Saw the teaser for this game on a Nintendo Direct and just had to get it, you know how much I like Tintin. I preordered the Limited Edition and then just waited. Took forever for them to release it on the Switch, so much that the physical was delayed for me since it couldn't be shipped until a couple of days after it was supposed to arrive. And in the meantime I heard some not good news about it. Apparently a mobile game they spruced up and upon release on consoles before the Switch it didn't work properly all the time. So I had lowered expectation going in.
Putting it in the first thing I hear is the theme from the 90's animated series and I just have a big smile on my face. And then the game starts, and it's album accurate in that it begins on the cruise as Tintin chase after a papyrus that this Egyptologist lost. And they just threw you out there without explaining the controls for the Quick-Time Events. And they just went on and on. I was not happy. Bad impression. It gets better after you left the ship escaping the Duponts and all that. The tomb of Kih-Oskh was a real highlight with just great amount of puzzles. A bit many stealth sequences overall that can go on my nerves followed by chase scenes in the rest of the game. Story is that on a cruise toward Shanghai Tintin gets roped into looking for a lost tomb of the pharao Kih-Oskh which turns out to be the headquarters for an opium smuggling operation. Tintin follows the lead toward India and helps a Maharadja stop the smugglers from extorting his people. All the while Tintin is hunted by the Duponts since the smugglers have implicated him as an opium dealer.
Overall a mixed bag. I enjoy it since it Tintin, but if I didn't know anything about it, it would have made for a irritating game to play through, and I wonder if some of the things you were supposed to do only works by reading the comics first. At times though it feel better paced out story wise since I can see and get the hints of the different smugglers. Mostly since we have more time with them. Graphics wise, they look like what they should look like, but I can see that the game hardly can work at times, throwing in textures a bit to late, first scene with Snowy really didn't work. Also, Tintin looks rather worse than other characters, Rastapopoulos probably looks the best for some reason. The game also crashed on me once while playing and the last Snowy sequence was a nightmare in trying to find your way around a mountain getting the final stone to push. Maybe they will follow it up with Blue Lotus, but I can understand if there's no follow up on this series.
