Under a Killing Moon

MOONING IN 3-D

A Review of Under a Killing Moon

by Grant McCardell

Under A Killing Moon is, without a doubt, the best adventure game

yet made for the PC. Comprising four CD ROMs (2 GB!), this game

is not a mere combination of digitized video clips strung together

by a weak interface as are so many current interactive movies.

Instead, Under A Killing Moon plays much more like a traditional

graphic adventure game: you explore different locations, find

items, talk to characters, etc. in a fully interactive manner.

The locales are not digitized video, but are rendered scenes with

all the richness of either The Seventh Guest or Myst.

There is

an amazing difference, however. In The Seventh Guest one moved

from location to location along fixed paths, seeing the 3-D world

as pre-rendered video. Myst’s screens, beautiful as they were,

were all pre-rendered and static: one interacted with a fixed

view. Under A Killing Moon, however, allows fully interactive

movement through the 3-D environment. The screens are rendered

from a first person perspective in REAL-TIME (!) as you walk

around. The feeling one gets from this is that of actually

being there in the same manner as Ultima Underworld or Doom.

Unlike Underworld or Doom, however, the scenes are not merely

ray-cast corridors and rooms, but fully 3-D locations rendered

with the type of detail seen in full fledged raytracing.

If this weren’t remarkable enough, it’s also done in SVGA (up to

640 x 480).

As a software designer with some knowledge of this subject, I can

say that this sort of rendering has not been thought remotely

possible to achieve in real-time. Even using Pentium processor

speeds, detailed 3-D raytraced scenes can take hours if not days

to render. Access has seemingly achieved the impossible. I can

only guess at how this has been accomplished: the scenes seem to

be rendered by a skillful combination of texture mapped

ray-casting, some actual simplified ray-tracing, textured polygon

rendering, and scaled sprite superposition of pre-rendered

objects. The net effect is nothing short of amazing, and I would

not be surprised if Access has developed some patentable

rendering algorithms here.

Before you run out to buy this game, however, you should be

warned that the hardware recommendations are rather advanced.

The listed REQUIRED HARDWARE is not so extreme: a 25MHz 386 with

a single speed CD ROM, 4 Mb RAM, an SVGA video card, and a sound

card. I suspect, however, that playing this game on such a

machine would be like trying to play Microsoft’s Flight Sim 5 on

a 286 (at least as regards moving around in the 3-D environment

– more on this later). The RECOMMENDED HARDWARE is more

intimidating: a 66Mhz 486DX or BETTER (i.e. Pentium), a Double

speed CD ROM, 16 Mb of RAM, a local bus SVGA card, and a 16 Bit

Sound card. This review is based on game play on a 66MHz Pentium

with a 64 Bit PCI local Bus ATI Video Card (which has

excellent DOS video speed), 16 Mb of RAM, a 2X CD ROM and an SB16

sound card hooked into professional audio equipment. Even with

this equipment, the frame rate is still jerky when displaying the

movement aspects of the game in full 640×480 resolution.

Fortunately, Access does allow you to tailor the size of the

movement screen to the capabilities of your hardware.

For those of you who are wary of these hardware recommendations,

Access does offer a CD demo of the game, available for $3-$4,

that includes a $5 mail in rebate voucher if you decide to buy

the full game. The demo allows you to experience the interactive

3-D movement from one scene and includes all the configuration

options of the full game, so you’ll know exactly how the game

will run on your machine. If you then buy the game you’ll even

make a $1-$2 profit with the voucher!

Under A Killing Moon is a highly polished piece of software and

great care has been taken with all aspects of the game. This is

not a product that was “pushed out the door” before it was ready.

(Considering the hardware recommendations I wonder if it might

not have been finished early!) I have not experienced a single

lock up or unexpected exit while playing. Even the manual is

well written and intelligently laid out — a rarity these days.

