Dear Journal,

Today I went on an adventure as a reporter who never really seemed to report anything…

Odds are if you pay attention to the clearance section of just about any store that sells video games you’ve seen copies of The Adventures of TinTin pop up in its various platforms.  Ultimately the game is a platformer with a few third-person adventure moments mixed in that is surprisingly more fun that you might expect.

TinTin is a young adventurer/reporter who has found a model of a ship and a secret scroll inside. He then sets out on an adventure that has him traveling all over the world to figure out the mystery and has him meeting some new friends along the way; primarily The Captain. The Captain is kind of a joke, a descendent of a ship captain that made some bad choices and left the family cursed to fail.

Opening level of the game and one of the few 3rd person levels.

Occasionally the game does have you exploring an area or engaging in a sword fight in the third person, as well as a few vehicle levels, but most of the game consists of pretty standard 2.5D platforming. In fact, this platforming is the best part of the game so the fact it makes up the majority is a good thing. It is kind of hard to describe the way TinTin plays, but the best way to do so would be to say that it is a very slapstick platformer. Being a children’s game, enemies are merely knocked unconscious when you attack them; and attacks often consist of events such as throwing banana peels for enemies to slip on or hitting them with a beach ball. Very kid friendly stuff, very slapstick. Often times the game would have you needing to clear a room of bad guys. In these rooms you would use a slight bit of stealth as well; slipping into crawl spaces and such to sneak around the enemies and get them from behind. It is surprisingly fun.

Most of the game looks more like this.

The third person stuff is mostly boring or in the case of the sword fighting, needlessly annoying to perform. Outside of the sword fights though, the third person levels are almost entirely based on walking around an area looking for a clue or some object. This is actually how the game begins as well.

Everything looks and sounds great by the way. Keeping in mind of course that it is based off of an animated movie so photo-realism isn’t a goal, the visuals are light and fun. Sound effects are fitting and the voice acting is top notch (one of the few advantages of movie tie-in games really).

Also, this game finally made me realize that TinTin is the kid and not the dog. Seriously, somehow never knew that.

The biggest flaw to The Adventures of TinTin is that the game is incredibly simple. There are maybe two or three moments that are genuinely difficult, and of course the couple of annoying to control sword fights as well. There isn’t much of a challenge to the game. Some would also likely point to the game’s length, which is around four hours, to be another flaw but in reality if it had been much longer it would of gotten very dull and repetitive. As is, there is just enough variety to keep the game the game entertaining and prevent the simplicity of it from getting to dull.

This is about as complicated as puzzles get in TinTin.

The game does also feature a series of mini-games, with the 360 version including Kinect functionality with it, but considering the mini-games are mostly just elements from the main game repackaged I did not spend much time with them. There is also another mode of the game that involves The Captain being knocked unconscious and having to make your way though what appears to be his mind. I got stuck on the first part of it though and didn’t really find myself wanting to press on.

Tomorrow I find out why taking all the characters and putting them together doesn’t always work out in Cartoon Network: Punch-Time Explosion!

Final Rating: 6/10

CBR Break Down:
Console Played On: Xbox 360
Time to completion: ~ 4.5 hours
Gamer Score Earned: 235
Price Bought at: $10
Current Price: $14.95 (Amazon)
Recommend Purchase Price: $10 actually isn’t a horrible price for this one.
Why you should buy it: Fun, though simple platforming moments.
Why you shouldn’t buy it: Almost to easy.

Check out all the Backlog Quest II journal entries!