Now that there's a bargain promo for them, I'm thinking about buying the three newest Tex Murphy games (I already own the Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum set), but I'd like to get a better sense of what I'm buying. My biggest problem with adventure games is that, since they are completely linear and can only be resolved in one way, you can really only play them once. On top of that, they tend to be short, so you could be paying ten bucks for two hours of play.
I'd like to get an estimate of just how long it takes to finish each of the Tex murphy games before I buy any of them. Six dollars isn't a lot of money, but there are other things on this site I could buy for the same amount that can absrob more time and have more replay value.

Tex murphy Under a killing moon takes just over 3 and a half hours if you know exactly what your doing, I figured this out from a longplay I was watching of it. So I would say 4-6 hours if you don't get too stuck and depending how good you are at point and click adventures. Can't really say for the other games.

UAKM took me quite a long time, it seemed. Six hours is probably about right.
It was a very good game. I highly recommend UAKM... still need to play the others.

I've never played any.
Was hoping for GOG to release a bundle with all of them with a slightly bigger discount.
However, as they haven't I am wondering which ones to get.
I think that getting OAKM and Pandora would be safe.
Not sure about Overseer and the old ones.
What's people's views on that?
Cheers,
Shao

The general opinion (with which I happen to agree) seems to be that Under A Killing Moon and Pandora Directive are the best games in the series. As a starting point, UAKM is perfect (it's what introduced most of us to Tex).

I've often wondered how long adventure games take on your first playthrough. I wish there was a clock. I think that back in Jr. High and High School, I quite possibly spent 50+ hours on some relatively simple games such as Freddy Pharkas and Conquests of Camelot. Certainly at least 30.
Even the really easy Leisure Suit Larry 5...I remember I started it as soon as I got home from school one day, and finished it late that night. It was ~3:00 to ~midnight, so even adjusting for breaks and such that's 7.5 hours for what was a really easy game.
Obviously I wasn't great at adventures when I was first starting out, but still. I believe I played UAKM recently almost every night for a couple of hours (at least) until I finished it. I'd venture to say it may have been well over 10 hours, even though I'm good at adventure games (used an in-game hint just once and it was just a dumb mistake not noticing something in the environment).
I have 2 chapters left on Pandora Directive, so I'll try to time those and also to time some of my other games in the future.
Just because a second run-through can take an hour and a half does not mean that the real average number for a first play is anywhere near that low. Super Mario Bros. can be beaten in a few minutes, but how long does it take to build up that skill?
Is there some sort of stopwatch thing you can download to help with this?

Sale ends tomorrow night. Any more comments?

My advise would be if you want to play these games get them now while they are on sale. It doesn't really matter how short a game is its how much fun and what you get out of it. I haven't actually played Tex Murphy games as I dislike the setting but I payed £30 just so I could play the Monkey Island 1+2 games again and would of been willing to pay double that. Monkey Island was only roughly 5 hours long but a great experiance even on a replay. In the end its cheaper then a cinema ticket.

Get them now!! Don't even think about it. Pandora Directive has several paths and endings and the story of the whole series is incredible. I'm sure you'll want to replay them in a couple of months/years. I bought them again on gog.com even if i already have the boxed versions. No disc-swapping, no drm and vista compatible.

Well, I got OAKM and Pandora. Glad I stopped at 2. Can't get into OAKM at the moment - the setting is not my kinda thing.
But I'll give it a try again later.

Well, I went ahead and bought all three games. I hope this wasn't a mistake.

I very highly doubt you will be disappointed. These games are adventure gaming at its pinnacle!
I recommend playing UaKM before Pandora if you want to recognize characters that overlap between the two, but if you don't care about that, Pandora is the best game in the series by far, and it has 3 different main game paths and 7 different endings! Overseer and UaKM are very good..the only thing is Overseer carries a lot of plot from Mean Streets as a remake, although Overseer has its own elements to it as well.
As for hours of game play, it depends on how much you will use hints. I use hints at times but not if i'm just stuck for a few minutes, and I got probably around 20 hours of game play out of Pandora my first time through, maybe even more! And that was just on one main game path, after that I tried for the other two main game paths and for all 7 endings!
Overseer, I went through it all the way for the first time, and I have played Mean Streets so I knew some of the plot and places to go (although at times I had forgotten, and at times it was different, but I didn't use hints liberally, although I did use hints a few times), and I got about 13-15 hours of game play out of it, it took me a week of a couple of hours every evening.
UaKM, I have yet to beat that game, I am about 2/3 of the way through, but it is the shortest (although it was the first out of the three), and I have played for about 6 hours.
If you are quick at looking at hints and skip every puzzle your results may be shorter (although not by a ton), and if you refuse to look at hints your play times may be longer. There is also a "Gamer" mode with perks on each of them (except possibly UaKM, I don't recall if it has Gamer mode or not), which disallows hints, so you can replay in that Gamer mode after you have beat them the first time.
All of these games are 5 stars in my book, even today, you will not be disappointed at all.

I played Mean Streets 5 and a half years ago, and I doubt I'm going to remember anything at all when I play Overseer.