Oh tell me what in the world will she review-oo today.

Yeah so finally I get to do something that is near and dear to my heart SOMETHING FROM THE CARMEN SANDIEGO FRANCHISE, I know I have such positive memories for console gaming and arcades but I spent more time on a computer than I did on consoles and arcades (because my parents would only let me hook up the console for two weeks a year...that's why I have such fond memories of Christmas, at least that was the case until I figured out how to hook up the console myself, so then I just had them up whenever I felt like it) but I'm sure you are wondering what does any of this have to do with Carmen Sandiego? well simple story we finally got a computer in the house in the last week of 1998, and well long story short, we had more educational games in the house so I spent more time on the computer, that basically kept me tide over for the other 351 days of the year, plus the weekend after the last day of school before the break. I should probably save more of this for the Post review follow-up.

Gameplay and Story: So the game starts off with that double dealing diva stealing the players ACME Gizmo Tapper 586LC, but we get that back fast enough in the intro, oh about that Player thing, this game is a tie in to the FOX Kids animated series Where ON EARTH is Carmen Sandiego (want to know something ironic, Power Rangers took a bite out of Game Show Carmens ratings, and I always thought it was Olmec's fault but that show aired weekends) But she still goes on her little crime spree, we get a batch of crooks that exclusive to the game and unlike the other games we don't have to solve more than 40 cases in order to catch her it's more like less than 25. And we are taking Zack and Ivy as well as the Chief along for the ride. There are Acme Paparazzo net agents that are to take pictures of Carmen's baddies and we have to put pieces of the picture together in order to obtain a warrant to arrest the crook, and I'll give them credit for this, this is an easier way to obtain a warrant than well, I guess I can explain when I review the games that were meant for older kids.

Graphics: We get pictures of certain places, when we are at locations, at least Zaire works on this game (I'll talk about it when I get to the World Deluxe game) all the characters are 2D animated, including the cut scenes of crook captures.

Sound: They did a very mediocre job with the soundtrack, a majority of the background music is MIDI stuff that would try to sound like the region you are in but it's just not the same, the World and USA games had folk music from actual artists in the background but this is just not acceptable. If there is a good thing I can say about this is that they brought in the voice actors from the animated series (including Chief Squidward....yeah that's my nickname for the floating head, I'll give them extra cred for bringing in EGOT legend Rita Moreno, and she even cameo'd in the Carmen Sandiego netflix series) which is nice considering the games made after 1995 never brought in either of the recruitment agents or the engine crew or even Rockapella to show up in the games(maybe that could have saved the soundtrack).

Addictive: Well not so much, I had to play the whole thing, it's not as fun as the other Carmen Sandiego games though, I did the segments, I did the commentary playing and the full playing sans commentary, I'm likely going to put the game to bed.

Depth: This took me less than two hours to finish this in one sitting. Also during each case we are relegated to a certain region, like say this theft took place in Africa, we only get to go to places in Africa, oh and there are a couple of places that didn't make it into any of the other games.

Difficulty: This game is actually meant for those ages 4-7, those that aren't ready for the other games in the franchise. There actually is a point in the game where you don't really have to click around to get any clues, we actually look at the titles of countries as well as graphics that show off exports. We see how many icons there are and we see which one has the one that has one of each of the icons we see most on the map (like 4 soccer balls, or three noodles or fish, I'll post a gameplay of this one day to show what I mean). That's how easy the game is.


Post Review Follow-up: I'm not going to lie, I've only seen a handful of the FOX Kids series (even though I do have the complete series with me that I bought during a trip to the states when Grand Forks still had a KMart) but I saw all the episodes of the Netflix series which is basically a reboot of Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego, but even if I did see the rest of the series I probably still would have preferred the netflix series, but lets be honest NOTHING I mean NOTHING is better than the game show. I didn't really mind this game, at least there had been one game in existence that was a tie in from one of the shows that aired, but I'll whine about the latter in a future review. I'm going to give this a good rating because I can't say anything bad about Carmen Sandiego.


This concludes my review, join me tomorrow when I review.....CARMEN SANDIEGO MATH DETECTIVE (yay two in a row!!!!)