donny2112 said:
If you're an Indiana Jones fan and want a weekend play-through for a new movie story, I'd recommend picking this up for $20 or renting it. A good 7.5, in my opinion.
Lttp -
I just finished a personal Indiana Jones Movie Marathon over the past week. Incidentally, Crystal Skull is much, much, worse if you watch it right after Last Crusade. But anyway, I picked this up on a lark while under the effects of an Indiana Jones fever. I followed donny2112's advice and basically agree completely - that last sentence is perfect.
GOTY? No. 7.5 is about right. The hand-keyed player animations are not all that great but get the job done. The puzzles range from "Hm. That was pretty clever." to "Jesus. What am I an asshole?" Graphically it's fairly impressive for the Wii. One thing that's kind of a shame is the fighting. Not that it isn't fun - but it's obvious that a lot of work went into the motion controls for different punches, and being able to hit guys with objects. I quickly found that grappling and banking bad guys into a wall got me through those sequences faster than any awkward flailing. The animation and sound for that move is pretty hilarious as well which helped.
Having said all of that - couple things that I think put this game in the "underrated" category, and are worth checking out if you like Indy, or, linear action games: The music - someone who loves John Williams' music was in charge of choosing what track goes where here. Also, the new, original music is great. It has the feel, but not the resonance of a John Williams score, I think they just needed a bigger orchestra.
The other thing that I thought was well executed was the gameplay variety and the pacing. Somehow I didn't mind that I was in a scripted scene for the shootouts, it felt right for an Indiana Jones game, as did the various chases where you were locked into a shootout with enemies while on a vehicle. It just works. At first I wished they were longer, but then I realized, they might've gotten stale.
So what would've made this a memorable game?
- I think making the artifacts a little more intriguing, and harder to get, would've gone a long way. Make them intrinsic to the environment.
- The office menu was great, and has sort of a Mafia feel, but menu navigation is kind of weird because of the icons. Just make arrows out of those things that should be arrows, instead of footprints.
- Give the player a few different ways to complete a quest. Speech and stealth are simply omitted here in favor of fisticuffs. Alternatively - just give the player stealth 'takedowns', like the sub pen guard in Raiders, where Indy steals his uniform. Disguised gameplay would be sick.
Usually I hate linear games, but I found myself playing this game for hours at a time, in part because of my Indy fever, in part because no one's done better with the license lately. If you can't spare the 20 bucks, and you're an Indiana Jones nerd like myself, throw it into your gamefly, I think you'll have some fun for a weekend.
