Manhunter: New York and Manhunter: San Francisco (Forgotten Diamonds)

Back in the adventure game days, Sierra On-Line was one of the top dogs in PC gaming.  Lucas Arts was a major competitor, but Sierra had franchises that were hard to topple.  If a game had the word "quest" in the title, it was a Sierra hallmark: King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, and Quest for Glory (formerly Hero's Quest, but changed to avoid confusion with the board game HeroQuest) were among their best-sellers.  They also had cult favorites like Leisure Suit Larry, and the awesomely bad Phantasmagoria FMV games.

Bad acting, bad bluescreen, bad puzzles, bad CGI... sign me up!

There were a few series, however, that didn't get far off the ground, because Sierra wanted to concentrate on sequelizing their biggest sellers, so some of the most intriguing games got forgotten.  Among them was the Manhunter series, a pair of sci-fi/horror adventures.

Phantasmagoria becomes a cult classic, and this gets left in the dust? There is no justice in the world.

In the far-off future year of 2004, Earth has been invaded by an alien race of giant flying eyeballs called Orbs, and humanity has been enslaved.  All humans are required to wear same-looking robes, and remain completely silent at all times.  Chips are implanted in their necks for easy tracking.

You are a Manhunter, and your task is to solve crimes being committed by a resistance group.  You get a laptop to help you, and you must investigate crime scenes and try to figure out the identity of murderers and terrorists.  The problem is that the GPS trackers in people's necks only track bodies, but don't give IDs, so you can watch logs and track individuals, but you can't tell who they are without some detective work.

Something something political joke.

And although you start off working for the Orbs, you soon become embroiled in a deeper mystery that reverses your allegiance and forces you to commit crimes yourself, unraveling new strands that show even more horrifying evildoings of the Orbs (as if just enslaving the human race wasn't bad enough).

Thrown in the mix are a variety of minigames to keep you on your toes.  These are generally quick reflex games, like one where you must throw knives between a man's fingers, to stealth games, like sneaking through a warehouse and avoiding robot guards.  The minigames generally can have their difficulty settings changed, so if you find one too hard, you aren't stuck.

Hint: Always put this one on Easy mode.

Even if you lose these, or die in any other nasty way, it wasn't a big deal like in most of Sierra's other games of the time.  In King's Quest, for instance, you had to save your game every couple of minutes so you could load if you died.  In the Manhunter games, you were brought back to a point shortly before your death automatically, so saving was only to quit and come back later.  Unfortunately, like other Sierra games of its day, you could get stuck being a dead man walking, so strategically placing a few saves is still a necessity.  This is one of the only flaws in the games, though by today's standards, it's quite a big one.

Excusing the arcade-style minigames, most of the game is searching for clues and trying to put together different signals and symbols.  Since you can't talk (and neither can anyone else), you either have to communicate by writing, vague hand signals, or showing important objects off to gain the trust of suspects, witnesses, and others in the resistance.  Keep a pad of paper handy and take a lot of notes.

Every word of this confused me as a kid.

Though the Manhunter games keep you in suspense, and can be pretty creepy and frightening at times, there are plenty of light-hearted moments to relieve the tension, as well, usually by way of Warner Brothers-esque slapstick.  My favorite funny bits, however, are very dark and very subtle bits of text.  In those cases, the jokes are some serious implications and raise the stakes when you understand them.  Though I won't give an example so as not to ruin anything, I will say that if you catch the jokes, you'll be laughing your head off and your heart will be pounding in fear at the same time.

This, however, is not a funny bit.  This bit will make you cry.  No, seriously.

The puzzle-solving can be quite devious, and require a fair bit of out-of-the-box thinking, though nothing as ridiculous or unfair as some other of Sierra's games, so rarely will you get stuck for too long, as long as you understand what you're looking at.  Oftentimes a shift in perspective is all you need.

It may have taken me slightly more than four years to figure out how to get past this screen.  I am ashamed.

Although they are not numbered, Manhunter: New York is the first game, and Manhunter: San Francisco is the second, picking up moments after New York ends.  A third Manhunter game was meant to be set in London, but it was cancelled in favor of continuing other Sierra franchises.  The Manhunter games did not sell as well as King's Quest or Space Quest, so they were dropped.  It's sad, really, because they were extremely original, spooky, funny, and stick with you for a long time.  I've had more than one dream inspired by these games.

Look for them on abandonware sites, and you can probably find them.  It also helps if you have a beepy-boopy internal speaker for the sound.  Surprisingly good music, too!

Also, this is the least gory crime scene you will see.  Be prepared for lots of blood.