Revisiting a game series from a young man is like exploring the basement of a childhood home. Sieve through boxes and shelves and old memories come back. This happened when I started playing Carmen Sandiego, the latest game in the 40-year multimedia series. I was once again eight years old when the master thief appeared on screen with her iconic trench coat and fedora. My face went inch from the computer screen to solve Carmen’s latest capers using early knowledge of mathematics, geography and history. Forty years later, Carmen San Diego gives us the same thrill of solving puzzles by gathering clues, even if some of the contemporary additions to the visual novel interface misses their mark.
As a former child gum show, collected from geography grasping runs around the world and tracking the world’s worst criminals, I was ready to revisit Carmen San Diego Ves with the release of this new adventure of the same name from Gameloft. You need story clues from the animated Netflix series that concludes in 2021, emulating the visual style of the manga, but you don’t need to know anything about Carmen’s backstory and the evil organization’s backstory to enjoy her latest quests. Importantly, this is the first time in a long-term series in which players can step into Carmen’s shoes and wear the famous Fedora, but there’s no big difference in the hunt for con artists.
The series started as an Edoutainment game, but Modern Carmen San Diego combines a quick-time event in puzzle solved, a dash of third-person top-down exploration, and (of course!) the occasional trivia questions. In some ways, the new elements make the world feel bigger and more exciting than the early DOS iterations. It’s not just clicking on the icons that represent key locations, analyzing the dialogue and answering questions that aren’t out of place in the fifth grade final exam. That being said, I wouldn’t have missed it if it didn’t include new activities like rooftop gliding and rooftop efforts.
When following despicable thieves from one country to the next, we need to gather two types of clues. It will help you understand where to go next, and help you narrow down the list of suspects in the ACME Detective Agency database. In the 80s and 90s, the Carmen San Diego Game relied on a physical yearbook full of geographical and historical facts that helped them answer in-game trivia questions and understand the meaning of the cues. This time, all of that information is kept in the game itself.
You can find data such as airport codes, exports, Japanese language, government structure and more throughout the campaign. This self-constructed yearbook is useful when you’re in the tail of a sleazy villain and you need to decide what to do next. There are usually only a handful of clues, such as the color and pattern of the flag, the spoken language, or whether residents will drive on the left or right side of the road. Use these cues to determine your next city from three offered options:
Similarly, we use personal information to narrow down the criminals behind each caper. A rethinked ACME database streamlines this process smoothly. You can easily rule out suspects based on details about hair and eye color, hobbies, favorite foods and fear. There’s only one left, and I’m very happy to cut down the list of suspects in my 30s until I issue a warrant for my arrest. Make sure you have the right person. Otherwise, it’s a game for Carmen (and time to start over for you).
Find clues by exploring key spots across a range of exotic locations around the world, from New Orleans to Barcelona, Singapore and Brisbane. This is similar to the mechanics of early games, but this time there’s a little more room for exploration and choice. In some places, Carmen wanders, questions multiple witnesses and looks for local trivia that will help later. You can’t choose which activity will occur where, but there are more actions involved than before.
All cases have several chapters involving individual robbers connected by comprehensive villains. The incident begins with a crime scene, whether the crime is the theft of a Japanese bullet train or whether or not the city’s free Wi-Fi hotspot will be replaced with a paid “VI-FI” version. Each city can visit three locations and gather clues that will take you one step closer to solving a case.
Here’s how it actually works: Visiting landmarks and districts within the city, such as the statue of Merlion in Singapore and a Viking-themed Museum in Reykjavik, requires that you complete pre-determined activities to uncover clues about the location. Sometimes it means roaming around, questioning suspects and witnesses, and often picking up geographical fun facts. You may also need to complete hacks and rock picking puzzles, or use Carmen hang gliders and grappling hooks.
Some of these gameplay elements are more fun than other games. Hacking the safe and completing the puzzle to boost wireless signals was satisfying, but more physical activity is not particularly thrilling on the rails. There are certain beef with grappling hook mini game. This requires you to press a simple button when the icons are aligned on the screen. The problem is that grappling is either too simple or frustrating and insensitive, as these icons can move irregularly. Also, there are totally… problematic hang gliding activities, but I would like to see fewer physical gameplay elements than forced action that feels like filler. Instead, they would have been totally pleased with more brain teasers.
Though not as merciless as the 1985 iteration, it could fail the Carmen San Diego case. The clock is always ticking. Usually there are 5-7 days to resolve each case, and all activities take time. If you missed a critical clue and ended up flying to Singapore when you think you should be in Buenos Aires, you have just wasted 11 hours. If you run out of time, the thief will run away and you will have to redo the case. However, I never really felt like crunching the time for the main campaign. I usually had at least one day, if not a few.
Carmen Sandiego has other ways to fail cases, and these represent more threats in my playthrough. If you notice by blaming the sleazy lucky, you just missed important evidence. Without one clue, you won’t blow the case off, but once you do that several times, you don’t have enough information to arrest you. Most of the time I was able to identify the exact moment that blew it away. Following the mark was too late and we didn’t pay enough attention to actions that required accurate button presses. Otherwise, I realized that in my database some suspects were still some suspects and I didn’t know where I missed the clue.
I made a few mistakes, but the main campaign is not what I would call challenging. However, considering the history of the series as a child’s educational resource, I might not be a target audience. I was able to see my parents and kids playing together at Carmen San Diego, and I could see them building critical thinking skills and having a great time as their parents hone their primary school geography. And while it’s on the simpler side, Carmen San Diego never feels ridiculous.
You are lucky to be with my fellow Olds, who are looking for more challenges. Apart from the main campaign, you can explore the ACME files for what is said to be a cold case dating back to the 80s. These cases employ modern systems that filter out suspects and narrow down piers around the world, but are presented in retro pixel art style, injecting questions that may feel like a teacher slaps a pop quiz on a desk. Quick, what is the largest island in the Caribbean? Which country was the largest producer of wheat and rice in 1985? What is 4x13x80? (Thankfully, despite what the teacher told me, I have a calculator in my pocket everywhere.)
Because the ACME files use a simplified interface, it felt like they had returned to the front of their family computers in the early 90s to desperately paging physical books and find answers. This time, Google was my yearbook. This may make retro cases seem easier than campaign cases, but in reality it’s even more difficult, especially in time crunches. I actually ran out of time with the ACME file, but after seeing the ticks for the last few hours, I filled me with determination to make it better the next time. Overall, these cases are smart additions that add variety to the experience and provide comfortable fan service.
The historic case is drawn from the same list of cities as the main campaign, and only a few hours are visible anywhere in the world where Carmen San Diego can visit. I don’t know why they couldn’t expand her global reach in their main campaign, but as a result, after a while, all the environments start to repeat a bit. Still, every city is always worth looking at a different perspective, as there are often new facts to find when revisiting.
Maybe it’s a nostalgia goggle, but none of these shortcomings bothered me to the point of wanting to stop playing. Each chapter is very paced and feels like it’s constantly progressing. I love games where you think of ways to get out of the problem. For the most part, that’s exactly what Carmen San Diego demands from his players.
However, it’s a shame that the campaign ends quite abruptly. There’s another capers taking part in a free DLC release later this year, but it was unpleasant to see “coming soon” on the menu of the finished, published game, ready for the final mystery. The story doesn’t feel like it’s still a natural conclusion, but there’s still 15 hours of content between the campaign and the ACME file. After the initial confusion I took this as an opportunity to explore older cases and wait for the day when I could complete Carmen’s adventures.
