The Pandora Directive is the fourth installment in the Tex Murphy series of graphic adventure games produced by Access Software.

[3] Like all Tex Murphy games, The Pandora Directive takes place in post-World War III San Francisco in April 2043.

The events of WWIII still left the planet with no ozone layer, and to protect their citizens many countries adopted a time reversal.

In The Pandora Directive, after accidentally offending his love interest Chelsee Bando, Tex (Chris Jones) is hired by Gordon Fitzpatrick (Kevin McCarthy) to find his friend, Thomas Malloy (John Agar).

He learns that Malloy stayed at the Ritz, and decides to follow up the lead after reconciling with Chelsee and agreeing to go for dinner with her at her apartment.

After finding out that a female acquaintance of Malloy works at the Fuchsia Flamingo club, Tex offers to take Chelsee there to both apologise and hopefully to check out the lead.

Tex finds the source of this and sees a figure dresses similarly to the person who attacked him in Malloy's room waiting to confront Emily.

Tex hurries over to the club and is able to get there just in time to see the Killer jump out of the window carrying a small box (whether Emily survives or not will depend on the storyline path).

Tex is pulled in for questioning by the police, but is allowed to leave when an unknown woman enters the station and speaks to Mac.

Tex retrieves the box that Horton stole from Emily's room, but is seized by the NSA and taken to Jackson Cross's office at Autotech.

After stealing Horton's personal effects from the morgue where his body is being held, Tex is able to get into Autotech's evidence room to recover Emily's box.

Tex travels to the Cosmic Connection shop and speaks to Archie Ellis, an eccentric comic book nerd and ufologist who recently interviewed Malloy.

Archie tells him that the famous author Elijah Witt set up the interview between them, during which Malloy made several cryptic references to something called 'The Pandora Device'.

He also reveals that during their research into the alien crafts at Roswell, the scientists accidentally released something into the facility that proceeded to kill off practically everyone in the complex before the military moved in and quarantined the entire base.

Tex travels to Roswell and enters the deserted site, but whilst moving around the facility becomes increasingly aware that he is being stalked.

After obtaining all the relevant pieces, Tex summons Fitzpatrick, Regan and Witt to his office where he assembles the Pandora Device.

He hypothesises that the ship contains large amounts of anti-hydrogen on board, and that if this gets into the wrong hands it could result in the destruction of life on Earth.

Tex arrives and manages to navigate his way through a dense jungle and an ancient Mayan labyrinth in which he comes across Regan who set off earlier in hope she might get there first.

He speaks to the manager (a hologram of Humphrey Bogart) and requests a two-for-one special date with Jayne Mansfield and Anna Nicole Smith.

We see him backstage putting on his makeup before going on, glancing briefly at photograph of Chelsee before sadly leaving the room to perform.

The Pandora Directive was the second game in the series to make use of Under a Killing Moon's engine and feature real-time 3D graphics.

These dialog trees were unusual at the time in that they did not display Tex's full response, but rather a short and sometimes humorous description, a convention later popularized by BioWare.

The "best" Mission Street ending is achieved when the player has taken the high road every time he was given the choice, and by exactly following two conversation paths earlier in the game.

[9] A reviewer for Next Generation praised The Pandora Directive's all-star cast, three-dimensional interface, storyline, and use of both sight gags and more subtle humor.

[5] In PC Zone, Chris Anderson called The Pandora Directive "without question the best adventure game of its type".

[10] She concluded: The ability to develop the leader character's personality in certain ways—ways that have a definite, material effect on the conclusion, irrespective of puzzle-solving—is worth the price of admission by itself.

So don't let the "interactive movie" label put you off: The Pandora Directive is worthy of your attention, whatever your level of gaming expertise.