Chris 'The Tingler' Capel is thrown two copies of the Lego Indy game, then runs and is skewered on a spike trap. Here's what he wrote before then....
I’m sure a lot of you know what to expect with this game, having already judged it based on the demo and the Lego Star Wars series. By all rights, that is quite fair. It’s a Traveller’s Tales Lego game and shares most of the strengths and weaknesses of the Star Wars titles. However, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s more excited about a new Indiana Jones game than a Star Wars one, so there must be people who have had no experience with the Lego games and just want to know whether this is a good Indy game or not.
DOCTOR JONES, JONES, CALLING DOCTOR JONES
Let me get it out the way now: yes, it is. Lego Indiana Jones can join the other four or five good Indiana Jones games out there. The closest comparison is probably Emperor’s Tomb: simple puzzles, rope swinging, lots of action and brawling, slightly fiddly to play on the PC, guns all have an ammo limit, Indy can pick up objects and attack or throw them at enemies, and there’s no mid-level saving. Hell, it even has Indy’s same quirky habit of choosing to whip chairs and objects instead of the Nazi Guy pointing a machine gun at him. We won’t hold that against it though.
The main difference between Lego Indy and ‘Tomb is that you won’t want to break things every time you die, as like Lego Star Wars there’s infinite lives and you respawn at pretty much the same point you died. The levels are all quite long with loads of hidden little details and secrets, and there will always be massive sections of the level you’ll only be able to get to after unlocking a few characters and coming back to the level in Freeplay mode – so you’ll definitely be playing it at least twice.
The biggest amount of joy in this game comes with those little details. Whipping Willie Scott over to snog her and earning a slap for your trouble, finding Luke Skywalker struggling with his feet stuck to the ceiling of an icy cave, ‘using’ a bush in Barnett College and watching Indy wear it like a disguise in a Looney Tunes cartoon… The attention to detail in this game is superb, Traveller’s Tales really put lots of effort into this game, raising Lego Indy to a fun level far above run-of-the-mill dross like, um, Transformers.
The graphics in the game are great depending on the system you play it on, but on the technical side what interested me more was the music. It’s not just taken from the three Indy films, there’s a lot of music from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and even Clint Bajakian’s score from Emperor’s Tomb. Very interesting, and nice to hear.
One thing that I mentioned briefly is the simple puzzles. Well, I think I did them an injustice – I think they’re closer to Infernal Machine levels of difficulty, even occasionally reaching proper adventure levels. One particularly puzzle in the Well of Souls had me utterly stumped, it even misdirected me to an incorrect solution! And that was only the fourth level!
While puzzles do rear their head from time to time, brawling is what you’ll be doing most. Guns have a few bullets then they get discarded, plenty of objects can be picked up and used as weapons or thrown (have you ever bashed someone over the head with a hard pizza?), but you’ll often find that against a pack of armed Nazis Soldiers that the whip just doesn’t cut it. You can’t even dodge unless you have a gun.
Platforming takes up the next third of the game. It’s tricky with the camera perspective, at least for non-Lego Star Wars fans, but as death isn’t that painful it’s not much to worry about. The humour must also be mentioned, as it’s a lot funnier than expected. The ending of Raiders is particularly well done. This game is incredible amounts of fun, but there’s a slight problem with it…
TOO SHORT ROUND
Lego Indy is incredibly fun, and I would happily have given the game 5/5 if it wasn’t for the game’s one (ironically) big problem: it’s too short. The levels are surprisingly long, but with no checkpoints they get finished all at once. You’ll play through the game twice – once normally, once in Freeplay, and then unless you’re playing cooperative you’ll never play it again. The Lego Star Wars games may have been easy to get through, but there was always plenty of incentive to go on. Unlocking then playing Watto or Ghost Yoda is fun, unlocking and playing Nazi #4 Person With Political Differences #4 is not. While Star Wars has many fun characters, here the clue’s in the title – you only ever want to play Indy. What happened to all the extra stuff from Lego Star Wars, like Super Story, gold blocks and challenges? There’s a few secret levels, and of course the treasures and Mail Boxes to find, but then that’s it.
This is one of those occasions where the score represents the fun value rather than the longevity. If you can bear to wait that long, I think the inevitable Lego Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures will be a far longer and more attractive package. If you desperately want a new fun Indy game that’s a little bit skewed towards the kiddies but won’t last a single-player gamer very long, then go ahead and pick this up. It’s certainly a good and very fun game, just not a very long game.
Still, it’s a new, and good, Indy game. That counts for a lot in my book! Oh, and the developers clearly love Elsa as much as we all do.
Lego Indy is the first Indiana Jones game to appear on a handheld console since that basic Game Boy Color version of Infernal Machine in 1999. While the PSP version is the same as above, the DS version is completely different. It’s like two different development teams were given copies of the Indiana Jones trilogy and Lego Star Wars and each told to make a Lego Indiana Jones game, but they weren’t allowed to talk to each other.
The levels feel shorter and a lot more linear, and the puzzles are a lot simpler, but it’s still great fun. The DS version even improves on the main version in some areas. Indy’s whip works a lot better for a start, and Last Crusade actually starts with the Young Indy/Cross of Coronado sequence like it’s supposed to! Many elements are closer to Lego Star Wars with the DS version, like having Red Blocks instead of Mail and having the gold blocks back in.
If you own a DS and like Indy (as I presume everyone who comes to this site does), it is definitely worth picking up.
SCORE: 4/5 (for both games, just for different reasons!)
