Lego: Indiana Jones

Well Lego have done it again, taken a well known franchise and made a solid gold lego series out of it! Can there be a better combination?

This game is the most fun I have had from playing a video game in a LONG time! Everything about it is just right and you can tell that the developers (Travellers Tales) were huge fans of the films and not just game developers. A whole load of care and attention to detail has made it into this game.

The graphics are good, as good as the limitations of lego can go at any rate. The scenery and backgrounds are almost identical to those in the films and somehow seem to intergrate with the lego elements nicely whilst still making items easy to spot. Key artifacts, vehicles and other items from the three films are all replicated faithfully in lego! The characters are just wonderful! Especially Indy and Henry Jones Sr! Some of the female characters are not instantly recognisable mostly because lego decide they should all have typical female lips which limits individual detail to the face, but that's just being picky now!

Levels are fun and action packed. Mostly puzzle based involving building things out of lego to progress. Scenery can be broken up to reveal Lego studs which you need to collect to raise your score and buy new characters and other extras. All characters have different abilities and tools which react to different items in the game and you'll sometimes need to use more than one character at a time (There are always at least 2 in play) Henry Jones Sr. can translate symbols to open secret passages, Sallah can dig for items and Indy can use his whip to swing and pull on items. Vehicles can be driven including key vehicles from the films such as the German trucks, Short Round's car, motorbike and sidecar, speedboats in venice and also animals such as camels, elephants and horses.

Each film is split into 6 levels making a total of 18 seperate levels all jam packed with action, puzzle solving and storyline. You don't need to worry about violence as lego people just break appart into pieces and it's all very cartoonesque. Nazi's are replaced with "enemies" and "soldiers" and where possible some scenes have been filtered for violent content. Considering the dark themes of the films, Travellers Tales did a fantastic job at keeping the Indy spirit alive in a very lighthearted game.

The typical Indiana Jones humour is so similar to the humour used by Lego that some scenes have just been more or less pulled straight from the films! The cutscenes are an absolute treasure in themselves and a very suitable reward for playing through the levels. They depict the key scenes and not much detail is missed out. They do move rather fast and I wonder if non Indy watchers will be able to follow. (Are there such people?!) Wonderfully animated they will have you laughing out loud and remembering your favourite scenes from the films. Cutscenes lead on seemlessly to the next level and you'll forget that you're playing with Lego, it's a top notch Indiana Jones experience!

The replay value is immense, you'll need to go back and play again to find all the hidden artefacts as some special characters need to be used in order to find them. Love and care has gone into this game and die hard Indiana fans will have trouble finding fault. Even the names of the achievements will have you chuckling as they've truly picked the best lines to sum each level! This game has got a whole charm and appeal of it's own, the best £30 I've spent and well worth every penny! If you love Lego and love Indiana Jones... buy it now!

