Review – Lego Indiana Jones
Lego Indiana Jones does exactly what it says on the tin. You play through the origional trilogy of Indianas adventures with a vast array of charachters in the Lego format. I really enjoyed playing the Lego adaptation of Star Wars, it was entertaining and folowed the movies rather well, splicing it up with the Lego brand humour that made the game brilliant. The same brilliant comedy can be found again in Lego Indiana Jones.
The game mechanics are rather simple, it’s a basic platformer game with several Lego additions. Such as having to build propellers out of Lego to get the plane you escape on working again. Other interesting aspects of gameplay include how certain charachters have different advantages or dissadvantages. “Big Whoop!” I hear you say, but this is actually very important to gameplay, you can’t play and fully complete a level as one charachter, you need to switch between them to solve the various puzzles and complete the game. Short Round can access small spaces which larger charachters can’t, Indy is scared of snakes and actually becomes useless when you move near them and to avoid annoying the feminists, women can jump higher than male charachters.
The game is very fun to play and has provided me with many hours of enjoyment. Well except when the game get’s a bit buggy. Thats right, Lego Indiana Jones suffers from a bad case of the gremlins. At least 4 times I have had to restart a level because an event didn’t get triggered, or I couldn’t defeat a boss as he or a needed object fell through the solid rock floor. This doesn;t cause the game to crash, just impossible to continue the level, this can be very annoying especially when you are near the end of one. Perhaps it is just me and the PS3 version, other consoles may run the game better.
Another issue I have with the game is how the camera reacts with two people on screen. The drop in, drop out co-op system that was introduced in Lego Star Wars is still a brilliant addition. Being able to just pick up a controller and join in the fun is something I wish more games implemented. Though this does mean that with two players on screen at once, the camera does follow the wrong person and can cause you to become separated, having to re-spawn next to your ally. Even in single-player the camera has a tendency to get stuck in the wrong place, or gets into a really awkward angle making even the simplest of actions difficult.
Don’t let this stop you from buying, or at least renting the game. Apart from the bugs it has, it is still a very enjoyable game to play, the brilliant sense of humour the cutscenes have and the simple gameplay mechanics make the game accessable to all ages. It presents enough of a challenge to older age-groups while staying simple enough for younger ones to enjoy it.
