A great addition to the Tex Murphy series.
Overseer is a remake of the story from Tex's first adventure Mean Streets, which is pretty inaccessible to most modern day gamers thanks to some of its annoying gameplay elements. Overseer does away with all of these annoying bits, and creates a compelling story out of the much more simplistic story of Mean Streets. Tex is hired by Sylvia Linsky (Rebecca Broussard) to find out the truth behind her father's death. It was ruled a suicide as there were witnesses that saw him jump from the Golden Gate Bridge, but Sylvia doesn't believe it. As Tex investigates he gets tangled up in a plot involving mind control and a crooked political party trying to get their hands on the technology. There are a few familiar faces, including Clint Howard, Henry Darrow, and a great performance from Michael York. Suzanne Barnes returns as Tex's love interest, Chelsee Bando, and of course Chris Jones returns as Tex. He continues to shine as Tex Murphy and make him a truly great character.
Overseer uses a completely different 3D engine than the previous two games, and is, for the most part, an improvement. Unfortunately, the visual quality of the various locations is all over the place, with some locations looking quite nice for the time (1998) and others looking far too blocky. This is rectified somewhat by 3D acceleration which is the norm nowadays anyway. The game was also an early adopter of DVD technology and if you can get it to work (it's unfortunately extremely difficult due to a very limited list of supported MPEG decoders) the video sequences are quite nice. The DVD version also has no disc swapping, an issue if you choose to play with the CDs, of which there are five. Making images of the discs and mounting them to virtual drives eliminates this, as each CD can be assigned to a different drive within the game.
Gameplay is quite similar to its predecessors in that you search locations for clues. Puzzles are again rarely nonsensical, and a complete hint system allows you to find out what your next step should be if you get stuck. Movement through the 3D world is more awkward than in Under a Killing Moon or The Pandora Directive thanks to an odd choice of requiring the player to hold the right mouse button while moving (done completely with the mouse). Keyboard controls for movement are now available, but are not very good. The movement issues don't detract much from the game, though, as how and exactly where you move isn't very important in most cases.
As far as replayability goes, Overseer is a step down from its predecessor, The Pandora Directive. There is only one ending and the choices you make throughout the game will not have any effect on anything else down the line. The game does have two difficulty levels, Entertainment with 1500 points available, and Gamer with 4000 points available, but there are no added puzzles in Gamer mode, and the extra points are entirely from bonuses obtained by finishing logic puzzles within a certain time. While this does add a bit of replayability, there really isn't much point in playing the game on the harder mode unless you want to get the maximum score in both modes. Tex's usually humourous descriptions of the world around him are still present, and you can still find new things to see and do every time you play the game.
Overseer was intended to be the first game in a series of games, and as such ends on a cliffhanger. Unfortunately, after Microsoft bought Access Software in 1999 Tex Murphy faded away, and a sequel at this point in time, though possible (the people who created Tex keep trying) is probably not extremely likely. That said, the cliffhanger doesn't mean the story is left unfinished. The main plot is finished, and is quite well done, and there are some amazingly well done scenes throughout the game. The cliffhanger involves a subtle subplot that goes on throughout the entire game.
All in all, if you enjoyed Under a Killing Moon or The Pandora Directive you're sure to like this game too. It's highly recommended to any fans of adventure games. The Pandora Directive is probably the best choice for newcomers to the series as it truly is an amazing piece of work, and may help increase your appreciation for Overseer.