Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first hour has a pleasant storybook momentum: Tintin buys a model ship at a Belgian flea market, something immediately feels suspicious, and before long you are slipping through hazards and pursuing the mystery of the Unicorn. The game is fundamentally a side-scrolling platformer, but it avoids feeling entirely automatic by asking you to scout rooms, find routes forward, and choose a quiet way around enemies. Rolling under trouble, grabbing ledges, hopping between platforms, throwing objects, and hiding in barrels give Tintin enough movement options to make sneaking feel active rather than passive.

Stealth is where the game has its best ideas. You can take guards down discreetly, steal keys, or use nearby objects to create an opening. Later, when enemies arrive better armed, the environmental tricks become more important: a banana peel or wet paint can be more useful than charging in. There is regular melee combat too, but it is less distinctive. When the game pushes you toward observation and timing, it feels appropriately mischievous for Tintin; when it becomes a direct fight, the energy dips.

Small puzzle moments help the adventure breathe. Sending Snowy through narrow gaps and ordering Haddock onto a pressure plate are straightforward tasks, yet they break up the platforming without stopping it cold. Bosses turn up occasionally, and the campaign also steps outside its 2D lane for motorbike chases, plane flights, scent tracking, diving, and on-rails sword fights aboard the Unicorn. That variety is welcome, although the main platforming-and-stealth loop remains the reason to play.

Co-op is a worthwhile alternative to Solo mode if you have company. Tintin’s grappling hook, Haddock’s strength, and Bianca Castafiore’s double jump and glass-breaking each serve a clear purpose, so the separate co-op stages ask partners to coordinate instead of merely sharing the screen. Challenge mode offers competitive play as well. If you want an earlier, very different Tintin adaptation, The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun is also worth a look.

Graphics

The game spends most of its time in a side-on 2D view, making Tintin’s climbs, rolls, barrels, ledges, and guard-filled spaces easy to follow. The campaign moves from Belgium to the SS Karaboudjan, Ben Salaad’s Palace, the port city of Bagghar, and Marlinspike, while its occasional 3D sequences shift the camera for chases, flights, diving, and sword-fighting set pieces.

Story

This is not a loose license wearing familiar names; it starts with Tintin’s purchase of the model Unicorn and follows the hunt for why its captain destroyed the ship during Red Rackham’s attack. A collector steals the model after Tintin discovers a document inside it, giving the opening a clean detective-story hook. You know exactly why Tintin is poking into strangers’ homes and climbing through dangerous places: he wants his clue back and an answer.

The plot draws from The Crab with the Golden Claws, Red Rackham’s Treasure, and The Secret of the Unicorn while following the 2011 animated film’s story. That makes it a busy, globe-trotting tale: Snowy helps Tintin track the collector, Captain Haddock joins him aboard the Karaboudjan, and the investigation carries them through palaces and ports before returning home to Marlinspike.

Its strongest story quality is forward motion. One clue leads to the next location, and each stop gives the platforming a practical reason to exist. The historical Unicorn material also gets more than a passing mention through playable on-rails sword-fighting sequences, connecting the old pirate conflict to Tintin’s present-day search.

Overall Experience

The Adventures of Tintin: The Game is an agreeable, varied action-platformer rather than a demanding stealth game or a deep puzzle adventure. Its best stretches let you quietly outwit guards with the tools in a room, then move on before the joke wears thin. You should give it a chance if you want a breezy, accessible take on Tintin’s mystery, especially if the film and comics’ mix of investigation, travel, and comic danger appeals to you.

Frustration can set in if you come expecting the brawling to carry the game, because the more ordinary melee encounters are not as clever as its stealthy setups. The frequent shifts into chase, flight, tracking, diving, and sword-fighting activities keep the campaign from becoming monotonous, but they also make it feel like a collection of adventure beats rather than one system that steadily deepens.

Still, the payoff is worthwhile at the right scale. The journey from the flea-market mystery to the secret of the Unicorn has a clear throughline, Snowy and Haddock are put to useful gameplay work, and co-op adds a genuinely different way to tackle dedicated stages. It is an easy recommendation for a younger gamer, a Tintin fan, or anyone after a modest platform adventure with more personality than a simple left-to-right run.

Retro Replay Score

6.8/10