Manhunter: New York

The Good
Cool sci-fi adventure where an alien race called the Orbs has invaded the world. You work as a manhunter in NYC who hunts down troublesome humans for the aliens.

The game has a great setting in the crumbling conquered city of New York. There is some detective work to be done at each crime scene which is well presented as you find one mutilated body after another.

The game while being one of Sierra's adventure games does not require the typing of the other games to solve puzzles. But at the time of this game mouse was not supported, the interface could REALLY use a mouse to speed things up and make it easier to use, however the joystick/keyboard combo worked fine in its time, it wasn't until I started playing mouse based games that I realized how slow this game was without a mouse option.

The Bad
While the game had a cool setting and murder puzzles that remind me of the movie Blade Runner what was not so cool was the annoying mazes and arcade sequences that continually popped up.

These arcade games were either easy or tedious and always boring, luckily you could save in the middle of one to speed your progress in case you died. Having arcade sequences in an adventure game is not bad but when they are poorly made and boring they become a chore and would detract from my enjoyment of the game (anyone remember the thugs in the alley?).

What was worse were the mazes in the game, maps of them could be found in the game so getting out of them wasn't a problem. What bugged me was how the interface of the game could make you very disoriented as you could not easily figure out which direction was "up", so you had to very carefully chart your progress.

The game presents a pretty serious story and has a lot of grusome murders but the designers flake out on making this a fully adult game by doing stuff like trying to make a bloody corpse seem a little more "funny" by having a purple tongue hang out of the mouth or by having.

Also what bugged me was how you go from being an agent of the Orb to fighting against the aliens. Of course we expect to be rid the alien menace at the end of the game but the game does not present as to WHY you switch sides (other than aliens are bad). You go from one case to another and learn more about an anti-alien group you are hunting but there is nothing really compelling you to switch sides until late in the game. I would have liked more of a build up of evidence against the aliens, perhaps some more conversation and a cut scene or two could have filled in the holes.

The Bottom Line
Likeable game was a bit of ground breaker for its interface. But a decent game is spoiled by some really bad arcade games and some gaps in the story.

The Good
Gotta love a game that dates itself. Reminds me of the movie Escape From New York, which was set in 1995, if memory serves.

But, I digress.

Manhunter came about during an odd "grey area" of Sierra's game development. It seems that they wanted to move away from a parser-driven interface, and make something more modern; a "point and click" game.

Problem was, mice weren't in common use at the time.

So Manhunter (and its sequel, Manhunter: San Fransisco) used a keyboard-based "mouse interface".

Basically, your cursor was a flashing orb. You moved it around the screen with the arrow keys; whenever you floated over a hotspot, the orb would turn into a grabby-hand or an arrow. You'd then click... sorry, I mean, hit enter, to confirm the "use item" or "move in this direction" action.

Now, with the interface description aside..... This game, on the surface, rocked. New York (and, presumeably, the rest of the world) have been invaded by an alien race called the Orbs. The Orbs, who look like large floating eyeballs, have bombed New York practically back into the stone age, and have enforced strict laws on mankind. No humans must ever speak. All humans will wear concealing, hooded robes, to hide their disgusting forms. Play nice with each other, and maybe we won't turn your planet into a very small, very dense sphere.

All hail our alien masters!

ahem

Anyway, in this game, you play the role of a Manhunter employed by the Orbs; your job is to track down and identify criminals, and submit their identity to the Orb Alliance. You're sort of like a police detective, and despite its setting, the game plays out like a gritty detective story. Or, it tries to, anyway.

The game takes place over four days; at the beginning of each day, you're awakened by an Orb floating into your apartment (as if it owned the place), and giving you an assignment to track down a criminal. Using your trusty laptop computer, you can view the latest tracking data for these criminals (the Orbs have oh-so-helpfully implanted all humans with tracking devices), and then start figuring out what they were doing, and who they are.

As the days pass, and as you follow various criminal's trails, you discover that maybe our new alien masters aren't so benevolent after all. What're you gonna do about it?

The Bad
Oh, man, where to begin.

First of all, while I loved this game's story, the game developers really botched the job. This game is almost nothing but mazes followed by arcade sequences, followed by mazes, followed by arcade sequences, followed by mazes.... You get the idea.

And another big gripe is the total lack of mouse support. I mean, sure, mice weren't common when this game was made, so they had to give you keyboard controls to move your cursor around. But would it have really been so difficult to actually add mouse support?! I mean, seriously, where's the logic in making a game that pretends to be mouse-based, if you don't actually support mice at all? Sheesh!

Sorry, I'm ranting. Where was I.... Ah, yes.

At one point in time, Sierra was re-releasing some of their "classics" with new interfaces. For example, Space Quest 1 was given a massive facelift, and converted from a CGA game with a text-parser interface into a VGA game with a mouse interface (using the same engine used for nearly every game after, and including, King's Quest 5.) I really, really wish Sierra had re-done Manhunter in such a fashion. Maybe add more "plot", and remove a bunch of the maze-and-arcade "filler".

But, alas, such was not to be. More's the pity.

The Bottom Line
I would say that this game has an excellent story, and a very unique world. Especially for Sierra. I'd love nothing more than to see a movie based on this game, or even a book or two. Unfortunately, the actual game experience is extremely short.

It's also maddeningly frustrating; I'd strongly suggest not even trying to solve the Central Park puzzle, and using a walkthrough instead. Trust me, you'll know it when you run into it, and you'll be glad you've consulted a walkthrough.

The Good
The scenario itself was quite fun. You were working as an investigator in New York for aliens named Orbs. The gaming interface required no keyboard input and showed that you could actually play adventure games without typing up every command. It probably served as a precursor to King's Quest V's interface.

If I remember right, the manual was really cool, it was in fluorescent yellow and consisted as a book prepared by the Orbs for human investigators.

The Bad
This, along with Manhunter 2, was one of the last games made with Sierra's adventure game interpreter. This means that there was no sound card support (Editors's note: There was additional 3-voice sound if you had a PCjr/Tandy) and low resolution graphics. Back in 1989, many games (including some from Sierra) started supporting sound cards and the EGA, so I guess this one looked pale compared to other high tech games released back then. The graphics were nice, but they would have been a lot better in 320x200.

The Bottom Line
If you liked the movie Escape from New York, you'll defintely like this game, as it recreates the same atmosphere in the Big Apple. It shows a lot of New York landmarks either destroyed or occupied by aliens. Working for the vilians is also very fun!