Explorers Collection: The Oregon Trail & Carmen Sandiego Bundle PC Review
Summary: A bundle of the most recent releases in two iconic franchises. Neither game sets the world alight, but modestly succeeds in bringing each series into the modern era.
3.5
Explorative!
The Explorers Collection by Gameloft is a pairing of two of their recent games with similar themes, which, as you might have guessed by the title, is exploration.
This bundle partners 2022’s The Oregon Trail remake with the 2025 release of Carmen Sandiego.
The Oregon Trail
Named after the infamous 2000-mile route that connects the Eastern and Western sides of America, The Oregon Trail is a game that has been around for multiple decades at this point, with the first iteration launching in 1971.
At its core, it’s a game about resource management, decision making, and survival. Players are tasked with taking a small group of emigrants as far along the trail as possible, with the hopes of making it to Oregon to start a new life. These themes have persisted through the numerous versions of the game since its inception, and this release is no different in that regard.
A random selection of four people is picked at the start of any given run, each with unique stats, personalities, and abilities. Your caravan can be stocked how you see fit based on the available resources, such as food, clothing, spare parts, bullets, etc, and the cash you have at hand.
As the group travels westward, a huge number of obstacles block the path forward. These can be physical obstacles, such as navigating a river in the best possible way or making it over some other difficult terrain. They often manifest themselves in less obvious ways, though. Each party member has their own psychological needs and hangups, which can get in the way of making steady progress. They’ll also get injured and fall ill, as well as meet a cast of interesting characters along the way, who may potentially aid or inhibit their progress.
These challenges and moral dilemmas that keep thing interesting, as the gameplay otherwise boils down to occasionally clicking on menu options, aside from the odd hunting minigame, which are little more than Duck Hunt, and inventory management akin to Resident Evil 4’s attaché case system. It’s a tried and tested formula that has stood the test of time, and this version of The Oregon Trail holds up as well as any other.
In terms of visuals, Gameloft has largely gone for 2D pixel art, most of which is well done. There’s the occasional scene that’s presented in full 3D that looks nice enough in isolation; it’s a cartoon-like, relatively low-poly and low detail presentation that, while it looks great on its own, doesn’t necessarily mesh well with the 2D pixel art that most of the game uses. From an auditory standpoint, I had no complaints. The music is pleasant and evokes the period in history in which the game is set.
This isn’t the best version of The Oregon Trail that I’ve ever played, but it’s certainly a very pleasant and easy-to-play version of the game that is perhaps the most accessible that it has ever been.
Carmen Sandiego
The second game of the Explorer Collection is the 2025 release of Carmen Sandiego, another long-running franchise that made its debut in the mid-1980s and follows the master thief as she travels around the globe. In this release, things have been flipped slightly. In many of the early games, players took control of the ACME Detective Agency and had to hunt down Carmen. This time around, she’s working with them to put an end to the plans of VILE, a criminal organisation that masquerades as an import/export company. The series was branded as ‘edutainment’ early on, as it primarily dealt with teaching geography to children, and this theme remains today.
As Carmen travels around the world, a myriad of facts are uncovered about the various places she visits, many of which aren’t especially linked to gameplay and are just there to teach players about the place in question and to flesh out the world a little.
Gameplay loosely falls into the ‘point & click’ genre, with a healthy dose of social deduction and evidence gathering, somewhat like that seen in the Ace Attorney games, with Carmen ultimately attempting to discover the identities of various VILE members and bring them to justice. The core gameplay also features many minigames. Most of these are incredibly simple and don’t pose any challenge whatsoever, though they are mercifully brief.
It’s a fun little game that doesn’t linger in one spot for too long, thus never having any one aspect of its gameplay outstay its welcome.
The whole game is presented in 3D, with a simple and bold aesthetic similar to that used in The Oregon Trail’s 3D moments, and is reminiscent of the most recent Pokémon games in art style. I enjoyed this aspect of the game. Everything is bright and colourful, the art is readable, and it eliminates a lot of the ‘pixel hunting’ that similar games of the past often suffered with.
There are no graphics options whatsoever in the game, and while this should run on pretty much anything made in the last 15 years, basic settings such as setting a resolution and changing the window mode should be here, but aren’t. There’s also little to no anti-aliasing present in the game either, which leads to some very jagged edges on objects.
The voice acting is mostly decent, there are some lines that had aged poorly before the ink was even dry on the script, though none of this is a deal breaker by any means. The soundtrack is lively and helps to keep a light tone throughout.
My only real issue with Carmen Sandiego is that it’s just too easy. Not something that’s necessarily a problem, with most of the solutions obvious before half the clues had even been uncovered. I enjoyed my time with the game, however, even if it does feel a little lacklustre compared to some of the older entries into the series.
Final Thoughts
If you’re interested in picking up both of these games, then the Explorers Collection is a great way to go about getting them, as it applies a 17% discount over grabbing them individually.
Both games have their strengths and weaknesses, with the main criticism being that they feel a little dumbed down compared to the legacy titles. With that said, neither is a bad game, and they are a decent way of experiencing them for the first time.
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