The Smurfs Travel the World

The Good
The background visuals and the occasional foreground really try hard to please the eyes, even the storyline is well presented in the traditional style of the Belgian comics. Although it's good that you can choose to play as a generic Smurf or the Smurfette, it would have been nice for them to have more than just cosmetic differences, such as unique abilities as well as being able to pick other characters like Brainy or Jokey. It's kind of humorous that every enemy you meet is the same size as the Smurfs, including the lions and bears.

The Bad
The platforming is pretty weak with either linear levels or mazes with the only goal of collecting crystals that look like flint spearheads. Enemies are a constant torment with unpredictable paths and hard to dodge attacks. That makes you want to avoid them altogether until you realise you need to eliminate them in order to get the crystals. The kick attack is so short-ranged it's practically useless. In regards to vitality, you can only have a maximum of four hearts and no more. And speaking of vitality, water loses you a life in an instant. In some levels you can swim, but you can't defend yourself at all. That's a heap of unfairness in the gameplay.

And the side quest to collect garbage seems pointless (why ever would you need to collect biodegradable apple cores?). There's no penalty for not picking up garbage and no score system or stats for anything you do in the level. And the sound and music isn't interesting enough to listen to. Talk about lack of polish and thought put inside the game.

The Bottom Line
Much of the game is complete chaos and nothing in the gameplay makes much sense. Hidden behind the colourful visuals are a ton of broken mechanics that ruin your game day. Your every efforts don't feel even remotely rewarding, not even for the ending. This doesn't feel like a faithful adaptation of the comics, this is just a run of the mill safari hunt with poorly mimicked Super Mario mechanics in the mix. What you see is all you're going to get and what you experience, you're going to regret. I can't recommend this one to gamers or Smurf fans, much less to environmentalists.