Ah yes, my favourite part of Indiana Jones: that scene where Indy's attempts to demolish Cairo was repeatedly gatekept by a horde of monkeys holding all the vital tools.
After tackling Star Wars, Bionicle, Star Wars and...Star Wars, it was clear that Traveller's Tales had figured out what formula and franchise worked best for making these Lego games. However, they had run out of Star Wars movies to make videogames out of (right? right??) and thus, it was time for another IP. I don't know whether it was their choice, or something that the Lego Group mandated from them (to coincide with their own toyline the same year, which itself would coincide with the 4th movie), but it's perhaps appropriate that it turned out to be the other popular George Lucas trilogy. And given the popularity of franchises such as Tomb Raider (and Uncharted just the year prior) it was proven that such a theme works pretty well in videogame form. Traveller's Tales took all this...and make Lego Star Wars wearing the plastic skin of Indy and friends.
Hell, "Indy and friends" could sum up the first big flaw with this installment: Indiana Jones is not at all known for its rich vault of established characters. For each movie, you've got Indy, token love interest, token sidekick, and token villain. And of course, lots and lots of Nazis/culturally insensitive stereotypes! With such a poor roster of characters, especially off of the back of Star Wars, coupled with a setting that is generally grounded in reality beyond the supernatural nature of whatever artefact everyone's fighting over, you get some truly desperate attempts to create differing character classes. Indy? Well, all like, 10 versions of him do the same shit; he's the only one who can use the whip, which is needed for like 50% of the game's progression. Uhh...Nazis can go through Nazi doors...Women can checks notes jump higher, Willie specifically can...uh, scream, really loud, breaking glass...now I know that they were really stuck for ideas, especially when a lot of aspects of films are problematic, but damn.
Beyond the character cast, the levels and gameplay are going to look very familiar to Lego Star Wars, though there are a lot of new mechanics that I'm pretty sure are thrown in as a desperate attempt to avoid being accused of being a reskin. Build stuff out of lego to progress or reach secrets, break other stuff made out of lego for money, levers, switches, pushing blocks, all the classics. As before, all levels have 10 shiny objects to collect, as well as a separate collectible that grants you a "cheat" you can purchase at the hub world. What I do actually like is that unlike Star Wars, where said collectible was simply another hidden object to find and pick up, this time you have to both discover a parcel, and the mailbox to carry it to and put it in. Unfortunately, this highlights one of the new mechanics that I'm not too fond of.
Of the new mechanics, the one you'll probably spend most of your time doing is picking up objects. These can be small ones, such as bottles or chairs to throw at enemies, or even swords and guns (the latter of which can actually run out of ammo)...but you'll also be doing this for puzzle solving. Let me tell you, there's little else more tedious in this world than slowly, painfully carrying a large object to its destination, let alone like, 100 times over. There's also rope climbing, except sometimes you can only swing from ropes instead of climbing them and it's never obvious which ones are which. Combat, with the obvious lack of lightsabers, also now mainly tilts towards firearm superiority, which are often one-hit-kills against enemies. Melee weapons are slow and clunky to use in groups, and Indy's melee attacks specifically have these overly long comedy animations, where he kills the enemy in some silly manner, like a lethal noogie.
In fact, wasting time is probably my biggest criticism. Aside from the Indy melee animations, opening Nazi checkpoints takes an ungodly amount of time. You knock like, 7 times, watch the window slowly open, have the Nazi spend like 3 entire seconds checking you out, then he nods like, four times. Four. Then the door finally opens, like 10 total seconds later. The statues you have to pray to are also offenders, although not nearly as badly. Hell, there are cheats to speed up the more tedious animations, such as digging and repairing. Nothing for those damn Nazi checkpoints, though!
Of course, beyond all the grievances, and how adapting Indiana Jones into the Lego Star Wars formula is a bit of a doomed undertaking, the actual, minute to minute gameplay is fine! It's just Star Wars again, but a bit different, a bit jankier, but with a few adjustments for the better. You can finally, finally save and exit a level in free play while keeping what you obtained! Still no checkpoints of any kind, but it's something. The level designs themselves can be pretty creative and fun, although certain levels drop the ball hard (looking at YOU, Motorcycle Escape!). And of course, the cutscenes adapt all the famous moments from these movies while adding in cartoonish slapstick (and uh, removing all the bits where the Nazis are actually Nazis, and the weird stuff with Mola Ram and that guys' heart...). The John Williams soundtrack is there, and it wouldn't be right without it...though, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little sick to death of hearing them on loop for 20 hours so soon after playing Lego Star Wars.
All in all, this is a simple enjoyable kids game, complete with classic couch co-op drop-in/out, and is sure not to fall too far from the Lego Star Wars tree. Even if not all of its changes are for the better, this is a perfectly competent videogame with a lot of small issues that neither the developers nor the target audience probably gave a shit about.
