Questions about Overseer

I'm new to the series and am just wondering what the deal with Overseer is. Is it a remake or a new game? Also wondering, why it is not considered as good as UAKM or Pandora Directive?
The official first game in the series is called "Mean Streets". It was an old style, very pixelated game using the keyboard (kinda like the early Monkey Island games). The story from that game is being retold as a flashback in Overseer. So it's basically in the same story but with considerably much better graphics and is now a point and click user interface. There's more action and the puzzles are completely different.

One big reason we don't consider it as good as the other games is that it had a much shorter production time compared to the other two games. Since is being told in flashback format, it's linear and not multi-path like Pandora. It's shorter game to play which can seem like a let down after having played the longer games beforehand.

But the #1 reason people hated the game was the cliffhanger ending. Of course it only took them 16 years to finally get around to continuing the story in Tesla Effect so that's all forgiven now. :)
Samantha


Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.
Good to see you about, Sam!
One Mean, Green-Eyed Fitch.
Another issue with Overseer is that it can be quite a bit harder to get running on modern PCs and OS', particularly the DVD version.

Also, some people had issues with the acting in Overseer. Some loved it, particularly Michael York, but others didn't.
sam10100 wrote:So [Overseer] basically in the same story [as Mean Streets] but with considerably much better graphics and is now a point and click user interface. There's more action and the puzzles are completely different.
More action? Shirley, you gest. They took all of the gun fighting and speeder flying out of it! What action did you mean, Shirley?


Someone else made this observation, and it seems to be true.

UaKM was an adventure game with almost no 'puzzle minigames'- at least not ones that stuck out.
PD introduced the Pandora boxes, each was sealed with a puzzle minigame. They felt integrated into the story.
Overseer didn't really have a lot of reason to have puzzle minigames, but it was a Tex Murphy tradition by then, and so it had them. They didn't feel as well integrated.
Tesla Effect continued this- Giant sliding puzzles to reveal safe combinations.

I may be projecting my thoughts onto everyone else, but I think the puzzles only serve the game when they're well integrated. Overseer had too many that stuck out.

After PD- there was word that the story was going forward with the Chance/Trance/Polarity trilogy. Overseer was not it- and then it became the last one in the series for 16 years.

However, I really like Overseer. If you're not aware, there's a team remaking it. It's a fan effort, so you never know how long (if ever) it will take to come out. But I think we've made some good progress so far. http://www.bigfinishgames.com/productio ... soned-pawn

One last thought- going through the inventory items in Overseer- there are a lot of documents. More documents than anything else. Not exactly the most exciting inventory object.
Gur, Gur bëhet mur.
Well I guess when I said more action, I was referring to the scenes dealing with Slade and desperately trying not to get killed. There was also the part about trying not to get killed in in Gideon's art gallery. I guess I mean the more action style puzzles as opposed to the location puzzles where you take item A from location A to use at location B.

I find the scrolling gun fights and speeder flying to be more tedious than doing the puzzle minigames but that's just me. I guess others might enjoy that type of action more than me.

Yes I'll agree Pandora's puzzle were the most integrated into the story. Overseer's puzzles seemed random things to slow you down from searching a location too fast.
Samantha


Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.