Tex Murphy: Overseer, the fifth installment in the Tex Murphy
series, has a very intriguing and engaging plot. In fact, it’s probably one of
the best plots I’ve seen to date. (And guess what, Overseer’s ending certainly
leaves plenty of room for a sequel!) In Overseer, the actual gameplay takes
place in the past, as Tex recounts the story of his first case to his girlfriend
Chelsee. I’m relatively certain that these events are a rehash of the first Tex
Murphy game, Mean Streets (released in 1989). However, this didn’t affect
my experience, as I’ve never had the chance to play the original. The story starts
out relatively small–Tex is a rookie P.I. in the year 2037 (remember, this is
the past in Tex’s world) and has just gotten his own office. As he waits for his
first case, he fritters away the time with a game of Parcheesi. Suddenly, the
office door opens and the ravishing Sylvia Linsky walks in. She’s convinced that
her father Carl’s suicide was really murder, and she wants Tex to prove it. Anyway,
to make a really long story short, what starts out as a small case with a smidgen
of leads superbly develops into the uncovering of a huge conspiracy of dark secrets,
murdered people, and a plan to control the world. The only negative side of the
story is that it’s very linear–but nonetheless, I wholeheartedly enjoyed Overseer’s
story. The plot receives a well-deserved A.

The graphics of Tex
Murphy: Overseer are sure to differ from computer to computer. If you’re lucky
enough to own a high-end machine, you’ll probably experience beautiful graphics.
If you’re even luckier and own a much-coveted DVD drive, you’ll see higher quality
video playback and won’t have to swap disks constantly. (The CD version contains
five CDs.) Players with lower-end systems, such as me, will probably experience
choppier animations, environments, and video. I ran Overseer on a Pentium
166, with 32 MB RAM and a 24X CD-ROM drive and was able to get away with interlaced
video, a window size of 560 x 420, and a medium quality of texture.
Though I was happy with the smooth video I received, I was disappointed with the
“VR environments” in which most of the first-person gameplay takes place,
as the pixels were occasionally enormous and scenes seen from windows or open
doors leading into a new areas lacked depth. For the most part, though, the VR
environment’s graphics on my lower-end machine were acceptable. On the plus side,
the graphics enable you to be completely free in the environment in your search
for clues. You can squat down to look under things, get on your tiptoes, tilt
your head up and down, etc. This is necessary to find many of the objects, which
may be hidden at the bottom of a filing cabinet drawer or under a bed. Video in
Overseer is always used during expository and interrogation scenes. There’s
certainly plenty of it, and it is relatively well done and sometimes even beautiful.
The awe-inspiring cut-scene played when Tex first visits J. Saint Gideon’s mansion
might even evoke a tear from some gamers, simply because it is so beautiful. Overall,
the game’s graphics were decent and so receive a B.
The music
from Overseer was never intrusive. I even found myself humming some of
the tunes when I wasn’t playing the game, which certainly must be a good sign.
Most of the music seemed to fit the environment. For example, when I was sneaking
around in dangerous places and stealing things out of people’s pants, suspenseful
music kept me on the edge of my seat. The voice acting was, for the most part,
professional and convincing, with remarkable performances by Chris Jones (the
series co-designer and producer) as Tex Murphy, Michael York as businessman J.
Saint Gideon, Henry Darrow as fellow P.I. Sonny Fletcher, and Roger Davis as political
candidate Robert Knott. Occasionally I felt that the responses of characters were
forced, but overall I was very impressed. Many sound effects added to the atmosphere
of the game, such as a speeder vehicle racing past Tex’s office window, etc. The
music, voice acting, and sound effects category receives an A.

The puzzles
in Overseer range from novel to worn out. A lot of the game’s “puzzles”
involve finding and using the numerous passcards, passwords, and keys, which can
sometimes get old, though it’s well worth the reward of a new lead or room to
explore. Some of the puzzles involve combining inventory items in creative ways
to advance, deciphering coded messages, or moving big objects to see what’s underneath
or behind them. For any accomplished tasks, points are awarded. Aside from these
things, there are also the real puzzles, which are usually timed in “Gamer”
mode. (There’s another “Entertainment” mode, which offers the an online
hint system, bypassing unwanted puzzles, and easier puzzles in general.) Don’t
worry–when the timer runs out, you only get fewer points for finishing the puzzle.
It’s easy enough to save before the puzzle until you get it right for all the
points. Some of the puzzles are run of the mill, such as the listen-and-match-the-sound-tone
type of puzzle. Some of the puzzles don’t seem to fit the plot very well but are
nonetheless fun. Others are downright clever. For example, I especially enjoyed
the puzzle in which Tex had to rearrange loose bricks in an unstable wall to make
a perfectly square hole to crawl through. The underlying chess theme in Overseer
added a nice touch. Don’t worry, no chess experience needed. I only think
there should have been a few more puzzles. I don’t know about the rest of you,
but I enjoy a good puzzle. Overall, the category of puzzles receives a B+.

Even
though this is certainly a great game, no game comes without flaws. Access has
a new patch out to fix some bugs and other errors. However, some flaws are “built”
into the game. For example, often times I found that I was swapping disks just
to look at an inventory item. The disk swapping isn’t too bad when it’s just between
locations, though. The interface has a nice feature of putting a little green
dot next to locations that are on the current disk, so you can visit them all
in a streak if needed before you switch disks again. The interface is polished
and functional, with side bar slide-outs for travelling, inventory, options, and
navigation activated by moving the mouse to the corresponding edge of the screen.
I also like that the game has in-game configuration settings. This includes separate
music and other volume settings (so you can turn down only the music if it’s too
loud), and other technical stuff, such as 3D sound on/off, etc. I didn’t get to
experience the 3D sound, however, because of my technical limitations. Speaking
of technical problems, this game has a crash potential. I estimate that the game
crashed about six times during my 25 or so hours of play. I was expecting this
since I’m using a lower-end machine. Even so, it’s only a minor problem, since
the game conveniently saves your game before crashing. One other good feature
of Overseer is that it offers subtitles in addition to the voices. Games
should always have the option of subtitles. Kudos to Access Software. Overall
gameplay was pretty smooth for me, as I only encountered sticky spots when I had
missed an item from earlier. The interface and gameplay receives an A.

Despite
a few little problems, Tex Murphy: Overseer is well worth the money. The
extraordinary plot, combined with witty and professional voice acting, challenging
puzzles, and immersive graphics result in another great adventure game from the
Tex Murphy series. Overall grade is A.

Notes:

1. The newest patch for Texas Murphy: Overseer is available at the Access
   homepage.
2. Overseer can only use hardware acceleration on AGP
   graphics cards.

System Requirements:

CD-ROM Requirements:
133 MHz Pentium processor or
better
Windows 95
16 MB RAM
Min. 640 x 480 video resolution, 2 MB
video RAM required
16-bit multimedia sound card
4X CD-ROM
35 MB hard
disk space
Keyboard, mouse, and speakers

DVD
Requirements:
133 MHz Pentium Processor or better with hardware MPEG-2
or 233 MHz Pentium Processor or better with software MPEG-2 (AGP recommended)

Windows 95
32 MB RAM
Mininum 640 x 480 video resolution, 2 MB video RAM
required
16-bit multimedia sound card
DVD drive
35 MB hard disk space

Keyboard, mouse, and speakers