Mini-review of The Pandora Directive

Introduction:

	I was going to write up a complete review of The Pandora
	Directive, but I found myself cutting and pasting great
	amounts of text directly from my review of Under A Killing
	Moon (UAKM).  The Pandora Directive is another Tex Murphy
	detective story, and has many,many similarites to UAKM.  The
	same game engine is used, and many of the same actors appear
	in both games.  Instead of my normal review, I am going to
	discuss the relevant (to me) differences between The Pandora
	Directive and UAKM.

	Quickly, then, here is how the two games differ:

Graphics (quality, animations, cut scenes):
	 Same as UAKM; same game engine, mostly the same actors.
	 In other words, very good.

Sound (music, voices, special effects)
	Same as UAKM (good acting, voices, and music throughout).

Story and characters:

	This is one place where the Pandora Directive adds a new twist
	to the detective game.  PD has multiple story lines that can
	be played, each with different endings and different character
	changes and conversations throughout.  Depending on your
	actions, Tex Murphy can become anything from a complete
	"Mr. Nice Guy" to a complete "Mr. Sleaze Bag".  In theory,
	this makes for good replayability, since you can play the game
	multiple times, each time making different choices as you go.
	I say "in theory", and will discuss this at more length at the
	end of this review.


Puzzles (difficulty, uniqueness, suitability, ugliness, linearity):

	Much like UAKM, The Pandora Directive had a wide range of puzzles
	to solve, with quite a nice variety of type and difficulty.

	As in UAKM, there were some conversation trees which could get
	you killed if you made the wrong choices, and sometimes those
	choices weren't exactly obvious.

	Several puzzles consisted of saving your game and making
	random guesses until you got it right.  Definitely poor puzzle
	design there.

	And now to my favourite beef -- timed sequences.  There were
	multiple places within the game where saving and dying was
	required because of time limits (many more than in UAKM).  For
	that matter, the game had two difficulty levels.  I tried
	playing the higher level of difficulty, and gave up almost
	immediately.  Stupid designers thought that adding a time
	limit to almost every puzzle was a nice way to add difficulty.
	Sigh; will they never learn?

Controls (user interface, save/restore, sound/video adjustments):

	Same as UAKM, perhaps with a bit more hand/eye coordination
	required to perform some of the trickier "driving" tasks.

Bugs or problems:

	The game crashed and hung multiple times throughout.
	I had serious problems getting past some points in the game.

	2-D bitmaps in a 3-D environment caused some strange visual
	effects.

Pros:
	Great (mostly) acting and voices
	Great makeup
	Great story
	Great (and memorable) characters
	Unique and funny method for making dialog choices
	Enjoyable puzzles
	Fun hunting under desks and inside drawers
	
Cons:
	Crashed and hung repeatedly.
	Timed sequences.
	Many interaction modes, quite complex game control
	Not-quite 3-D graphics weirdness
	Puzzles that couldn't be solved without dying first

Conclusion:

	Well, since I enjoyed UAKM so much, I should have enjoyed
	Pandora Directive almost as much.  However, this wasn't even
	close to true; neither my wife nor myself enjoyed this game.
	It wasn't a stinker by any stretch of the imagination, but it
	just wasn't "fun" like UAKM.  I have spent some time thinking
	about why, and I find the conclusion to be an interesting
	insight into what makes a game "good" or "bad" for me.

	There were a few items which reduced my enjoyment somewhat,
	but on reflection, I don't think they were the major problem.
	The extra timed sequences were really annoying, but I tend to
	just grit my teeth and get through them.  Irritating, but not
	a fatal flaw, since they didn't colour the entire game.  The
	game crashing and hanging all the time definitely didn't help,
	but again, I don't think that was the major problem.

	The primary reason I didn't like this game was the multiple
	paths you could take throughout the game.  It sounded like a
	wonderful idea, but it totally ruined the immersive effect of
	the game.  Every single time I had a conversational or action
	choice, I immediately started worrying about what effect this
	would have on my character.  In other words, I wasn't playing
	Tex Murphy any more, I was playing Murray Peterson worrying
	about what this choice would do to the Tex Murphy character,
	and to the game path.  Instead of choosing the most amusing
	conversational response, I would choose the "good" or "bad"
	option, depending on which game path I wanted to travel.

	For me, a good game is one that immerses me in its world, and
	Pandora Directive just couldn't do that because I always had to
	back out of the game and decide if I wanted Tex to be good or
	bad.  I would have far preferred it if they had made this an
	option I set at the beginning of the game; that way I wouldn't
	have ever had to yank myself back into the "real" world to
	make some sort of moral or ethical decision on behalf of the
	game character.

	So, Pandora Directive doesn't make it into my best games list,
	but it's not a stinker in any sense of the word.  It's a good
	game that just didn't get me immersed in its world.