I was given a copy of Lego Indiana Jones for my Nintendo DS as a gift last month. At first I didn’t have high expectations because years ago I had played the Lego Star Wars game on my original Xbox and really wasn’t overly impressed with it. Whether it is a change in tastes over the years or the difference between playing on a handheld versus your TV I had a much more satisfying experience with this current Lego game.
Rating: 8/10
Drive-by Game Summary: You will play as Indy and his many supporting cast members in a Lego world recreation of the first three movies in the Indiana Jones series. Each movie is essentially broken up into chapters that represent major parts of each movie. You’ll have different characters with you in each chapter that you can switch back and forth with depending on if you need to use their special skill to reach certain places. Each chapter features a story mode where you work your way through the general plot from the movie, and a free play mode where you can more freely select the characters to play with. In order to reach all of the special areas in a chapter you’ll need to go back in free play mode at least once with some of the other characters special skills. As you work through a chapter you’ll bust up everything in sight to collect Lego “studs”, fight numerous bad guys, and try your best to collect all the treasures and special bricks you can find.
Save Game Convenience: 8 out of 10
Once you begin a level you can’t really save your progress until you complete that level. This isn’t a major issue though because the levels are not overly complex and generally within 20 minutes from start to finish you will have completed your run through a level. You can always just close up your DS and come back to it later which is why the Nintendo DS is great for busy gamers.
Story Complexity: 9 out of 10
You really don’t have to know much of what is going on with the story to enjoy playing through the levels. If you have seen the movies that the story corresponds to then it makes it even easier because you get the general idea of which part of the movie you are playing through in the game.
Control Scheme: 8 out of 10
The controls are very straightforward and the game even makes good use of the DS touchscreen for actions such as slinging out your whip or making the up and down motion to dig a hole with a shovel or flipping a lever to open a door.
Character Customization: 8 out of 10
When you play through the story mode of a level the game chooses for you the character and partner that will be playing through the level with you. When you go back for the free play mode you can select your primary character and the game automatically chooses a group of other characters that will be available to you for that level. It gives you some flexibility for choosing who you want to play with but also doesn’t require you to know ahead of time which characters will be best for you to use on a particular level.
Squad Usage: 9 out of 10
In story mode there are typically two to three characters available and they each have a different weapon or skill that will come in handy on a particular level. The game pairs you up with the right characters to use for that level and switching back and forth between them is easy. The character that is playing alongside of you rarely gets in your way or hampers you from playing the game as well.
Complete Game Review
Each time you start the game you begin at the college where Indiana Jones works. You can start out with the first movie and the first chapter before opening up new chapters. You’ll see cut scenes which remake scenes from the movie with a Lego style and sense of humor added in. The cut scenes aren’t excessively long and when you play the chapter again in free play mode it skips some of them automatically.
The controls are simple, you can do hand to hand (melee) combat, use the character’s special weapon (such as Indy’s whip or a sword or gun), jump, and switch control of the current character. The character switching is necessary to get to certain items. For example you might need a character that is carrying a shovel to dig up something so you just stand nearby that character, hit the switch button, and then start digging.
The touchpad on the DS is also used for certain activities like digging, lifting up blocks, solving puzzles, and of course cracking the whip. One other fun use of the DS controls is that you’ll be blowing into the microphone to blow out torches and blow up rafts at various points in the game.
You’ll work your way through each chapter collecting Lego studs from busting up objects, beating up bad guys, and uncovering special treasure pieces. The items you pick up can be used back at Barnett College where you start out to purchase new characters and special abilities. The levels tended to take around 20 to 30 minutes to play through if you were busting up everything in site and trying to find every hidden item that you could.
Since these reviews are aimed at people who love to game but don’t necessarily always have time to get around to it here is the breakdown on the key “time” involved elements. The control scheme is easy to remember so you don’t have to “relearn” all the buttons every time you’ve had a long layoff since playing. The levels themselves usually take only 20 to 30 minutes to play through and the game autosaves at the end of a level. You don’t have to go back and do the free play but you’ll probably want to just so you can access all the areas you saw but weren’t able to get to with the characters you had available the first time through. The only negative from a busy person’s point of view is that you can’t save the game in the middle of a chapter. It only saves once you’ve completed a level. A busy gamer tends to prefer games that allow you to save at any point, but since the levels are relatively short and if you were really desperate you could just pause and close your DS it isn’t a dealbreaker for me.
All in all I found this to be a very enjoyable pick up and play game. It certainly isn’t deep or difficult (I don’t believe you can actually die at any point, your heart meter can go all the way down and you are just reincarnated right there) but games don’t always have to be super difficult or involved to be fun to play. Give this one a try and you may be as pleasantly surprised as I was.
