The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of The Unicorn was developed by Ubisoft and is based on the 2011 movie that was based on the popular Tintin comics created by Georges Remi. The game was obviously made based on the film more so then the comics as the cover and title suggest. I myself am not too familiar with Tintin and its characters (to me Tintin will always be the name of the main character on Rintintin K9 Cop) so the characters and plot was pretty much foreign to me.

Graphically Tintin is well a PS3 game so it isn’t horrible but its far from the best that I have seen. The best part of the graphics was definitely the level backgrounds like clouds, stars, buildings, paintings, ect. On the other end of the spectrum, the character designs to me were below what expectations should be for a PS3 game, an example of this is Tintin in cutscenes who at times appears to look like a vampire from the Twilight series. The foes are generic looking and only have about 2-3 different appearance variations per level, which in this day and age is just laziness in my opinion. Overall as I said at first you can’t say the game looks horrible, but it is on the low end of the spectrum over all.

Audio and sound is the one spot where I don’t have many gripes at all with Tintin. The music seemed really well put together, probably thanks to being a movie based game, and each sound really fit where they placed it at in the game. My only gripe is that some of the sound effects are over used, but that occurs in almost every game so I can’t really make a big deal about it. Basically if for some reason they EVER do a sequel to this game (Note: THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION TO THE CREATORS TO MAKE A SEQUEL) they should scrap everything but the music.

Alright the biggest thing about any game is going to be the gameplay and unfortunately this is where Tintin takes a big hit. When it comes to playing through the levels each character only has one attack which is a punch if you are Tintin or Haddock and if you are controlling the dog your only weapon is to bark and scare things away though some levels do give you the opportunity to use a grappling hook or throw around objects located in the background, there is very little variety and it gets very repetitive. Tintin is basically a sidescroller but the problem is that to me at least it didn’t bring anything really new or innovative to the paper and by that I mean you just jump over holes, punch or throw stuff at bad guys, rinse and repeat. The minigame levels where you fly or drive were pretty much just move the control stick in the direction that you want to go and hold down the gas, nothing really innovative there either.

The Controls are fairly simple which is fine for a kids game, and what little experience I had with the move controller it seemed to work alright, though they didn’t really add anything to the game for me my niece did enjoy it. The minigame controls are also fairly simple as I mentioned above with you controlling a vehicle or character and pretty much button mashing your way through a level.

The game does have a few different game modes available to play though none are really new or innovative they are there. First off there is the Tintin story mode which is described as being ‘The adventure of the film’ and again while I haven’t seen the movie I assume the story you play through is close to what goes on in the film with some minor tweaks and changes. Throughout this mode you control Tintin and at times his pet dog (the funnest parts for me involved playing as the dog) the dog is used in small spaces or fast paced areas to get to objects Tintin can’t get to. Essentially the story is divided into chapters as you seek to collect a series of letters hidden inside models of the “unicorn” ship. Between chapters your character travels automatically on a map from one destination to the next, along with cutscenes to explain things.

Next up is Tintin and Haddock mode where the levels are the character Haddocks dreams, this mode allows you and a friend (or it can be done with one player switching between characters) to play through levels that are slightly more innovative then those found in the single player Tintin campaign. Tintin is faster and has a grappling hook, Haddock is stronger and can move heavy objects. Like with the Tintin solo player mode you collect items to unlock things like costumes and other extras as well as coins to purchase other extras as well.

The other mode the game has to offer is called Challenges and is made up of 3 different types of mini game style modes: Sword, Plane, and Sidecar each with more individual challenges available to be unlocked for each mode. The sword challenge had difficult controls and was basically you fighting off a mob of pirates with a sword, but again the controls killed it for me as they seemed unresponsive. Plane mode was much better than sword mode, as the plane controlled much better and the cloud and sky graphics were very well illustrated, but it was very easy to get lost in the level and you would pretty much end up floating around until time runs out. My favorite of these was definitely the sidecar challenges as they seemed fast paced and offered a variety of different levels and environments, and the controls in this mode seemed the most fluid and well designed.

Bonus mode is what it says it is, you can go there and view all of your unlockable content such as character profiles, cut scenes, and concept art. There is also a co-op mode where you play some missions in some strange dream state with your friend to solve co-op puzzles.

In closing Tintin is definitely NOT a game for everyone, but if you are a fan of the comics/movie or if you are buying it for a young child then they may be able to get some enjoyment out of it, however for me it just wasn’t there.

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Overall