izigame.me

TLDR: Refunded. Gameloft's predatory practice is in full effect here. The music is the best part about it.

Note: I played this in offline mode so a lot of my time wasn't recorded. I played just under 2 hours. I have also played the Netflix version, which is the exact same game.
So I went into this as a fan of the Netflix show. I have played previous Carmen games, but haven't watched the old shows - so wasn't sure how important that was or not.
Lets start with the good.
The music is amazing, almost like they had the same people that did the Netflix show music. That was great to hear.
The art is alright, nothing to gush over, but could be much better. Obviously hard to bring 2D to 3D, but here its... I'm not sure. Levels and characters feel dead. Yes they are animating on the spot, but this is 2025. Cars should be driving by, people should be walking in and out of areas. Make it fucking alive, there is more life in a mortuary than this game.
Now the bad.
First off the marketing for this game, really shows you a bunch of cutscenes and very minimal gameplay. It implies you as Carmen can explore this big world and uncover some big mystery. Yet it isn't a big world, and there is no big mystery. There are only 15 locations, and 3(?) "locations" in each area that you can go to. Each one has a very casual minigame, or has a "free roam" area where you walk around for 5 mins and finish the level.
If you are looking for a Carmen Sandiego game where you are planning heists, or stopping thieves, or even sitting back relaxing with Ivy and Zack, this is not it. There is no planning heists, stopping thieves, and Ivy and Zack are absent . Actually, the only characters from the Netflix show that reprise their roles are Carmen, Player, Chief, and Paperstar.
Not once did I feel like Carmen. I am "directing" Carmen. You can't use her gadgets at your own leisure, you can't disguise yourself to get into certain areas. When you can use her gadgets, is in these casual minigames that take 5 seconds to beat. The minigames themselves are very mobile orientated, none of them require any resemblance of an IQ. The goggles minigame is probably the worse minigame out of the few that are there. Whoever came up with that should never design anything again.
Between the story sections, it forces you to play "retro" style gameplay, with the inclusion of minigames sprawled through it. After watching some videos that are past my playtime, it looks like these are only here as a level gate, as the actual story sections would only take you a couple of hours to beat. These retro areas also get repetitive, as you are forced to play a number of them before you can even access the next story section.
The game itself is very clearly a mobile game port. There are a lot of features absent that you would expect for a Unreal Engine game in 2025. Not able to access settings on first launch was weird, but not being able to access until I exit to the main menu felt weirder. I was surprised to see no visual settings, or accessibility settings. The user interface and menus also aren't changed from the mobile version, everything is massive for no reason. I'm not sure if Gameloft understand that a PC/TV screen is much bigger than a mobile phone screen.
Lets talk about the graphics, it doesn't look much better than a high end phone. To name a few, there are no high res textures, minimal anti aliasing, and no colorblind settings. This game could stand out visually if there was more detail in the world, but even if there was, there is no way to change anything. This game gives no ability to change the quality of shadows, textures, post processing, effects.
But sure, let me be able to make the game even easier through a casual mode toggle. The game is already piss easy, why make it easier? Is it so I can reach the end of the game quicker and be biting my nails for when the next content drop happens (I only assume so, given the last section is "coming soon"). I also noticed there is less languages here than on the Netflix version, which seems weird to me given the version of the games are the exact same with no difference in content and has been translated in those extra languages, but not included here.
The voice acting is very awkward. None of it is done by the Netflix voice actors, so the voice acting done here is all sound-a-likes, or they try to. The biggest noticeable issue with the voice acting is that Carmen sounds like she is either bored or has a stick up her ass. A lot of the lines from everyone sound as if they weren't given direction as to what was happening, no urgency, and just sounds bland. As for when the voice acting occurs, well... it's only during the cutscenes of the story section and then used as onomatopoeia during text only sections outside of the few cutscenes.
My biggest gripe is that this is the exact same game on the Netflix platform which you pay less than $20 a month. But Gameloft is expecting people to pay almost double that for the same content and no extra platform specific changes? It's an absolute joke.
But what about the deluxe content, that's not in the Netflix version? Well let me tell you, yes it is. You are paying up to an extra $30 for content that is included in the Netflix game. I havent seen this mentioned anywhere by Gameloft, which seems very predatory (not surprised given Gameloft's track record).
As for the deluxe content itself.
- The artbook is a joke. What kind of half assed attempt at a art book is this? 18 pages of art, that cant be full screen, and once zoomed in cant zoom out. I have half sized artbooks from a bunch of games, that have more pages then this game.
- Official soundtrack is alright, but this isn't the Official Soundtrack of the game. None of these songs play throughout the game, and these are all songs you can listen to on Youtube... for free. Nothing new here. You also can't listen to the soundtrack anywhere else, only on that screen. Who the fuck is going to just listen to a soundtrack and not do anything.
- The 40th anniversary caper is just the same retro game mode as the regular one, but this time Carmen is chucked in as a suspect. It plays out the same as the other mode.
- "Costumes" are a joke. Three in the whole game, with two of them being part of the Deluxe. Absolute jokes of skins.
- Absolutely disgusting pricing model here, $30 for this is daylight robbery. I purchased the Deluxe Edition on sale (more on this below), and its not even worth that.
When refunding my $50 purchase (deluxe package on sale), the refund split looks to be $22 for the Deluxe and $28 for the base game. Does Gameloft Brisbane really think that the Deluxe "content" is really worth slightly less than the base game. Disgusting.
I'd prefer to pay for an useless copy of Concord than keep this in my library. Refunded.