Who knew an interest in antique ships would lead to an adventure like this
With harsh deadlines, hacking scandals and furious scraps on dirty pavements required to get snaps of Z-list wannabes, the world of journalism isn’t the most glamorous career avenue to take. It’s especially not a fantastic aspiration to take when a 17 year old boy who’s accomplice is a rather tenacious hound. Tintin has charmed audiences for years on end, and hasn’t disappointed in its long comic book run, and it’s surprising it has taken this long for it to reach the big screen. Could the natural leap from film screen to video-game be too much for the intrepid reporter to handle? 
Closely following the events of the film, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn follows Tintin, Captain Haddock and excitable terrier Snowy on an adventure that’ll take up half the globe in a race to uncover sunken treasure. Gaining clues and riddles from three model ships, the plucky trio are closely pursued….not by the film’s primary antagonist, but by his main henchman…a bloke called Allan. There are a few omissions from the film that haven’t managed to work their way into the game perhaps for budget issues, but the plot remains true to its roots. Primarily a 2D platformer at heart, Tintin bares a remarkable resemblance to previous Ubisoft titles. Whenever you face an enemy in a linear corridor, you’re set to deal with them in an exceptionally linear way…thwacking square again and again until they’ve been knocked out. However, when the camera zooms away revealing an open playground for you to clamber around and take out enemies in. As you play in these areas, Tintin slowly begins to resemble the classic Prince Of Persia titles, as you wall jump across narrow spaces and take out enemies by grabbing them from ledges. It’s remarkably fun to get the upper hand on opponents by sneaking up on them, and as enemies gradually get tougher, more and more crafty opportunities to outsmart the dunderheads appear. Tintin has clearly gone to the Loony Tunes school of combat, chucking bananas to slip up armoured guards and tactically hurling beach balls to take out multiple enemies. It’s incredibly basic, yet nevertheless brilliant fun as you cause organised chaos with the daftest utensils. Unfortunately, the surprisingly great standard set by stealth segments doesn’t remain constant. If you’re not choosing to be sly about your approach, you’ll be mashing square to decimate opponents. Once you’re done with them, you’ll be trundling along hallways upon hallways upon hallways lacking any brain engagement and it’s even worse if Tintin starts narrating ‘The Adventures of Conventional Hallway Hiking’ to himself. There are moments that will tear the game away from its platforming core, chucking you into plane based dogfights, motorbike based shooting segments and swashbuckling sword duals. They’re nice little intervals that attempt to chuck something new to the mix of adventuring, but there isn’t a lot of depth to these diversions to really make them credible highlights, just sub-par intermissions.
We could have a franchise that could shake off the rotten tie-in stench for once
It’s easy to act the snob about the graphics when you compare it to that of its CGI counterpart, but the game tries its best to replicate the realistic look of the characters. The rendering in cut-scenes is pretty shoddy at times and strangely runs nowhere nearly as smoothly as it does when in gameplay. At times, it seems that the game has had a brush-in with the original Hergé comic books, with vivid colours and a more cartoon aesthetic than the film, and it pulls it off rather well in locales. The charm of the environments is backed up by a brilliant musical score that could easily been copied straight from the film, and really adds to the more cinematic set pieces. To its credit, the game does attempt to give you value for money by adding plenty of content to at least last longer than the film. If you do actually like the mini-games that break-up the main game, then multiple variants of dualing/piloting/driving are on offer. Each deliver different objectives to complete, and several levels of difficulty so that you’ll at least be challenged to get gold medals in each. All the mini-game have Move functionality, and although this really doesn’t add some much needed depth, it does make the additions slightly more fun to play though, though not a huge justification to shell out on the bright bauble wand. The main story only lasts around 5 hours, but a compulsive player will try to blitz these challenges, and a co-op campaign that carries on from the main story adds hours of play time once the credits roll. 
Whereas I found myself eagerly awaiting a cleverly structured battle of wits when playing alone, the co-op mode constantly delivered there brilliant moments. Set inside Captain Haddock’s head after a particularly nasty thwack on the noggin, these levels know no limits of weird. It’s such a strange premise to get your head around, but the levels are extraordinarily imaginative and wonderfully crafted to present some platforming magic. The unpredictability of the setting allows for some truly weird chapters. One moment you and a partner will be latched onto parrots traversing gears and shifting platforms embedded with spikes, the next a seeming normal looking factory will start folding in on itself. The conundrums you and a pal will face won’t push your friendship to the limits, but the puzzles you encounter are rewarding enough to work your way through, and those great aforementioned combat scenes become hilarious Benny Hill-esque chase scenes. It’s certainly not up to Portal 2 standards, but it’s certainly one of the greatest used of co-op play I’ve seen in a game recently. There are moments in The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn where you do have to admire its attempt to excel over other titles that have been plagued by the movie/game tie-in curse, and in most regards, it has. Tintin is a franchise that needs to be treated with care and love in this day and age. The film does it to a great degree, and despite some dull faux pas, the game manages it too. It’s just a shame that the sparks of genius in gameplay aren’t consistent throughout the entire game. If you have a young’un who’s desperate for everything related to the film, you can’t go wrong with this tie-in. Kids will most likely fall in love with the game, and not be dulled by the more linear sections, and the co-op campaign will most likely snag you yourself with its ingenuity. It’s just got me hoping for a sequel to the film, because I’m certain that another shot at a Tintin game would iron out the flaws here and we could have a franchise that could shake off the rotten tie-in stench for once.
The Bad: …but poor looking cut-scenes, Unusual pacing leads to quite a few dull and linear moments
Bronze Y Award