"Proof that being able to hold sixteen treasures at once in an adventure game doesn't bring happiness."

Cranston Manor is probably the most disappointing of the Sierra Hi-Res games; it's higher in quality than Mission: Asteroid, but the first in a series can be excusably bad. Cranston Manor is unrealistic, repetitive, and pointless. Basically, you must find ways to loot a mansion of its treasure to win the game. You start out in a town and once you finagle your way past the gate a huge manor with underground and a second floor awaits. Not bad, so far. But so much of the manor is repetitive. There are too many similar hallways, and too many rooms with doors in the same places, offset by an occasional stair. Then there is a silly ''check'' where you must get a mouse and drop it to shoo away knights in armor(the semi-cute ''You caught the little rascal'' when you pick it back up takes longer than you'd think to get old) that guard rooms and won't let you take items. One of this puzzle should be enough, especially when it's compounded with the hackneyed way in which you coax the mouse into your service. You find yourself almost wanting tension and possible deaths after a while(the sort that made Scott Adams's all-text Pyramid of Doom a winner,) but it's just not there.

How is the text-interface interaction? Well, the Sierra two-word parser is not terribly noxious here, as most of the commands(and puzzles) are simple. To their credit they recognize synonyms ignored before, with GET and TAKE primarily coming to mind. There are the slightly arcane ones--an odd verb is needed to pump water, and ''Lift'' operates a lift, while ''lantern on'' harkens back shades of Mystery House's ''Water on.'' The game also doesn't tell you what some items are supposed to be, which adds an unintentional extra puzzle--the worst is a drawer you must open. ''Is that a lantern or a blender?'' If you're able to get that far, the pulley puzzle near the end to rescue a treasure from the obligatory cave is cute, and the second floor, although it sticks you with a one-way passage it doesn't warn you about, gives the game a semblance of a story, but it's probably too late.

Graphics don't really help the game stand out, although things start well with a junkyard and a gazebo, and there are cute moments like the bridal suite with the mirrors on the ceiling(this offsets the one-way door surprise.) I've mentioned the repetitive hedges, hallways and rooms; the game in general contains too many rooms in the same area that aren't distinguishable, and some details in a room are nonsensical--usually you are supposed to see where the exits are in this sort of game, but in one room there's a pile of rocks that you can just push aside. This wasn't such a problem when the locales were exotic and variety could be faked, but in a more pedestrian game, there had better be variety if there's no decent story. There isn't. There's also a notable lack of people and animals which make the other Sierra games so charming.

Even the ending is unsatisfying; as you never are told how many treasures you need and have no good way to keep track of things, the game makes you feel overall rather driven by greed than adventure. In terms of creativity, Cranston Manor is a clear step backwards from the original Mystery House(no pair of early Sierra games is more similar,) which included plot, other people, and creative if bizarre puzzles.

So we don't leave on a total downer, and as I wanted to do it in one of these reviews, I've decided to include a best-to-worst guide of how I rank the Sierra Hires games--the numbers are Sierra's and chronological by production date, with 1/0 switched.

Wizard and the Princess(2) - Dark Crystal(6) - Time Zone(5) - Mystery House(1) - Ulysses and the Golden Fleece(4) - Cranston Manor(3) - Mission Asteroid(0.)

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/24/01, Updated 10/24/01