Revisiting a game collection out of your youth is like exploring the basement in your childhood home. As you sift via the packing containers and cabinets, outdated reminiscences come flooding back — which is precisely what occurred as I began taking part in Carmen Sandiego, the latest game in a multimedia collection that spans 4 many years. When the grasp thief appeared onscreen in her iconic trenchcoat and fedora, I used to be eight years outdated again, my face inches from a pc display as I used my nascent data of math, geography, and historical past to unravel Carmen’s latest caper. 40 years later, Carmen Sandiego offers me that very same thrill of fixing puzzles by accumulating clues, even when some of the trendy additions to the visible novel-esque interface miss their mark.
As a former baby gumshoe whose grasp of geography was gleaned from monitoring down the world’s worst criminals as they scurried across the globe, I used to be more than able to revisit the Carmen Sandiego-verse with the release of this eponymous new journey from Gameloft. Though it takes some story cues from the animated Netflix collection that wrapped up in 2021 — and emulates its cartoony visible fashion — it’s not essential to know something about Carmen’s backstory with the evil group VILE to take pleasure in her latest quest. Significantly, that is the primary time within the long-running collection that gamers get to step into Carmen’s sneakers and don her well-known fedora, but it surely doesn’t make a actual distinction to the crook-hunting formulation.
While the collection obtained its begin as an edutainment game, fashionable Carmen Sandiego is a combine of puzzle-solving, quick-time occasions, a sprint of third-person top-down exploration, and (of course!) the occasional trivia query. In some methods, the newer components make the world really feel larger and more thrilling than its early DOS iterations; there’s more to do than merely click on on icons representing key areas, parse via dialogue, and reply questions that wouldn’t be out of place on a fifth-grade ultimate examination. That stated, I wouldn’t have missed new actions like hang-gliding and grappling from rooftop to rooftop in the event that they weren’t included.
As you observe VILE thieves from one nation to the subsequent, you’ll need to gather two sorts of clues: people who help them work out the place to go subsequent, and people who help slender down the checklist of suspects within the ACME detective company’s database. In the ’80s and ’90s, Carmen Sandiego video games relied on bodily almanacs full of geographical and historic details to help reply the in-game trivia questions and work out what their clues meant. This time round, all of that data is saved throughout the game itself.
Throughout the marketing campaign, you’ll discover items of information like airport codes, exports, national languages, authorities buildings, and more. This self-built almanac is useful once you’re on a VILE villain’s tail and need to resolve what to do subsequent. Typically, you’ll have a handful of clues to go by — a colour or sample on the flag, the spoken language, or whether or not residents drive on the left or proper facet of the highway. You’ll use these clues to find out your subsequent metropolis from three supplied decisions.
Similarly, you’ll use private data to slender down the legal behind every caper. The reimagined ACME Database makes this course of easy and streamlined; you possibly can simply filter out suspects based mostly on particulars about their hair and eye colours, hobbies, favourite meals, and fears. It’s fairly satisfying to whittle down a checklist of 30-something suspects till there’s just one remaining and challenge a warrant for his or her arrest. Just make sure you have got the correct particular person, in any other case it’s game over for Carmen (and time to start out over for you).
Clues are discovered by exploring key spots all through a selection of unique areas across the globe, from New Orleans to Barcelona to Singapore to Brisbane, with a few stops in between. This is just like how the early video games labored, however there’s a bit more room for exploration and making decisions this time round. In some locations, Carmen will get to wander round, query a number of witnesses, and hunt down native trivia that would come in useful later. You don’t get to decide on which actions occur by which location, however there’s more action concerned than there was once.
Every case has a number of chapters with particular person heists linked by an overarching villain. The circumstances begin out on the scene of the crime, whether or not that crime is the theft of a Japanese bullet practice, or the substitute of a metropolis’s free Wi-Fi hotspots with paid “Vi-Fi” variations. In every metropolis, you possibly can go to three areas to gather clues that carry you one step nearer to fixing the case.
Here’s how it really works in follow: As you go to every of the in-city landmarks and districts, akin to Singapore’s Merlion statue, or a viking-themed museum in Reykjavik, you’ll need to finish pre-determined actions to uncover that location’s clues. Sometimes, meaning strolling round and questioning suspects and witnesses, typically selecting up some geographical enjoyable details alongside the best way. Other occasions, you could have to finish a hacking or lock-picking puzzle or use Carmen’s hold glider or grappling hook.
