If you can get it to work on your computer you will be richly rewarded.

User Rating: 7.3 | The Pandora Directive PC
This is my second attempt at reviewing a game which is over 6 years old but since it is such a quality often overlooked game I wil try.

You play Tex Murphy a burbon swilling, ciggerette smoking, smartass PI just trying to scrape a living doing what you love. What you love is being a Private Eye and scraping a living at it seems quite tricky.

You start out trying to find the friend of a missing scientist and events quicly build from there. You wander around 3D world with the aid of your mouse and keyboard looking for clues and talking to people. I have to remind you that this is a 6 year old game so the 3D is far from cutting edge. In fact it does not make use of video card accelleration at all. Even with this in mind the game looks suprisingly good.

Where this game really shines is in the story and the dialog. It just oozes personality and builds on the previous world. The innovation in this game is that the responses that you give during the FMV conversations with people actually have an effect on the story. They are not just funny derivations in a branching dialog tree. In fact there are 7 different endings to this game which are completely dependent on how you play the game.

There are a couple negatives though. Some of the puzzels are somewhat obscure. In fact you can only progress in the plot if you head back to a certian area for no reason which in turn triggers a cutscene. These problems are lessoned because the game has a hint system which you can refer to whenever you are having trouble.

Although probably the toughest mystery you will have to deal with is getting it working on modern machines. There are a couple ways that work. First and most flawlessly is running dosbox using full dos and soundcard emulation. You need quite a high end PC to run this though. Your second option is to use VDMsound to emulate older soundcards although you will not get the quality you would with dosbox.

The acting in this game is generally good. There are a few places where you will be really impressed and also covering your face at the quality of the acting. In general the acting has improved over the previous installment of the game. They pull off a campy yet serious atmosphere within the game which suits it very well.

If you can find the game it is definetally worth playing. This is a meticulusly crafted story which will have you on the edge of your seat for much of the game.