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Mean Streets (DOS)By: The J Man
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Mean Streets is the first of the Tex Murphy series that adventure gamers will probably know better from Access Software's later FMV titles Under A Killing Moon and Pandora Directive. My own introduction to the world of San Francisco's jaded, futuristic P.I. was actually Overseer back when it was released in 1998, and well before I was doing this site. Overseer is a remake of this game, so I needed some time to forget the plot. Nine years was apparently the magic number. Look for a review of Overseer in 2016.
You start with a brief text intro screen, but you'll need to check the manual for the fully fleshed-out introduction, written in a nice Dashiell Hammett style. You're accepting a $10,000 suicide investigation for dame in distress Sylvia Linsky. Her father, a university professor, took a swan dive off the Golden Gate Bridge for no apparent reason. The police see no use in investigating further, despite Sylvia's insistence that this act is totally out of character for her otherwise healthy dad. You agree to start looking into his recent activities and contacts. Your investigation starts out tame enough, with a short list of suspects and a million dollar insurance policy on the deceased that's starting to sound like the real reason behind Linsky's death. But like any good detective story, you quickly find yourself in the middle of something else that is quite a Big Damn Deal indeed. Mean Streets differs from other investigative games as it is mostly, to coin a term, a "social adventure." Instead of looking for items, the most valuable lead you can discover is another name and the address where you can find them. Your questionings will always be limited to asking about character names or corporations and their projects; never about objects, never about places, never about plot elements. You can't ask about "Linsky's suicide" or "Linsky's suicide note" for example, only about Linsky himself. You will get the info you need simply by asking the right person about the right name, but it's a limited system you might not be expecting. You can't even show items in your possession to other characters, or ask about them. If you find, say, an incriminating love letter, you don't need to pick it up and bring it along as proof. Simply dropping the sender's name will be sufficient. You do get limited opportunities to scour houses and labs for clues, using standard adventure game "look," "open," "move" commands. There aren't a lot of these though, and each address is limited to one room with most of its secrets hidden inside. There's a specific number of objects you have to acquire from all over California to complete the game, and frequently there's an item in one of these places that you need to use in another, strictly to acquire one of these game goals. But as for locked doors, safes, cabinets, secret panels, and hungry piranhas, the keys you seek are almost always hidden in the very same room. I say this to encourage you to search diligently instead of expecting to find the solution elsewhere, as you would in a more item/puzzle based adventure (a mistake I made when I started playing).
Mean Streets truly is less focused on the item-based adventure and more on talking to people. It's a bit of a shame, because these search sections work well and the objects in a room break down distinctly and clearly. The artwork even changes as you open a drawer or move a plant, so you can visually see what you've already tossed. But the conversation system is no slouch, and you get just as much of a thrill in finding a new contact as you do in finding an obscure puzzle item. So write down any pertinent information from papers you find, pick up a potentially useful object if you aren't sure (your inventory has no size limit) but don't concern yourself with grabbing everything that isn't nailed down. You'll just be looking for a name about every time. So you've found a new name connected to the case. What now? When you're not in conversation screens or searching rooms, your investigation will take place in your speeder. It acts as both your office and your conveyance throughout the entire game. There's a videophone in the cockpit, and two sources of information are just a button press away. Your secretary Vanessa (who looks like a young Nancy Allen) should be your first stop, and has access to all sorts of public records. Think of calling Vanessa as searching Google or the phone directory. What she cannot find, your informant Lee can, for a price. A simple barter system occurs where you keep adding to your offer until Lee is satisfied - don't worry, you can start low and she'll never be insulted or cut you off. Be careful though, because she will gladly charge you for information Vanessa or another name on your list could provide you for free.
Personally, I like it as it gives me time to think about case connections or work on my notes. But I'm also a sucker for a flying car, and this is the first game that let me directly control one. If you're not feeling up to manual control, you can input the nav code and engage a 100% trustworthy autopilot to take off, travel, and land while you attend to something else like a beverage or email break. You will have to fly everywhere and that cannot be avoided, and all flying takes place in unskippable real-time; some people won't like that. The autopilot also steadfastly insists on climbing to 11,000 feet for everything, which takes extra time and means that you'll probably want to handle short trips yourself. But every effort has been made to make these sections as painless as possible, and the inclusion of a guaranteed autopilot makes it hard to call this a hindrance. Gimmick? Sure, but I actually like what it adds to the show. Arriving at your destination and exiting the speeder puts you usually at a search zone or an interview sequence. Interviews always have a large window of San Francisco and the character, and a small window of introductory text setting up the scene. You type the full name and exact spelling of the person or company you wish to know about, and get your reply. The plot is relayed through notes discovered in the searching sections, and the responses from the characters you question. Frequently you will also receive another name or a new nav code from your current informant, and the entire process repeats. You also have the option to bribe or threaten an uncooperative person for the subject you just inquired about. Bribing works exactly like getting info from Lee. Threatening generally ends the conversation, unless it's your last resort. Ask, bribe, and then threaten when bribing won't do.