Some of these gameplay components are more enjoyable than others. Completing puzzles to hack safes or increase wi-fi alerts was satisfying, however the more bodily actions are totally on rails and never notably thrilling. I’ve a specific beef with the grappling hook mini-game, which requires a easy button press as icons align in your display. The downside is, these icons typically transfer erratically, so grappling is both means too easy or frustratingly obtuse. There’s additionally a hang-gliding exercise that’s completely… high-quality, however I’d fairly have fewer gameplay components which are more fleshed out than some compelled action that appears like filler. I might have been completely pleased with more brain-teasers as a substitute.
Though not as unforgiving because the 1985 iteration, it’s attainable to fail circumstances in Carmen Sandiego. The clock is all the time ticking. You sometimes have 5 or seven days to unravel every case, and all of your actions take time — as does flying from one metropolis to the subsequent. If you missed a vital clue and ended up flying to Singapore once you’re speculated to be in Buenos Aires, you simply wasted 11 hours. If you run out of time, the thief will get away and it’s important to begin the case over. However, I by no means actually felt the time crunch in the primary marketing campaign; I sometimes had at the least a day left over, if not a number of.
There are different methods to fail circumstances in Carmen Sandiego, and these represented more of a risk in my playthrough. If you’re pickpocketing a VILE lackey and get observed, you’ve simply missed out on a key piece of proof. Missing one clue received’t blow your case, however do this a few occasions and also you received’t have enough data to make an arrest. Most of the time, I may pinpoint the precise second once I blew it — I used to be too gradual when following a mark, I didn’t pay close enough consideration to actions that required exact button presses. Other occasions, I discovered myself on the finish with a number of suspects nonetheless in my database and no thought the place I missed a clue.
Though I did make some errors, the primary marketing campaign isn’t precisely what I’d call difficult. But contemplating the collection’ historical past as a youngsters’s academic useful resource, I is probably not the target market. I may see mother and father and children taking part in via Carmen Sandiego collectively and having a great time as youngsters build vital considering expertise and fogeys brush up on elementary-school geography. And although it’s on the less complicated facet, Carmen Sandiego by no means feels dumbed down.
For my fellow olds in search of more of a problem, you’re in luck. Aside from the primary marketing campaign, you possibly can discover the ACME Files for what we’re instructed are chilly circumstances courting back to the ’80s. These circumstances have adopted the trendy methods for filtering out suspects and jetting world wide, however they’re introduced in a retro, pixel artwork fashion — and injected with questions which may make you are feeling such as you’re back in class and your trainer simply slapped a pop quiz in your desk. Quick, what’s the most important island within the Caribbean? Which nation was the most important producer of wheat and rice back in 1985? What’s 4x13x80? (Thankfully, regardless of what my lecturers instructed me, I do have a calculator in my pocket all over the place I am going.)
The ACME Files use a simplified interface that made me really feel like I used to be back in entrance of my household pc within the early ’90s frantically paging via a bodily ebook to seek out the solutions. This time round, Google was my almanac. That may make the retro circumstances appear simpler than these of the marketing campaign, however they’re truly more tough, notably the time crunch. I truly did run out of time within the ACME Files, and watching these previous few hours tick away stuffed me with a willpower to do it higher subsequent time. Overall, these circumstances are a good addition that add selection to the expertise and supply some comforting fan service.
The historic circumstances pull from the identical checklist of cities as the primary marketing campaign, and it’s solely a few hours earlier than you’ve seen all over the place on the earth that Carmen Sandiego can go to. I’m not sure why they couldn’t have expanded her world attain in the primary marketing campaign, but it surely leads to each atmosphere feeling a bit repetitive after a whereas. Still, there are sometimes new details to seek out upon revisiting, so each metropolis is all the time value one other look.
Maybe it’s the nostalgia goggles, however none of these shortcomings bothered me enough to make me wish to stop taking part in. Each chapter is paced rather well, so it all the time feels such as you’re making progress. I really like video games that make you suppose your means out of issues, and for essentially the most half, that’s precisely what Carmen Sandiego calls for of the participant.
It’s a disgrace, nevertheless, that the marketing campaign ends fairly abruptly. There’s one other caper coming in a free DLC release later this yr, but it surely was jarring to gear up for the ultimate thriller and see “Coming Soon” within the menu of a accomplished, publicly launched game. The story doesn’t really feel prefer it’s reached a pure conclusion but, however there’s nonetheless a good 15 hours of content material between the marketing campaign and the ACME Files — even more when you full all of the chilly circumstances from means back when. After my initial confusion, I took this as an alternative to discover more outdated circumstances and await the day once I can full Carmen’s journey.