Beta impressions. *NO SPOILERS*

They cut Vanessa from Overseer, so it's possible. It would probably be difficult to cut it at this point, though. Does Tex talk back to Smart Alex?

That's a critical design flaw, right there. You cannot have the Smart Alex insult Tex AND have the player feel immersed in the role of Tex without having the player being the one receiving the insult. It's got to be either one or the other. Personally, I'd prefer immersing myself in the role of my favorite interactive gumshoe. No disrespect to Kevin Murphy; this one's on the design team.

-Fred

Hope the "skip puzzle" button is not to accessible... In some other puzzle games it makes you have to win a boring minigame before you get to skip.

Joel wrote:I'm not getting any visuals in the cinema tics, only sound and a green screen. Is this intentional for now to keep the download small?

install this joel http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... px?id=8109

Fred Buer wrote:That's a critical design flaw, right there. You cannot have the Smart Alex insult Tex AND have the player feel immersed in the role of Tex without having the player being the one receiving the insult. It's got to be either one or the other. Personally, I'd prefer immersing myself in the role of my favorite interactive gumshoe. No disrespect to Kevin Murphy; this one's on the design team.

-Fred

I have to agree here, Fred. I haven't completely finished the Beta yet (too many real life demands at the moment), but I'm having a hard time getting used to Smart Alex. The closest character from a game I can compare him to is Arthur from the Journeyman Series. Arthur made sense there, but I'm not used to Tex having a "sidekick", or comedic relief character. I'm certainly not used to having an omnipresent character make fun of Tex.

kevin murphy (smart alex) is there for one reason only " he has millions of fans" He will never be cut only toned down.

I have not played the Beta nor have access to it, but it seems like it is the same demo they sent out to press, like the one reviewed in this thread:

http://www.unofficialtexmurphy.com/mess ... f=1&t=4924

The very first thing that concerned me with that review was the "Smart Alex" clip. I assumed this was a feature added upon completion of the game or a feature I could disable and enable whenever I wanted. When I watched the clip I immediately assumed that I would disable "Smart Alex" the second I got the game, at least until I was ready for him. Along with the sparkly and glowy (hey the item is here) feature. Can you enable/disable these features, or are they just on no matter what? If so, do you think they just kept them on in the demo to make it easier for all to see rather than always on the final game?

But at this stage they can resolve this issue by replacing smart alex with Tex's old "Well.. that's not gonna work" from UAKM/Pandora. It's a real easy fix, but one that I know Aaron and Chris might not be willing to make. Smart Alex is fine because he's supposed to be replacing the "Great PI in the Sky", I'd prefer they just keep him in the role of he only abuses tex when he dies, since the lines for Tex's death are actually pretty witty so definitely they should stay.

In terms of the textures. We can fix them on our end without too much issue as long as they give us the means to do so. I'm trying to help their artists where possible with my bug reports, but my concern atm is, if this is just a small slice of the game, I really worry what the entire game will be like. But in the end post-release if they gave us the means to correct it, we can quite easily correct it so specifically I'm talking about Mod-tools. Get us the tools and there'll be no problems then.

Gameplay and story are really solid though and that's mainly what matters to me. I'm very happy overall with the game.

I actually never saw the sparkles showing in casual mode & I have since discovered that they only show up when using the flash light

jcarnby wrote:

Fred Buer wrote:The closest character from a game I can compare him to is Arthur from the Journeyman Series.

In Journeyman Project 3, there was an option to choose how much Arthur talked. Something like that is probably appropriate here. Not to completely remove the character, but just limit him if the player chooses.

I haven't played the demo, of course. I tend to like old-school adventure narrators that mock the player, a la Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, so I might enjoy Smart Alex, but giving players the option to limit him to death sequences and cut scenes where he's relevant might be helpful.

I liked Smart Alex, but I can see the concerns people have with, it is one of the few things different from previous games, you may need to get used to it. That being said, he makes just a few comments, most of the time is Tex speaking.

WITCHCRAFT! I never said nothing about any Journeyman games!

-Fred

The ability to turn Smart Alec on and off would be a simple answer

1. Option to turn off Smart Alex would be great.
2. Gamma control is a must- it was way too dark for me.
3. I only played for a little- but I didn't enjoy the hunt for the 5 things at the start. I found 3 of them right off, and ran out of fun while "pixel hunting" for the 4th and 5th things. This could be related to the gamma issues. Also, I was playing on 'gamer' mode.
4. After about 30 minutes, my keyboard started to act really weird. This could have been a problem on my end (running a usb keyboard on a long extension cord into my home theatre) so I'll have to see if it repeats.
5. Textures could be better. Not a deal breaker... but they do seem a little low res.
6. Video and gameplay were pretty smooth for me on my system at 1080p.
7. I think the UI could be improved. But I did like the keyboard shortcuts for everything in the UI. I will probably use those.
8. Gamepad support?
9. MINOR VAGUE SPOILER- The bridge at the start- videogame logic, I know, but why doesn't Tex just move his speeder?