After the overcrowded gaming season was over I was left with nothing to review, so I started playing some ‘go-to’ titles, just until the games start rolling out late in the first quarter. I quickly burned through them so I started scavenging through the list of all the games the public generally over looks, and I ended up buying the first good deal I found, which happened to be The Adventures of TinTin, (a.k.a. Why the Fudge does Tintin look so god damn creepy).
Plot: Whilst walking through a flea market Tintin discovered and purchases a model galleon called ‘The Unicorn’ which was captained by Sir Francis Haddock, before he blew up and sunk the ship during battle not to lose it to the hands of pirates. The model ship attracts the attention of a shifty onlooker who arouses Tintin’s suspicion, and upon inspecting the model ship he discovers a hidden scroll inside of it which mentions the tale of three ships. Tintin is captured and held hostage on a ship where he meets one of Haddocks’ descendants, and together they decide to get their hands on the other two scrolls and unravel the mystery.
Audio & Video: As every gamer agrees, ALWAYS STAY AWAY FROM GAME ADAPTATIONS OF MOVIES, and by that definition you can imagine the awful visuals, textures, and sound quality. During gameplay the visuals tend to be miles better than cut scenes, which are a collection of unsaturated, low resolution, and low framerate images with pixels the size of 7 seater minivans. Screen tearing and a jittery frame rate seem to be a norm for this game, and during fast paced sequences you’ll generally feel like throwing the console with the game still inside it out of the window. But as any gamer would say at some point in time, the visuals are not the most important thing to make a game good. The sound is average to say the least, and the voice acting is extremely horrible.
Gameplay: I have to be honest and point out the fact that the only reason why I still played the game through was due to the awesome mechanics and addictive gameplay. The game has a nostalgia feel to it, which reminded me of the old 2D platformer games which had shoddy visuals but were actually fun to play and addictive as hell. The platforming parts in the game feel really good, and the game has a unique charm which just keeps you going. There are some sequences which are broken as fudge, including the flying, the pirate battle, and driving sequences. It is also a pity that during the open world-ish sequences, were you had the opportunity to explore the world between platform stages, were held behind by not making the second analogue stick control the camera viewing angle which has been a standard on platform games since the PS1.
Personal Experience: In my humble opinion, I didn’t expect much of the game, but it ended up being a pleasurable experience, even though I had to be there for the cut scenes, screen tearing, and horrible voice acting. The gameplay part, which is the core element of the game, was mostly good. The pity is that Tintin was a perfect opportunity for Ubisoft to create a new platform genre the industry needs, but instead they decided to capitalize off the success of the movie with an unfinished game. If the developers stopped throwing faeces at each other all day and concentrated on fixing all the little things that pissed me off throughout the game, they could have started a decent platform series for this generation, and the game wouldn't have ended in the $10 section after just two months on the market.
Overall Rating: 5/10
Written by Matthew C