Indy Lego Title Is Pure Family Fun
Fans of Indiana Jones and Legos, now is your time, because Traveller’s Tales has done what they did for six Star Wars movies. They have transformed the first three Indiana Jones adventures into the world of Legos.
If you played either of the Star Wars Lego titles you will be familiar with the game play here. But for those of you unfamiliar with the previous games, you walk around as a Lego version of one of the characters from the movie and complete famous scenes from the movie. Though you are far more destructive then the characters from the movie because you need to smash a lot of things to release studs (scoring bricks) which raise your total. If you manage to fill the bar at the top of the screen you get a huge bonus. But every time your character dies you loose some points.
The game keeps the E10+ rating solidly in place because everything is made of Legos. Like with the Star Wars game, if you kill or break something it simply shatters into a little pile of building blocks, just like if you were playing with Legos on your living room floor.
Once you have completed a section of the story, that section of the game opens up for free play where you can (and need to) bring in characters from other movies or scenes. As I started to say a moment ago, you really need to bring in other characters from other movies because sometimes you need to be small to get into a secret area or you need a particular character to interact with an item to open it up.
There are certain items you need to get a perfect score in each area and Traveler’s Tales loves to hide things in areas that you can not get to without returning to the mission in free play. Which, along with the ability to instantly flip between one and two player modes, adds greatly to the replay ability of the game.
This particular Lego game focuses a lot more on the adventure including lots of puzzles, climbing, and collecting of items. Which I think fits in more closely with the theme of the Indiana Jones Trilogy. The developer did a fantastic job of sticking with the story, but they added in scenes which I think really add to the game.
The first one I ran across was after the bar fight in Raiders of the Lost Ark after Indy and Marion escape the bar and they travel though a number of snowy scenes fighting Germans. This is not something that takes away from the story, but really adds to the adventure. There are plenty more, but you will have to play the game to find out.
And of course there is combat, but without blasters and force powers, this game relies a lot more on melee combat, and of course the whip. There are guns, but you mostly pick them up from dead characters and they have a limited number of bullets. Besides fists and whips, many of the characters are armed with special items like shovels for digging or wrenches for fixing things. And least we forget books for solving puzzles.
Even if your particular character does not have one of these things, they are often lying around and can be picked up and used, which is very helpful in free play where you might not always have the character originally intended for that scene. A new dynamic with Lego Indy is that at times one of your characters may be paralyzed with fear by snakes or spiders forcing you to use another character.
There is of course no talking in any of the Lego games. Any feelings are conveyed with gestures in the many well-placed and always amusing cut scenes. The music is as always perfect and fits wonderfully, but then that is a must in a game with no dialog. The graphics are good, very similar to the last two Lego games.
The camera angles could use a little work, a criticism carried over from other Lego titles. I always find myself just wishing for a slightly better view, though they are possibly slightly improved over the Star Wars games.
This time you end up at Indy’s university between missions. And there is of course a lot to smash there, but I found that there was also a lot more to do including a new mailbox system where you find things in the game and send them back to the university where you can pick them up in the mailroom.
Overall I was very impressed with this title. I am of course a huge fan of Lego and the Indiana Jones films, even that last one. But I thought Traveller’s Tales did a wonderful job of adding some new features to the game without taking anything away from the magic of the Star Wars games.
Developers: Traveler's Tales
Platforms: Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360