The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn Review

The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn is the brand new game from Ubisoft which follows Tintin on one of his amazing adventures. With the opportunity to play as Tintin and his faithful companion Snowy the game allows players to unravel the mystery of The Unicorn and perhaps find the lost treasure. Will The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn be a treasure waiting to be played or will it fall short of the mark, like so many other movie based games?

Let’s find out and kick off the HOTs and NOTs.

HOT

A Decent Movie Game

The Adventures of Tintin is surprising good being a based off a movie. It doesn’t fall at the typical hurdles that many other movie games trip up on. The developers haven’t tried to stray too far from the movie’s plot line yet they have managed to include plenty of interesting features to keep it from being singly a narrative. The game also comes with a few other modes apart from the story mode including a two player cooperative adventure and a challenge mode. This means even after the storyline players will still be able to enjoy the game – which is something many movie titles forget about.

Storyline

For those in the dark about The Adventures of Tintin, the story revolves around the young male journalist Tintin, who is always able to find an adventure. This time around Tintin is thrown into the world of wicked smugglers when he unintentionally purchases a model ship containing a clue to a lost treasure. The storyline follows Tintin and Captain Haddock, as their journey takes them in search of the treasure but will they be able to discover the treasure before the smugglers? You’ll have to play the game to find out. The Tintin story mode is on the short side but this is how it was written and making it longer may have caused parts to drag.

Separate Co-op

The Adventures of Tintin also comes with a peculiar cooperative side scrolling platform game. Players take up control of multiple characters, including Haddock, Tintin and even Snowy, inside of a rather dazed Captain Haddock’s head. Set inside Haddock’s head you can straight away guess that the levels won’t be exactly typical. Despite the fact players will be somewhat confused by the surreal coop experience it is also where the majority of the games entertainment value comes from. Each level brings in a new feature or element keeping the gameplay fresh and enjoyable. With plenty of items to collect including cogs and gold items as well as coins, which can be spent on costumes, there is plenty to do in just this mode.

Presentation

The presentation is another area where The Adventures of Tintin shows other movie games how it should be done. While the graphics won’t be winning awards the character models and the environments are all in the typical well loved Tintin like style. The graphics don’t push the boundaries but the game makes up for it by staying solid and well polished through-out the title. The game sound superb with great voice work by the movies cast, as well as a fantastic use of both music and in-game noises to engross players into the title.

Replay Value

The Adventures of Tintin has plenty of replay value from numerous aspects of the game. The storyline itself is on the short side but it is simple and fun to play through; so you can expect to play it through at least twice. After you’re finished with the storyline there is then still the Tintin and Haddock mode and the challenge mode where players can play small mini-games based around events from the story. Overall the game offers plenty of entertaining content which any Tintin fan would be crazy to miss.

Gameplay

The gameplay is built around a simple control scheme which allows all players to instantly pick up the intuitive controls and purely enjoy playing. After only a couple of levels players will know all the controls as the control scheme mostly re-uses the same few buttons. Whilst there are some 3D sections the game at heart is more of a platformer with a few puzzles added in for good measure. The gameplay is kept fresh by the addition of a few unique stages; such as sword fighting, driving a car or flying a plane. The overarching feeling from the gameplay is that it has been kept simple to cater for everyone, yet at the same time it isn’t too simple allowing the game to get boring.

NOT

Loading

The Adventures of Tintin, like many other titles, suffers from the curse of loading. While the loading screens are often over quickly they break up the flow of the game and are in general too frequent. Whilst the loading screens are often quick, to make the matters worse occasionally the loading screen seems longer than the level portion they load.

Cutscenes

The cutscenes do advance the Tintin storyline well and they do a decent job of starting off the Tintin and Haddock mode too. This being said it is unfortunately obvious when a cutscene is about to happen as the game jolts and freezes for a split second. The problems for the cutscenes don’t end there. The lip syncing is at certain points appalling. The game looks good but the cutscenes are of a poorer quality due to this fault.

Verdict

Overall The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn is a incredibly entertaining game, which can be enjoyed by anyone due to its simple controls and well designed gameplay. Despite the fact that there is a lot of loading in the game the wait always seems worth it. With an easy going and amusing storyline The Adventures Of Tintin manages to go above the standards set by the regular film based video games. Whether or not you plan on seeing the film, the game is still worth playing but it is especially worth it for Tintin fans.

[Editor’s Note: The Adventures Of Tintin was reviewed on the PlayStation 3 hardware. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]

One thought on “The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn Review

  1. How do I activate…or at all get started in the
    co-op game in Haddocks dreams?

    Nothing works, except for the characters running
    left and right and jumping up. Tried all possible
    and impossible combinations with the PS3 control and still N O T H I N G !

    The challenges and the Tintin adventures mode worked fine but nothing when tried in the Tintin
    and Captain Haddock mode. What have I missed??

    “One who only got to play 50% of the game”

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