From developer Gameloft’s Australian studio, publisher Netflix Games and Houghton Mifflin comes a revival of a series only peripherally familiar to us over here in the UK, that being Carmen Sandiego. The first game in the long running series was originally released on formats of the time in 1985 as Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? by the same software house as Prince of Persia, the now defunct Broderbund. When we say formats of the time, the first game came out on Apple II, C64 and many others including the SNES and Megadrive.
The series has always had an educational bent, with this latest being not a great deal different. Though having encouraged the eleven-year-old child in our household to have a go, he said this newest installment was OK but a bit repetitive. Then he went back to playing Brotato and Balatro. I think we’ve raised him right. Which for us, begs the question, who is this realistically aimed at? Those people who played the original series forty years ago? Or their children and grandchildren?
We suspect that this is more aimed at kids that might’ve watched the 2019 Netflix series on Netflix, hence the graphical stylings being similar to that as well as this being published by them. The format will immediately be familiar to anyone who’s played any of the prior games. Though this is a departure from the norm in that you play as Carmen herself as opposed to ultimately hunting her down at the end of the original game. Is that a spoiler? No more so than revealing that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father we guess.
The formula essentially is a string of globetrotting missions across a variety of apparently random cities where you have a limited window to apprehend the perpetrator. The first mission begins in Mexico City with the theft of a top-secret stealth aircraft. Though as our kid pointed out, why would a plane be in a museum installation fully fuelled for a thief to pinch?
We have to confess we took a chance on Carmen Sandiego based on the trailer. It made it look like a decent enough action platformer. However, it led us down the garden path a little. You’re looking at a series of minigames strung together with expository text. You have to visit three locations within each city, being drip fed clues as to where the thief has gone next as well as clues to their physical appearance and other attributes like phobias.
You have to narrow down the V.I.L.E. (aka Villains International League of Evil) suspects in a submenu that brings to mind Guess Who? in some regards. It’s also possible that the rumours you’ve been given by people in the cities are in fact, incorrect. We failed at the final hurdle a few times, purely due to not having sufficient reliable intelligence to narrow down our list of subjects to be able to issue a warrant for their arrest.
In the event you’re correct, you’ll arrest the perp with a daft little animation where they cuss you out. In a strictly family safe manner of course. Get it wrong, you fail the mission and have to try again. A bit annoying if you’ve been unlucky with the clues you’ve been given. That said, you’ll be very familiar with the areas you need to revisit, so the only things you’ll need to tackle are the minigames. These range from the easy hacking minigame to the massive chore of the horrible rerouting of circuitry. You get the illusion of traversal as suggested in the misleading trailer from the simplistic hang glider sections and the rooftop grappling hook minigames. The stealth minigame is fun enough at least.
The facts you garner throughout are all generally very much of an educational bent although with a Lonely Planet sort of flavour in terms of the trivia aspect. You’re quizzed occasionally, but these sections are the exception from the rule.
As well as the main campaign missions with the modern graphical style, you have a bunch of throwback missions that ape the original game series in terms of their graphical pixel art. They incorporate the new style minigames from the main campaign at least. More importantly, they also yield extra experience points that allow you to level up. This part being crucial to being able to unlock subsequent campaign levels.
They act as a nice change of pace if nothing else and for anyone longer in the tooth, a nice nostalgia trip. There’s even the bonus level Where In The World that is a nice throwback to the original game format.
Including all the little extras, we played Carmen Sandiego for around eight hours, though given the £24.99 price tag, we’re not convinced that players will necessarily plump for it. It might well tickle the nostalgia itch for some, but we’re not sure that Carmen Sandiego will be particularly enticing for many. Heck, there’s not even a platinum trophy for your trouble if you do as we did and played everything that the game had to offer.
At the time of writing, the final campaign mission Fallen Idol isn’t yet available, we hope it’ll be free to play rather than paid for DLC. Quite why that isn’t included at the outset, we’re not entirely sure.
In conclusion, Carmen Sandiego is very much an educational game, the so-called edutainment in fact. It doesn’t seem to know whether to aim for fans of the recent Netflix series or to go for the nostalgia angle. As a result, it straddles both camps being something of a compromise. The repetitive format left our kid cold and we suspect it will do the same if players try to mainline it as we did for the purposes of this review. Probably best left to short play sessions in that regard anyway.
Summary
Carmen Sandiego is at once a tie-in to Netflix’s recent series as well as a throwback to Broderbund’s 1985 classic edutainment title. It doesn’t quite know who its aimed at though, whether it be current kids or their parents. Some minigames are fun, others are turgid. It’s best left to shorter play sessions anyway. We just fear it won’t do quite as well outside of America as the brand doesn’t quite hold the same cache on this side of the Atlantic.
