Carmen Sandiego Math Detective
Reviewed by Anise Hollingshead
Published by Broderbund

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Math Price: $34.95

PC version requires:
Windows 95, 486/66MHZ, 16MB RAM, 25MB hard drive, 4x CD-ROM

Mac version requires:
System 7.5.1, 100MHZ Power PC, 16MB RAM, 20MB hard drive, 4x CD-ROM

Description:

Cripes! That conniving criminal Carmen Sandiego is at it again, and this time she's captured several cherished landmarks.

In this newest installment of the Carmen Sandiego series, Carmen Sandiego Math Detective uses math to solve the crimes and return the stolen goods. Carmen has stolen 12 world famous landmarks like the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall of China and shrunk them into Crystal Capsules. The Crystal Capsules are scattered around the world in Carmen's employees' hideouts and must be found and decoded to open and remove the crystal from the capsule. After removing the crystal, the player will take the crystal back to the Quantum Crystallizer at V.I.L.E. headquarters where the crystallizer will restore the landmark and deposit the crystal into a tray in the Power Grid. When all 12 landmarks have been returned, the Quantum Crystallizer must be immobilised by figuring out the special pattern using the crystals leftover from the lankmarks.

In order to decode the crystals that contain the landmarks, passwords must be obtained by playing several math games. For each crystal there will be 6-8 passwords needed to open the crystal. At the villain's hideout, players will pass their cursor over the scene to pick out hotspots. Each hotspot contains 1 of 5 games: Atom Smasher, Crimewave Sensor, Light Spectrometer, Microchip D Decoder, and Moleculor Scope. In Atom Smasher you have 3 minutes to answer 10 math equations and in Crimewave Sensor you will use estimation to come up with the answer. The Light Spectrometer is a version of the "towers of annoy" games where you have to move lenses from one stack to the other while adhering to certain rules like "the smallest number on top, only a bigger number can go under it" and so on. In Microchip Decoder players must draw lines from points on a grid and then answer questions about the shape that was drawn and in Moleculor Scope you have to fill in a math crossword by answering word problems.

Features:

• Math drills
• 3 levels of difficulty
• Player's progress area
• Practice mode
• Customizable option in Atom Smasher
• 12 exposure disposable camera with mystery photo included

Technical Aspects:

Carmen Sandiego Math Detective was easy to install and ran well with no problems, but be aware that this game takes up a lot of hard drive space, 25 MB for Windows users. The graphics are animated and colorful, and the manual is very helpful. There is also an online help section on the gaming interface which is very nice instead of having to go to the readme file, and it has math strategies included to help the player understand the basics of working out the problems.

Report and Conclusions:

Overall this is a good teaching tool for students in 4th and 5th grades and is fun to play; the names of the villains are hysterical! The box states 4th, 5th, 6th grades and ages 8-14, but I found that to be stretching it a little. How many 6th graders are 14? And for the most part, the math will be a little tame for 6th graders. For example, in Atom Smasher the hardest level offers only subtraction and addition of fractions, not multiplication or division and most 6th graders are multiplying and dividing fractions by the end of the school year.

In the practice mode players can choose to work any of the problems in any order from the math games. However, some of the games are not randomized, as in the Moleculor Scope and the Microchip Decoder. In these 2 games the questions are always the same no matter how many times you play them, but the others offer a good variety of problems in random order. We especially enjoyed the Light Spectrometer where you had to stack the lenses according to certain rules and you were given different numbers each time. And an added option of interest to teachers is the ability to add your own levels of problems in the Atom Smasher, where you can pick what kind of problems you want them to be working on. It would have been even better if the other activities offered that option.

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