Back in the day, game developers were more willing to experiment with stuff. I guess that's pretty rare in the modern AAA game industry because games are more expensive to do these days. The publishers want to keep things as safe as possible and do things they have at least 90% certainty of people liking. That's why we don't really see games like Mean Streets anymore. It's an odd mix of things that don't necessarily mesh well together, but at least it does try to shake the conventions of the adventure genre. And what, I hear you asking, is the thing that makes Mean Streets so experimental? I'll go to that a bit later.
Tex Murphy is a hardboiled private dick in the radiation-soaked future Los Angeles of the year 2033. If you've read the manual, which is really recommended, you'll already know the score: Sylvia Linsky cast her shapely shape through the door window of Tex's office. She, like every lady in every detective story, walked in and Tex knew she was trouble. Along with the trouble she was having, that is. Her father, Professor Carl Linsky, had supposedly killed himself by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge. Sylvia wasn't having that and wanted an alternative answer to the sloppy police work done by the local cops. So she contacted Tex. That's the case, Tex. To find out if Carl offed himself or not.
So, when you boot the game, you see the first thing that makes Mean Streets stand out: a good chunk of the game takes place in Tex's speeder, which you fly over the city in a 3D-flying simulator. You can enter the navigation address to the computer or just fly freely anywhere you want. The reason why there's a flying simulator in the game stems from the fact that Access had previously done one and they had wanted to implement it into something with a proper story. Mean Streets was what they came up with.
Having read the manual, you should know a couple of contacts and addresses. Before heading out, it could be wise to call Tex's secretary, who can dig up more info for him about people and locations. Tex has an informant as well, who gives info for a fee. Her services are best reserved in situations you are out of other ideas.
Calling Tex's contacts gives out another surprise: they talk. Both Vanessa's and Lee's phone dialogue is digitized and it all is coming through a device you least would expect of being capable of pushing out digitized speech: the PC-beeper. All of the sounds, music included come through the most dreaded sound device of the PC computers, but surprisingly enough, it sounds pretty good. That's thanks to the RealSound tech Steve Witzel developed for Access Software. The tech itself was utilized by other game developers, such as Legend Entertainment, as well before soundcards became more ubiquitous.
After marveling at the technological prowess of Mean Streets, it's probably time to start investigating the case to its fullest. The first thing to do is to interview people, friends, and family of the stiff and the cops. You get some clues as well as the home address of the ex-professor. At Carl's, you finally get to experience the terrible adventure mechanics of the game.
Some of the locations you get to explore are the more traditional adventure game sections of Mean Streets. You enter a location, where you control Tex with cursor keys. On points of interest, you hit a button in order to get to the interaction menu, from where you can choose what you want to interact with and what do you want to do with the items. You know, look, open, use, take, etc. Additionally, besides clues, you can find valuables you can sell as well as ammo. Technically speaking, these 3rd person exploration scenes are the worst Mean Streets has to offer, mostly because of how clunky and slow the movement is. Tex moves around the room slowly and the interaction menu doesn't help either, as it's just cumbersome to use and doesn't come out as very user-friendly. There's a decent idea behind it, but it lacks finetuning.
I think I should explain the valuables and the ammo. As I stated, Lee, Tex's informant, wants money for her info. The harder the piece is to get, the more it costs. While Tex starts with a whopping 10k in his pocket, you can burn through it fast. He can also spend money on bribing the people he interrogates, so that's a potential money pit as well. This is where the sellable valuables and the ammunition come into play. The goods you can sell, obviously, with the ammo you can bounty hunt. Littered all over the map you can find special black landing spots which are bounty hunting locations. Go there and you get a sidescrolling shooter minigame, where Tex has to walk two screens from left to right while gunning down an endless swarm of crooks. Stay alive to the end, you get money and more ammo. If you die, well, you die. Game over. So, saving is advised. Speaking of dying, it's a good practice to save the game before going into the new locations, as some places do have traps in them, hazardous to Tex's state of being alive. Oh, and some people can live in dangerous zones with shootouts, but generally, story-specific shootouts are easier than bounty hunting is.
After a lot of running around, Tex learns of Carl's involvement in a secret Overlord project, aimed at mind-controlling people. He was basically driven insane with the invention he was working on. But now it's up to Tex to save the day from the evil, mind-controlling corporations, and political parties. Like a hard-boiled detective, Tex begins to cut through the corruption of Los Angeles, and who knows, he even might get the girl in the end.
Mean Streets is a mishmash of all kinds of stuff. Some of it works, some don't, but what's really important is, that this was the first entry to the Tex Murphy series. It was the 3rd entry to the series that really broke the bank with its mixture of FMV and real-time 3D locations to explore, but the first game just doesn't quite really manage to get up from under all the different elements heaped on it. As a side note, Mean Streets was remade into an FMV title later on. But more about that later.
Anyhow, Mean Streets is an interesting title. Technologically ambitious and, in some ways, it was trying to take the adventure genre forwards. It isn't quite successful in what it is trying to do and it's hard to call it a good game. So that said, I wouldn't really recommend it unless you are interested in experiencing something somewhat experimental that wasn't afraid of throwing stuff at the fan. If you do want it, it's available at GOG bundled with the second game in the series, Martian Memorandum. That one isn't great either.
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