Overall 8.4 Graphics 4 Sound 3 Addictive 9.5 Story 9 Depth 7 Difficulty 5
8
Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego: for Geography Freaks Only janus
When I first received my Sega Genesis in 1993, I also received two games: Sonic the Hedgehog II and Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego. Since I often watched the PBS show and was such a geography freak – I still own a board game where you need to collect cards relating to country data – I immediately started playing the latter game. You will enjoy it... providing you liked the show and enjoy geography.
Graphics: 2/10
This low score is not because the graphics are terrible; it's because graphics play no part in this game whatsoever.
The game is reduced to the world map (which has a realistic illustration of the various climates), your warrant page and the cities you visit (limited to three main places each). The only “animated” graphics you see are your foot steps and the mystery thief you see running around telling you you landed in the right city/the weapons telling you s/he is in the city and the police chase towards him/her. When you catch Carmen Sandiego at the very end, you get an additional marching band celebrating your exploit.
Music: 2/10
Once again, this game was not created because it had an awesome soundtrack.
As a matter of fact, I can't even remember if there was any music, which proves my point. The only sound effects I remember are the footsteps to each places you explore/chasing the thief once you can catch him/her, the plane you fly (which does sound like a plane) and the clock ticking for each hour you spend (it speeds up at night). Of course, the sight of the thief and his/her presence in the city yields a short dramatic track.
Addictiveness: 10/10
This is what kept me playing this game on and on until I got through the game.
First of all, this game is available in five languages. Being a native French speaker, I of course got through the game in that language first. But then, as a challenge, I tried English and then Spanish (or was it Italian)? It may not look like much but I did learn a few more words from the Latin languages – I could guess the overall meaning most of the time.
In addition, this pursuit to be the best detective ever is highly addictive. There was always a little fight among my siblings because I played “too much” and wouldn't let them play! I always wanted to do one more mission before quitting.
Depth: 7/10
I'm not too sure how to rate this feature.
You goal is to be the best detective around, completing 30 missions catching Carmen Sandiego and her crooks. You have seven days to do it, otherwise they run free and your boss will question whether you deserve your detective license...
The fact that the game is well-translated into five languages would count as depth. I mean, you would have to complete 150 missions before you completely beat the game.
Difficulty: 5/10
For those well-versed into geography, this game is a joke. The clues about where the thief has gone are usually fairly obvious and you usually miss your destination because you didn't use the controller properly. Also, who the thief is in each case is also easy to find out if you read what people in each city has to say.
The main difficulty, notwithstanding geographic knowledge, would come about for people who don't speak French, English, Italian, German or Spanish. Unless you have a native-like mastery of one of the languages, you might have a hard time understanding the clues. People will often use synonyms/subtle ways to tell you the clues. Instead of saying that the thief plays tennis, people might talk about a “sore elbow” or about some famous tennis player. Instead of talking about brown or black hair, they might say mahogany or ebony instead.
In short, unless you like the Carmen Sandiego TV show or are a geography nerd, this game is probably not for you. The graphics are almost completely static, there is no music/sound effect worth remembering and no action whatsoever. Compared to Carmen Sandiego, strategy games like Shining Force look like an action-packed zombie apocalypse.
Graphics 2 Sound 2 Addictive 10 Depth 7 Difficulty 5
Review Rating: 5/5
Submitted: 02-28-15
Review Replies: 0
6
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego for Gen classgame
It was either that or DO IT ROCKAPELLA for the description, and yet for some reason they NEVER used the Game show theme song in any of their games....except in the Where in Time PC game....did Altman and...no wait the same two people that composed the World game show theme song also did the Time Game show theme song they could not have been itching that badly..you know what there is no excuse for them to not have included the World theme song in the world games, but I guess by the time the Time game show tie-in game was released Sean Altman had left Rockapella, now enough about my griping, I should review this game
Gameplay and Story: Well if you've played the game on any format it's exactly the same (unless you've played the Google Earth game which was based on the netflix series that just launched it's final season yesterday) you have to catch a bunch of thieves that could potentially lead you to Carmen Sandiego. But I don't have the patience or the time to memorize any save passwords
Graphics: The graphics aren't anything special considering this was probably made before they put out any of the traditional PC games (which is why Interpol is chasing Carmen instead of ACME) the photographs are digitized, and all we get are visual profiles not portraits.
Sound: Well there's no real soundtrack to this game sadly, (if you want a good soundtrack in any of the games you are better off playing the PC games, their soundtrack is spectacular here is my youtube playlist [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO4xaXjl3EBRLeBg56JVgdshAGCjnb3mM[/youtube] for some reason they sound way better in full rather than small snippets or rearranged around
Addictive: Hey it's Carmen Sandiego what couldn't be more addictive about it, and when you think about it most educational games are addictive
Depth: This game has places that weren't in most of the other games, the USA game included all 50 states (plus Washington DC) But I guess there is so many places in the world they can't use them all, oh well, at least it gets easy to figure out how the controls work. But like I said I don't have the patience or time to try and catch Carmen in this game
Difficulty: Depends on how much you've played it, I played my first Carmen Sandiego game 22 years ago this month, to be exact it was the same day we brought computer speakers for our internet-less Windows 95, so yeah I had to figure out where the crook went WITHOUT THE USE OF GOOGLE and after awhile I realized we had to put in a warrant at the same time, that's why I didn't completely master it til March of that year. I caught Carmen a week before Spring Break.
Overall: The Carmen Sandiego fandom is the only fandom I'll ever really be a part of, I'm well aware that some people don't like what the Netflix series has done, but there is a such a thing as a multiverse, and yet for some reason it completely collided in the Netflix show. Despite how good the netflix show was, I will still prefer the PBS game shows (world, I could go on and on about how Time let me down, but I have other things to do today, maybe in a separate thread on day) But I'm going to be completely honest, I prefer the PC games than the Console games, it just doesn't feel right, I'd rather be clicking a mouse rather than have the console in my hand doing this.
I'm giving it a 6
Graphics 6 Sound 4 Addictive 9 Story 9 Depth 7 Difficulty 5
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 01-16-21
Review Replies: 0