Lego Indiana Jones - The Video Game

Someone made the comment about "Star Wars Lego" (both games) that Star Wars was cool; Lego was cool and therefore Star Wars Lego was awesomely cool. Obviously having had such amazing success with the first two Star Wars games, the Indiana Jones Lego idea was a fairly obvious idea (as indeed is the idea of a Batman Lego game which is released later this year). Centering around the first three movies (and including a bonus level that is NOT The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull), we get to play the movies in true Lego style.

One of the coolest things about Star Wars Lego was that you could watch some scenes of the movies in a Lego style which means entertaining things such as people getting killed and, quite literally, falling apart as a result. This continues into Indiana Jones Lego, but to be fair the scenes don't have quite the same irreverent humour of the Star Wars games, though when that humour shines though it is tremendously funny.
The gameplay is almost exactly the same as the Star Wars movies - movement is identical, though every character has a slightly different special ability: Indy cracks a whip; Marcus can translate things; Sallah has a shovel; etc. One interesting change to the characters is that some have phobias that render the characters unable to move. The best example of this is Indy who, when faced with snakes, cringes and the player is unable to do anything except move backwards. This gives secondary characters a little more power than they might have had against a "super-powered" Indy.

Collectibles remains essentially the same - instead of building spaceships, you build artefacts, but you still collect treasure chests and, unusually this time around, you have to post "extras" such as artefact detectors and disguises; things you could simply buy in the Star Wars games. That said it is a lot easier to become a "true adventurer" this time round, with an absolute abundance of studs.

It took me about twenty hours to get through 75% of the game, though I have a feeling that this was helped by the fact I had played Star Wars Lego - for newcomers it may take a lot longer to play the game.

It's nice, once in a while, to be able to play a game that is clearly designed to be nothing more than a fun game, rather than an interactive gritty horror/fantasty movie, but still have enough substance to make the game challenging and enjoyable.

"A-"