Installation of the game is straightforward and uses the most

flexible and user friendly engine I have yet seen outside of some

Windows applications. The save/restore game functions are

equally admirable: games are saved based upon player name and

then displayed with information telling you the time and

location in the game where it was saved, as well as an outside

world time/date stamp. The game is also fully reconfigurable

while playing: during game play one can change the resolution of

various windows, set music and sound options, reconfigure mouse

input, etc. The game even lets you use different CD ROM drives

(or a multidisk changer) for the four CDs. This will allow you

to play the game without having to swap CDs. (Just in case you

happen to have four SCSI CD ROMs hooked up to your machine!) If,

however, you only have one CD ROM player you needn’t worry about

buying three more, as CD disk swapping is fairly minimal.

The game uses separate first-person interfaces for movement and

for object/person interaction. Switching between the two is

accomplished easily by right double-clicking the mouse or by

pressing the spacebar. In the movement portion, you walk around

and turn by pushing the mouse around, You look up and down, etc.

by using the keyboard.

If you see something you want to examine,

open, move, pickup, or talk to, double right click and the screen

will freeze allowing you to interact with objects on the screen

using various mouse cursors. Examining and using inventory

items, large scale movement (i.e. a different part of the city),

and game option selection are also accomplished from this screen.

When you’re finished, double right click again and you’re on your

way walking around again. Mouse control of walking or running

around is a bit awkward at first and takes some getting used to.

(Remember bouncing off the walls when you first tried playing

Ultima Underworld?) With some practice, however, you’ll soon

have good control of your movement.

All screens are 640 x 480 SVGA. You can, however, reduce the

display of the movement screen to be less than full screen,

allowing a faster frame rate. (You can also reduce the amount of

detail shown to increase the frame rate.) Some actions and events

lead to cut scenes.

These all combine live actors with the same

rendered locations that you move through. The live actor and

rendered scene integration is done absolutely seamlessly. The

actors seem actually to be in the scene, not just pasted over the

scene. These cuts must have been edited pixel by pixel to achieve

such a smooth look and feel. The acting in the cut scenes is also

quite good and features some known film talent: Margot Kidder,

Brian Keith, Russell Means, and James Earl Jones being the most

notable. Chris Jones, who also designed and directed the game, does

a professional job as the story’s central character.

The game’s sound is also excellent. This is not surprising

considering Access offered digitized speech in games several

years ago even if you didn’t have a sound card (RealSound.) All

conversations, descriptions, etc. feature crystal clear 16 bit

digitized speech. The music is also quite good. It is mostly

mood type music that changes in accordance with the plot line.

The FM synthesis of the MIDI music is particularly good,

benefiting in part to the contributions of the Fat Man, whose

previous credits include the music for The Seventh Guest.

The game’s story line is well and logically thought out. You

play the game as Tex Murphy, a film noire style PI. (The same

character was featured previously in Access’s Martian

Memorandum.) Instead of the 1940’s, however, the game takes

place in 21st century San Francisco.

The game does a good job of

combining the ordinary and the futuristic to create a believable

and interesting world. You start the game destitute and out of

work. You quickly find yourself involved with an unsolved

burglary case. Cracking this case ends day one and leads you to

begin investigating some more heinous related crimes. As an

adventure game, ground breaking graphics aside, this is a very

good game. The puzzles are challenging, but not overly so.

Unlike Myst, the average adventure player should be able to make

it through the game with few, if any, hints. If you do get

stuck, the game features an integrated hint system that is

similar to the UHS system in that you only get hints as you ask

for them. Getting such hints reduces ones point score by 4

points per hint. (A perfectly finished game gives 1000 points.) It

is, however, a simple matter to preserve ones score by saving a

game, getting a hint, and then restoring the saved game.

In conclusion, Under A Killing Moon has set new game standards

that will be difficult to match. If your hardware is up to it,

this game will leave you breathless; if not, maybe it’s time for

that new machine. This game may well be the game to get for

1996, and it’s still only 1995.

Gamer’s Zone Scorecard

Product:	Under a Killing Moon
Company:	Access Software
Cost:	n/a

System Requirements:

n/a

Breakdown:

Fun Factor 5
Graphics 5
Sound 5
Interface 5
Replayability 5

Overall Score: