I finished Indiana Jones and The Emperor’s Tomb. It was fun enough to keep me putting up with jumping puzzles, but anybody who was into Tomb Raider is bound to find it a cakewalk. For most of the game, the timing and distance judging is pretty straightforward, and Indy can jump his full range almost from a dead start. On the other hand, come on, it’s Indiana Jones.
We get to see Indy in all the classic modes – Indy in jacket, Indy down to sweaty shirt, Indy in professorial habit, Indy in white tux, Indy in stolen Nazi uniform. The only things missing were Indy in Tanis Map Room robe and burnoose and Indy with no shirt on.
I played in easy mode, because I wasn’t looking to futz around with a lot of tricky combat. I don’t know what it would be like in regular mode, but I actually found it the most violent game I’ve ever played. There was little emphasis on gunplay and not a lot of bloodshed, which will probably get it overlooked by concerned interest groups, but perhaps it shouldn’t. Most combat came down to desperate and dirty fisticuffs. Indy grabs opponents, throws them against the wall and wails on them, wails on them, wails on them, putting his whole body into each punch. The violence is visceral, immersive and brutal in a way that seems very personal.
The immersion begins even before combat, because Indy is huffing and sweating right from the beginning, with miles to go before he sleeps. Nonetheless he must schlep and keep on schleping his weary ass all over creation.
No matter how much crazy jumping and catching ledges and swinging from chains and whipping conveniently placed objects and hacking vines and futzing with switches and pushing over giant statues Indy has to go through to get through the ancient temple of mystery, there’s always some other schmuck already down there who doesn’t even have a whip. In one of the toughest sequences in the game, he uses the Mirror of Dreams he’s worked hard to piece together from sites all over the world to get through some tricky levels, and then finds that there’s a Nazi already down there with a fucking tank.
It’s a fun game, and probably worth anybody’s trouble at the $20-30 range.