But I'm a gamer, so naturally, I'm furious.
After tackling Star Wars, Bionicle, Star Wars and...Star Wars, it was clear that Traveller's Tales had figured out what formula and franchise worked best for making these Lego games. However, they had run out of Star Wars movies to make videogames out of (right? right??) and thus, it was time for another IP. I don't know whether it was their choice, or something that the Lego Group mandated from them (to coincide with their own toyline the same year, which itself would coincide with the 4th movie), but it's perhaps appropriate that it turned out to be the other popular George Lucas trilogy. And given the popularity of franchises such as Tomb Raider (and Uncharted just the year prior) it was proven that such a theme works pretty well in videogame form. Traveller's Tales took all this...and make Lego Star Wars wearing the plastic skin of Indy and friends.
Hell, "Indy and friends" could sum up the first big flaw with this installment: Indiana Jones is not at all known for its rich vault of established characters. For each movie, you've got Indy, token love interest, token sidekick, and token villain. And of course, lots and lots of Nazis/culturally insensitive stereotypes! With such a poor roster of characters, especially off of the back of Star Wars, coupled with a setting that is generally grounded in reality beyond the supernatural nature of whatever artefact everyone's fighting over, you get some truly desperate attempts to create differing character classes. Indy? Well, all like, 10 versions of him do the same shit; he's the only one who can use the whip, which is needed for like 50% of the game's progression. Uhh...Nazis can go through Nazi doors...Women can checks notes jump higher, Willie specifically can...uh, scream, really loud, breaking glass...now I know that they were really stuck for ideas, especially when a lot of aspects of films are problematic, but damn.
Beyond the character cast, the levels and gameplay are going to look very familiar to Lego Star Wars, though there are a lot of new mechanics that I'm pretty sure are thrown in as a desperate attempt to avoid being accused of being a reskin. Build stuff out of lego to progress or reach secrets, break other stuff made out of lego for money, levers, switches, pushing blocks, all the classics. As before, all levels have 10 shiny objects to collect, as well as a separate collectible that grants you a "cheat" you can purchase at the hub world. What I do actually like is that unlike Star Wars, where said collectible was simply another hidden object to find and pick up, this time you have to both discover a parcel, and the mailbox to carry it to and put it in. Unfortunately, this highlights one of the new mechanics that I'm not too fond of.
Of the new mechanics, the one you'll probably spend most of your time doing is picking up objects. These can be small ones, such as bottles or chairs to throw at enemies, or even swords and guns (the latter of which can actually run out of ammo)...but you'll also be doing this for puzzle solving. Let me tell you, there's little else more tedious in this world than slowly, painfully carrying a large object to its destination, let alone like, 100 times over. There's also rope climbing, except sometimes you can only swing from ropes instead of climbing them and it's never obvious which ones are which. Combat, with the obvious lack of lightsabers, also now mainly tilts towards firearm superiority, which are often one-hit-kills against enemies. Melee weapons are slow and clunky to use in groups, and Indy's melee attacks specifically have these overly long comedy animations, where he kills the enemy in some silly manner, like a lethal noogie.
In fact, wasting time is probably my biggest criticism. Aside from the Indy melee animations, opening Nazi checkpoints takes an ungodly amount of time. You knock like, 7 times, watch the window slowly open, have the Nazi spend like 3 entire seconds checking you out, then he nods like, four times. Four. Then the door finally opens, like 10 total seconds later. The statues you have to pray to are also offenders, although not nearly as badly. Hell, there are cheats to speed up the more tedious animations, such as digging and repairing. Nothing for those damn Nazi checkpoints, though!
Of course, beyond all the grievances, and how adapting Indiana Jones into the Lego Star Wars formula is a bit of a doomed undertaking, the actual, minute to minute gameplay is fine! It's just Star Wars again, but a bit different, a bit jankier, but with a few adjustments for the better. You can finally, finally save and exit a level in free play while keeping what you obtained! Still no checkpoints of any kind, but it's something. The level designs themselves can be pretty creative and fun, although certain levels drop the ball hard (looking at YOU, Motorcycle Escape!). And of course, the cutscenes adapt all the famous moments from these movies while adding in cartoonish slapstick (and uh, removing all the bits where the Nazis are actually Nazis, and the weird stuff with Mola Ram and that guys' heart...). The John Williams soundtrack is there, and it wouldn't be right without it...though, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a little sick to death of hearing them on loop for 20 hours so soon after playing Lego Star Wars.
All in all, this is a simple enjoyable kids game, complete with classic couch co-op drop-in/out, and is sure not to fall too far from the Lego Star Wars tree. Even if not all of its changes are for the better, this is a perfectly competent videogame with a lot of small issues that neither the developers nor the target audience probably gave a shit about.
But I'm a gamer, so naturally, I'm furious.