Carrying on from the best selling Lego Star Wars games, comes Indiana Jones!
In this game you play the throught the storylines of the three original films - sorry, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not included. Each of the three films has been expanded to try and get more out of each storyline. As an example, in Raiders of the Lost Ark the bar brawl where Indy meets Marion moves beyond the bar into a mountain top level with more puzzles and action. In Temple of Doom there is a really nice level travelling to Pankot Palace where you ride elephants through more puzzles. And in The Last Crusade there is more made from the escape of Indy and his father when they use the motorbikes. But most importantly, they have kept in all your favourite parts of the film - the classic boulder dash in Raiders, the vehicle chase in Raiders, the mine cart escape in Temple of Doom, the fight on the bridge in Temple of Doom, the discovery of Sir Richard's tomb in the library in Venice from Last Crusade, and also the selection of the 'real grail' at the end of the Last Crusade.
As with Lego Star Wars you can play story mode where you are limited to which characters you can use, and free play mode where you can play with any character you have purchased or earned in an attempt to collect all the extras - such as the status of True Adventurer, the 10 artefacts (replacing the mini kit from Lego Star Wars) and posting all the parcels ( a very nice way of earning extras such as stud mulitpliers, invincibility, silly disguises and more!).
All your favourite characters from the films are here too. Indy is there of course but so is Marion, Sala, Belloc, Short Round, Dr Henry Jones, Marcus Brody and a whole host of minor characters and baddies you meet along the one. As a nod to the Lego Star Wars game there is one special hidden character you can earn too............
So, on to the game itself. How does it play? Well, it is very similar to Lego Star Wars in a lot of ways. You have certain characters who can perform certain actions. So you have a mechanic/engineer who permanently carries a spanner around to fix broken lifts, vehicles, machinery etc.... There are characters who carry spades who can dig up hidden artefacts, chests etc.. and these are a useful weapon too! They make a satisfying ring when you hit someone with it! You also get characters with major weaponry such as a rocket launcher or grenade carrier. These are all really enjoyable to play with, and replace the type of characters used in Lego Star Wars, such as Force characters, Droids who can speak to terminals and Bounty Hunters. All very nice.
Graphically it is much more lush than Lego Star Wars. The backgrounds are really well done, and are a vast improvement on any of the Lego games before it. Though i have one issue with it - the perspective. The backgrounds are 3d but it is very hard to judge where your character is in relation to the edge of a cliff, whether you are near to a rope, and most awkwardly of all, getting onto a ladder can be a real irritant! It is a minor gripe, but a fault with the game that you wish had been ironed out before release.
The music is perfect too - directly lifted from the films.
It plays really well too, and like Lego Star Wars is enjoyed most when playing in co-op mode with a friend.
As for the difficulty, anyone can pick this up from children to adults. The puzzles are generally straightforward (and better than Lego Star Wars in my opinion), but the fighting is not quite as exciting - the lightsabers were so enjoyable in Lego Star Wars, whereas this game has to rely on whips,guns, spades and rocket launchers. What is nice though are the character specific ways of brawling - Short Round has some kung fu moves, Indy has a rough and tumble style of fighting, and Willy has a Super Scream which is funny to use!
Onto the extras on this game - there are loads to discover and unlock. The game hub is set in the University where Indy works and this is where you set off on each of his adventures, buy characters, buy extras, view artefacts and earn some cool hidden stuff. I won't spoil my favourite hidden feature, but i will say that you want to earn all the artefacts........... It unlocks something really cool that will have you grinning from ear to ear!!
So let's go through the good things about Lego Indiana Jones. The puzzles are much better than Lego Star Wars, the music is brilliant, the free play mode is great fun, the gentle humour is as good as ever, the extras are better (there is a trailer for Lego Batman that you can access from the main menu and this is a must to watch), the levels are well thought out and that they have crammed in all the good bits from the films.
However, there are some weaknesses in this game that stop me from giving it five stars.
Firstly, it is not as immediately fun and exciting as Star Wars was. Once i had played through all the stories and gone into free play, i was hooked but the story mode just didn't grip me for some reason. Secondly, the extra characters you can buy/earn just aren't different enough from each other. You always end up playing Indy because he is the most fun to play with, whereas Star Wars had more recognisable 'bit players' that you could enjoy from Bounty Hunters, to Droids and to those using the Dark Side of the Force. Thirdly, it is way too easy. Lego Star Wars was huge and challenging in finding all the hidden extras, and I'm afraid Lego Indiana Jones wasn't for me. I found everything and unlocked everything very quickly, and that was in only in a short span of gaming time. Having said that, the extras that ARE in this game are brilliant.
My final criticism is that the developers haven't really done anything new with Lego Indiana Jones. There is nothing that makes you go 'wow!' like Lego Star Wars did. There is no real innovation in this game - so it is really more of the same, and let's face it, that is not really a bad thing when Lego Star Wars was so good!

Who would like this ?Well, that is pretty simple. Anyone over the age of 5 and upwards who either likes, Lego, Indiana Jones or a fun platforming/collecting game!

I really enjoyed it from beginning to end, short though it was, and would recommend this as a great family game, or a fun game for hard core gamers want a break from serious games. For me it provided a nice break from intense, involving games - this was a pick up and play game with lots of fun for all included.

Roll on Lego Batman later in the year!!

In this game you get to play as all the different characters, each come with different tools such as a spade, spanner or a whip. You can climb, swim, run, ride and shimmy.

The graphics are really good and it is really clever how most things are made from lego, like the trees. It is fun when you smash thing and lego bricks fly everywhere! There are lots of cool movie clips too.

I like the fact that 2 people can play and you can swap characters whenever you want.

On the downside it would be better if you could save when you want instead of having to complete the chapter you are on, as I find I keep having to play the same part more than once. I would recommend this game to anyone.

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