; whose skits and one liners are far too rare to fill in the gap left by the constant interaction and conversation that dominated Tesla Effect up until this point. Within each day are puzzles which make use of tile sliding and flipping, or simple mathematical equations (among other equally uninteresting brainteasers). There is so little narrative logic behind the majority of these puzzles that Tex Murphy himself must provide narrated instruction as to their purpose and the requirements of their prescribed solutions. The vast majority of these puzzles are so simple that such narration is scarcely needed; nor, luckily, is the absent narrative logic or justification. But a few jarringly more complex and challenging puzzles pop up from time to time, and their placement makes little logical sense: there is no tangible sensation of progression from the easy to the hard.
But the majority of the gameplay takes the form of pixel hunting; if pixels were the size of voxels. Almost all of one’s time spent when actually trying to solve a puzzle consists of the search for the items which form the blatantly obvious solutions to the majority of the non-brainteasing puzzles. Although one might have expected this to mean the careful scouring of nooks and crannies, most of these items are strewn about the levels seemingly at random; though some might be carefully hidden in cupboards—unfortunately, which cupboards can be opened and which can’t are at the same random whims of the level designers as the placement of the exposed items are; thus the puzzle solving detritus suffers from a distinct lack of satisfying direction. Some of the harder to find items are not merely obscurely placed, but oddly camouflaged by colour or darkness: one is thus encouraged to use a superfluous torch to illuminate darkened corners and cupboard drawers. And there is even a (mercifully) brief—and (typically) regrettable—stealth vignette…in which the torch fails to arouse the suspicions of the patrolling monks presently on duty.
Yet I could not help but be enamoured by Tesla Effect. As sincere and irrepressibly enthusiastic cinematic excreta, Tesla Effect is utterly, irresistibly endearing; as a game, Tesla Effect is still sincere and enthusiastic. And I cannot, in good conscience, pretend that I do not feel a strange compulsion to brave the odd mathematical flight simulator that I assume the original Tex Murphy is…