The only other consideration you have is finding the money you will need for all this bribing. You'll bleed out your starting funds pretty quickly, especially if you pay for unnecessary questions. Characters who require bribes require money for all answers, not just the important one that they alone know. So it becomes unwise, unhelpful, and expensive to treat them like regular interrogatees and ask them about anything while throwing G-notes like ticker tape. Still, even if you're frugal, you're gonna need some more dough. Your primary source is in selling valuable items you pick up from the search sections. A pawn screen directly in your speeder lets you sell off your inventory easily. Every searchable area has hidden money or a specific rare item worth thousands of dollars. These usually require tripping an alarm and resetting it in a limited amount of time to make off with the goods. You can also manually fly to bounty hunter zones, marked by black landing pads visible on the horizon, and play through tougher shooting stages for $1500 a pop. There is, of course, another devious option. Like Neuromancer, Mean Streets is almost entirely a quest for information. While it's true that you must have all of a certain number of items to beat the game, which will require legwork and backtracking to get, the meat of the game is names and nav codes you could get from unscrupulous walkthroughs. You can even start a new game and go right to the final battle with the proper nav code (though you can't win without the items). Point being, no in-game limit is placed on how you got your knowledge, no flags check that you've been where you're supposed to go. You can save your game, pay off an informant with bribes, and then reload with the required information in your notes, a refilled wallet, and no consequences. Or you could just follow a walkthrough that takes you right to the goal items, but you'll be missing quite a bit of interesting plot along the way. Graphically, Mean Streets is a impressive effort for 1989. The game uses digitized characters and character photos before they were all the rage, and the detail comes across nicely. Searchable locations are hand-drawn, but look pretty damn good. I wish you could see more of the city during your investigation, since the places you search are generally enclosed areas and single rooms, but that's more a request than a complaint. The 3D flight engine doesn't look great, and is naturally low on detail and landmarks. Major buildings can be spotted, like the TransAmerica Pyramid and Candlestick Park (Mean Streets hails from the glory days before corporations started buying arenas up like trophies), but there's little to see between cities, and not much to see in them either. Las Vegas in particular is just an amusing section of hot pink surrounded by the unshaded green ground polys. But it works, and the stills and characters you meet properly get the mood of a future-noir adventure across.
Of course, it all comes down the story and the writing. The plot is engaging, if a bit tired. The bad guys are fairly predictable, and what they're up to quickly becomes apparent. The connections are fresh though, as is the desire to make sure you're correct. You can hunch your way through the plot as a good detective should, but that don't make it the truth until you have the proof. The writers do seem a little restricted by the technology, in that characters only have the space assigned to "speak" about a paragraph's worth of text for each question. This results in the plot coming at you in bite-sized chunks and straightforward dialogue. Perhaps this is most clear in the difference between the in-game text and the intro story in the manual. All of the text matches the tone of the printed intro, but lacks its style and flourish. After all, when you're limited in what you can say, you tend to pare things down and get right to the point. That seems to be the case here. That doesn't mean the plot isn't conveyed well, and it certainly passes my Adventure Game Worthyness Test. This isn't Chinatown, but it's an interesting story unraveled skillfully in an interactive manner. Some comedy is present as well. It's not a chuckle-a-minute Sierra game, but there's some subtle wit in the descriptions. In one area, your character groans that he "couldn't reach that with a 9-foot pole." You defeat the puzzle by finding a 10-foot pole. Movie references also appear; far too many to try and list here. My favorites are President Michael J. Fox, and how Big Jim Slade from Kentucky Fried Movie has now become a killer for hire entwined with the plot of the game. So what's my summary? I buckled down and beat Mean Streets in one long day, because the smooth adventuring, just-interesting-enough detective story plot, and my love for futuristic urban settings made for a combination I couldn't put down. If this were the same game, somehow reworked to a medieval fantasy adventure where you play as a traveling bard accepting some coins to look into the unfortunate river drowning of a local scholar, forsooth, I admit I personally wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. If you're interested in the idea of casual future private investigating, Mean Streets is worth a play. Bring your notepad. If you're just not so sure, or want more of the Tex you've already come to love, Overseer revisits this story with greater skill and technology. -reviewed 7/02/07 - game copyright 1989 Access Software
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