so this was the very last Carmen Sandiego game that was released for PC (we wouldn't have another game of any kind released until that iPhone game came out in 2008, and then there was the exciting Facebook game that was online for 11 months on Facebook, then there was the Math game for the Wii which I haven't played, and Carmen Sandiego returns which I haven't played I guess it's too late for that), and it was released in November of 2001, which makes that scene where our detectives are in New York ALL THE MORE AWKWARD.

Gameplay and Story: So here we follow two agents working for ACME, there's Shadow Hawkins a recent graduate of ACME Academy, and there's Julia Argent (this is where she came from Netflix Carmen fans) and she was Carmen Sandiego's former partner, and our adventure begins where we catch Carmen stealing a rare copy of the Travels of Marco Polo and thus starts an adventure around the world, where the book is not the only loot that is stolen, we find out all the loots have something in common and it leads to an even bigger treasure. Oh and along the way we collect the gadgets that we will use along the way like a grappling hook and this looking flashlight that I must admit I could even use.

Character development: I'm going to make a special category here, this is the first and only time we play as the detective (or detectives) we aren't really the detective this time around, but couldn't they have written the characters a little better? Hawkins came off as kind of cocky, Julia came off as rather whiney (I mean yes I get it apparently it's been years since she and Carmen worked together, but she's still having a hard time dealing with Carmen defecting from ACME, and yet to this day we don't know why....especially since in Netflix Carmen she doesn't join ACME at all, because *spoiler alert* she would never work for the person that killed her father (the chief had shot him when she thought he was pulling out a gun but it was actually his car keys....well at least Carmen made the Chief aware of what she had done before the series ended, kind of wish they did some kind of what if, like what if the Chief saved baby Carmen instead of Shadow-san...good god we probably would have been in the same situation, and she probably would have been even worse than she was when she bailed from VILE) oh yeah and Carmen is kind of an a**h*** in this game (pardon my language) but then again we see alot more of her in this game than in most of the games, even more in the games with Chase Devineaux, even more than in the games with the game show Chief, but I'm sure we all shared this Chief's frustration whenever Carmen interrupted a communication transmission.

Graphics: The characters are drawn in 2D but..man it's actually hard hard to describe the backgrounds they're actually well drawn.

Soundtrack: Well for background music they recycled the background music that was used in the Where in the World 3.5 game (however we only hear them briefly) but I guess the Smithsonian folkways people are probably pushovers, however there is a new track though, that was used for Petra, Jordan, this country was NEVER used in any of the major PC releases so I'll give The Learning Company credit for doing something new, sometimes when we click on people in certain countries they will greet us in their native language, another thing that was carried over from the World 3.5 game was the Language translator thing but we don't get the trivia thing that would make Robocrook come out to play. Oh yeah I forgot they also added Antarctica as a country but they don't get a soundtrack.

Addictive: Even this game wasn't immune from an Easter Egg Hunt in the second case we see an article about Carmen competing on a game show as a child.....hmmm Carmen on a game show BOY DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR, and that kind of lit up for me because, after I watched the dvd of the Where on Earth episode I went to Youtube to see if I could watch the rest, however there weren't a lot of episodes on the site at the time, but there were quite a few episodes of the game show on the site so...you know what I'll talk about this in another review. I'll be honest even though I enjoyed the game I only played it less than a handful of times, I didn't play it again until 2019 when I was doing it just to complete everything because I had played everything else (and even that took awhile to get going)

Depth: So we get seven cases, and again it depends on how long it will take you to solve a case and recover loot.

Difficulty: I will admit I did have some difficulty at first especially with the Chinese Medicine task, thank god for the internet I was able to figure out how many needed what otherwise I would have given up on it. Some puzzles in this game are as easy as a memory match games some are difficult like a slider puzzle, however the good news is any clues we find we get to keep on us which is very useful when you need to solve puzzles, so you don't need to jot down notes.

Post review Follow-up: So the game kind of hits a sour note for me because when I got the game what was shown on the box was a screenshot from Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego 3.5, but when I installed the game I was aghast to see an image of a silhouette climbing a building, did Treasures of Knowledge sell THAT poorly? I mean I'll bet they probably were going to do another one with Where in the USA but I guess they couldn't and then they concentrated on making games using properties they didn't even own (Batman, Powerpuff Girls, Scooby Doo), I was happy to play a Carmen Sandiego game I hadn't played before, but not happy that I fell for a bait and switch.

This concludes my review, join me tomorrow when I review Where in the USA oh wait tomorrow is Saturday and I said I would reserve weekends for some Genesis games...and I have 8 more to go, and I did at least four games last year.......boy was I short sighted there. I won't be able to review where in the USA until next Thursday (because I have to go back to work on Monday)