It's okay to tell your kids about these swingers. When developer Traveller's Tales put out two Lego Star Wars titles, audiences snapped them up. So, it only made sense to tap yet another George Lucas goldmine and take Indiana Jones to Lego land, with a focus on the three original Indy films. So could the Indiana Jones games be at least as good as the Star Wars ones?
The original Lego Star Wars games seemed at first like children's games, but ended up being quite fun. The presentation for the Indy game is just as fun and is extremely well done. It does a solid job of presenting the stories of the original three movies.
Lego Indiana Jones looks great and has some solid colors, well-drawn animations and shows a nice touch with the visual effects. This game really looks fantastic on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and even the good ol' PlayStation 2. The sound is also quite well done; you get to hear John Williams score from all three movies, along with some nice sound effects. There's nothing like hearing the crack of Indy's whip with a well-played move. The sound effects can get a little bit repetitive, but manage add to the action going on around you.
The main focus of the game play is the story mode. You get to control Indy as well as another character through all the various levels. You get support from Marion and Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr., as well as other notable characters from the film. Each of the secondary characters has special abilities that help you along the way as you try to navigate the various puzzles and other tricky parts. Some of the characters have unique abilities. Willie Scott, for example, from The Temple of Doom, has the ability to shatter glass and Mario from Raiders of The Lost Ark can jump higher than Indy. Another bonus to the story mode is that you can always add in a second player to take control of that extra character, so you can play through solo with an A.I. partner, or with one of your friends.
The basic setup makes for a mix of an action game and a platformer. There are a great deal of puzzles you have to solve to progress through the various levels. These puzzles are easy in some instances, but a bit more tricky as you go forth. Many of the puzzles focus on repairing something, or finding a key, etc. The game is set up similar to Lego Star Wars, which means you can destroy pretty much anything.
Lego Indiana Jones also tries to tackle the action element of the franchise. Overall, the action aspect of the game is executed fairly well for its target audience, though sometimes it feels too much like a button mashing game. Some of the items that can be used in the fighting include guns, shovels, a whip, swords, etc. For the most part, however, no matter what item you have, you end up just pushing the single action button to kill all the bad guys.
The developers have done a good job with Indy on his Lego adventures. They took the much safer approach by using the Lego Star Wars formula, which worked out very well. But if they don't change up the games at some point, they will get stale pretty fast. Overall though, this is a fun game and a good release for Indy fans.
Lego Indiana Jones
The Original Adventures
Rated E10 for Everyone 10 and older. Publisher- LucasArts. Platform- Xbox 360, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2,3, Retail- $29.99-$59.99
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