Manhunter: New York is a sci-fi/horror adventure game from the folks at Sierra. A foreboding vision of our planet's future. Manhunter: New York evolves around the life of a detective in New Your City two years after alien invasion and consequent world takeover. Contracted by the newly founded alien dictatorship, the detective's goal is to track human activities, monitor their movements, and report subversive activities.
The graphics are EGA, and very blocky by today’s standards. However, they work well, and look good compared to some games of the same time period.
There are some pretty graphic scenes in it.
The sound is mostly “PC Speaker” type sound, MIDI type music with basic sound effects. They work nicely with the game though. It’s amazing what they used to be able to do with only a few tones available.
If you have played any of the King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry or Police Quest games from Sierra, you might think the interface is the same, but this one is a little different. Instead of walking around like the “Quest” series of games, you use the keyboard arrows to move around a little cursor on the screen. When you move it over something you can interact with, it will inform you of your options at the bottom of the screen.
The puzzles vary in difficulty. Some of them you may have to go somewhere else to find the answer. You also use a “laptop” called MAD or “MANHUNTER ASSIGNMENT DEVICE” which lets you search for names and also allows you to track people in the city. You travel to different locations in the city by using a map. There are little squares that blink to indicate places you can visit, and it tells you what they are when you put the cursor on it. Even if you have played it before, it takes quite a while to finish.
It has a pull down menu with help, file save and restore, restart, quit, travel, inventory, sound on/off, joystick and pause options. It also tells you the function keys for each of those commands too.
There aren’t many games around like this one. While it’s very strange, I think it’s very enjoyable and definitely not a waste of time. I’ve played it a couple of times back in the early 90’s and if you like mysteries, solving puzzles, and just like the old games, this one is definitely worth playing.
