Carmen Sandiego

I don't want to beat around the bush, but in this case I feel compelled to start by telling a little about my own personal history as a gamer. In the mid-90s, I was still a very young kid just starting to explore the world of video games, mainly thanks to my old (and still functional) Super Nintendo, as I could barely access the world of PC gaming. The reason, logical in those dark times in the family home, is that computers were serious, for grown-ups, while game consoles perfectly embodied the spirit that video games were.... well, for games. For kids. Until, by some strange quirk of fate, Carmen Sandiego met my father.

It probably must have been a word-of-mouth thing between parents at the school gates, but ever since he brought me the game one day and saw what it had to offer, he was more open to letting me try other titles on the computer. Thanks to the mysterious thief always dressed in red (whom I never saw, by the way, in that version of the Windows game I had) I got to know not only her great skills of investigation, deduction, and geography, but also opened a gateway to my beloved LucasArts adventure games, the 3DO strategy of Heroes of Might and Magic II, or the space battles of Star Wars: Rebel Assault, which came one after another in the months and years that followed. I may owe Carmen Sandiego not only my love of travelling and seeing exotic destinations around the world, but even my early introduction to video games and thus finding a way to make a living. Sometimes it is only fair to acknowledge certain unsung heroes for their contribution.

But 30 years have passed since then, and little has been heard of Carmen Sandiego since subsequent revisions of the 1985 original and its spin-offs were lost in the tide of releases. The TV shows were forgotten, until Netflix brought the franchise back a few years ago to give it a modern, youthful feel and transformed the former VILE boss into an anti-heroine who fights her old organisation by collaborating with her old ACME rivals. Now studio Gameloft is joining the revival by releasing a revision of Carmen Sandiego, 40 years after the original, and my first feeling has been that, while visually it's no big deal, the layers of curiosity, deduction-driven narrative, and mini-games not only pay homage to the past, but elevate it in the present day as the game I'll want to play with my young daughters, when they're a little older.

That's the first change in this new Carmen Sandiego. Whereas in the 80s-90s version we were an anonymous ACME agent tasked with chasing Carmen's henchmen around the world, now we directly control Carmen, who along with her partner and remote helper, young Player, will follow the VILE thieves on the biggest robbery campaign of the century. The main narrative, beyond giving a minimum of context to each of the robbery cases, doesn't offer much more than a few scenes to jump between dialogue boxes, uncovered clues, and mini-games.

Each theft case is always organised in the same way: a theft of a valuable antique occurs and we have exactly one week to find the thief in the world and stop them properly. Each visit to a location takes time, as well as travelling from country-to-country, looking for witnesses or more information. In the end we have to find two types of clues: some to lead us to the next correct travel point, and others to correctly identify the thief from the list of suspects that ACME manages. Sometimes we will have to make a decision that leaves us without important information: do we save time by leaving for the next flight, or do we spend hours looking for information about the thief? Bear in mind that even if we manage to catch him, we need a valid and unique arrest warrant for the suspect, and if we make a mistake we will lose. The earlier cases are not difficult to solve, but in the latter cases it is more a matter of intuition and inertia when revisiting famous locations already visited, and that can sometimes play tricks on you. On one occasion I thought I was making great time and went after the suspect, knowing he was hiding in Barcelona, only to discover that the clues had led me to issue the wrong arrest warrant. I caught the wrong thief, and both went free.

Carmen, before being a thief, is an expert detective, and she will have to interrogate different witnesses at each location Player gives us in order to find the suspect. Sometimes it will be enough just to interrogate the witnesses, but sometimes you will have to use special equipment such as the hook, the thermal vision goggles or the glider backpack. They are fun to use, beyond the 007 paraphernalia, they serve to direct attention to small details and exposures. These scenes, sometimes time-limited or as Quick Time Events, will earn you a higher score the more accurate you are, which in turn will make you rank up as a detective. Not that it adds too much "per se" to the story, but it does allow us to unlock new cases in The ACME Files, the classic (and pixelated) mode of the original Carmen Sandiego.

I think it's a great idea to include the classic game (well, a later revised version, but only aesthetically) to make this 40th anniversary edition a great one. In fact, it seems to me a great hook for those of the generation who played the original to try this title with (now) young detectives at home. They probably won't appreciate the detail as much as I do, just as I found the low-poly graphics of the current version grating. But the overall balance is that this game has a lot to offer to young and old alike, and all while learning geography and culture about faraway cities and countries. How many of you could remember without Googling the official currency of Singapore, where Park Güell is located, or how many steps it takes to climb the Big Buddha in Hong Kong? That's right.

Reliving those childhood afternoons in the new guise of Carmen Sandiego has been like unlocking a good memory of an old friend who I thought was lost forever, but thanks to television we have her back as a character, and thanks to Gameloft as the ideal educational entertainment to share with the family.