If you like stories that end well, move on. Because not only does it end badly, but it also starts very badly, and there is not the slightest trace of happiness from one end to the other. Indeed, the life of the Baudelaire children had nothing in common. Violette, Klaus and Prunille Baudelaire were nevertheless charming and intelligent children, full of resources, but their destiny did not hear it that way.
If nobody does anything, guilty we will be of these orphans!
From the outset, the tone is set. Get ready to live the disastrous adventures of the Baudelaire orphans, that of Violette, the eldest aged 14, Klaus her 12-year-old brother and little Prunille who is still only a baby but has nothing usually. Raised by wealthy parents, their lives change when they perish in a fire. Mr. Poe, banker and executor of the Baudelaire parents places this family in the hands of Count Olaf, a distant uncle. Money does not buy happiness, it is well known (even if it strongly contributes to it!) since the latter, an expert in the art of disguise but also a tragic second-rate actor, is obviously only interested in the inheritance and will try by all means to appropriate it. He will task the children with zany and perilous missions such as chasing huge rats or even a nest of giant spiders from his mansion before trying to finish you off directly. Fortunately, we are then placed under the guardianship of other distant relatives, who are generally very sympathetic but totally brainless. We will thus find in this adventure Uncle Monty, an eminent specialist in reptiles and more particularly snakes, or even Aunt Agripina, passionate about French grammar. Olaf will then use his theatrical talents to abuse them, even if it means making them disappear forever, to recover custody of the children.
The onion is strength!
Orphans will therefore have to rely only on themselves and their skills to extricate themselves from situations more grotesque than each other. For example, Violette is able to create ingenious mechanisms and even weapons from insignificant objects such as a simple piece of string, a pair of gloves or even a fork. MacGyver can go get dressed! Klaus is a bookworm who has the particularity of never forgetting anything from his reading and can therefore put his encyclopedic knowledge to good use. As for Sunny, she is still only a baby and therefore only speaks by syllable, making it rather difficult to understand what she is saying, but her small size allows her to squeeze through narrow passages. She also has very good teeth and can bite anything that comes within her reach. Metals, wood, etc. nothing can resist him! When my dentist told me not to eat sweets to have healthy teeth, he was probably right in the end! Quite dirigiste in the approach, the title too often boils down to a few phases of platforms to find certain objects and then to fight a boss or move on to the next puzzle. The puzzles are also distressingly easy and the possibilities of action are themselves quite limited, being limited to pushing heavy objects or jumping. But let's put it into perspective because the title is primarily aimed at a young audience. Everything is then implemented to put us on the track. For example, searched objects are illuminated by fireflies and if an action is possible (pick up an object, open a door, examine a corner, etc.), the round button is displayed in the center of the screen. Same observation for the fights, where an automatic lock system has been put in place although the latter turns out to be quite approximate in the end. If the life of the Baudelaire children is rather eventful, it will be impossible for them to die. Wounded, we can always recover medallions bearing the likeness of their parents to restore their health, but with each failure, we find ourselves tirelessly at the nearest checkpoint.
A disastrous adventure?
But is this adventure a disaster? This is what one might try to believe, especially since it took us a little less than five hours to see the end of it. However, the characters have a certain charisma and the smoothly conducted adventure will give some people the desire to get the book. Although confining the player in relatively small spaces due to its linearity, certain phases of the game may distract the informed player. In this case, we find ourselves in shooting phases or even a mini game that looks like Simon, an electronic memory game where you have to repeat the combinations produced by the machine. The realization is neat and we are eager to know the outcome of the story. Exit the cinematics, it is told to us by the cavernous voice of the narrator revealing in parallel many sketches which are sketched little by little before our eyes.
Whether or not the title needs to be under the Christmas trees, we'll let you draw the conclusions. But if it is certainly not of the same stamp as Harry Potter, it undeniably retains its charm and will appeal above all to the youngest.
