Customer Reviews

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

LEGO Indiana Jones is a sweet game. Of course, this is in line with the LEGO Star Wars (LSW) series that kicked us off. Also, this release coincides with the movie release, just like the Star Wars series.

There are really three aspects of these LEGO video games that apply: ease of play (all ages), strategy, and hilarious humor. LEGO Indiana Jones (LIJ) definitely hits these aspects up - such a fun game.

If you have played the LSW series, you are familiar with the basic controls: four buttons for action, jump, attack, and special. When in Free Play mode, you use the character switch button as well. Same concept here. So easy a child can play and enjoy it, but therefore good for adults as well!

The strategy is more for the older kids (ages 10 and up), I think. The strategic elements of the game are primarily in the Free Play mode, such as deciding which characters to use for which scenarios. Also, a youngster may not fully comprehend the abilities of Indy and his whip. And that is a new feature in this LEGO video game (sort of... more like an expansion of an old theme, I suppose) - your character interacts with the environment differently. For example, in LIJ, you can use the whip to disarm enemies, activate levers, and perform puzzle solutions. It's just a tad different (kind of a mix, really) of the LSW strategies. But you will notice some similarities and understand what I mean by "an expansion of an old theme." Basically, if you played the LSW series, this will be familiar to you; if not, it won't be that difficult, especially for the older players.

Another cool aspect of the environment is that your players can fully interact with it now. This is new. Basically, you can now swim, climb, and pick up objects and whatnot. Also, you can use the objects that you pick up - like chairs, bottles, etc. - to inflict damage on your enemies. This makes the game even more entertaining as the possibilities are quite varied with each play.

In the LSW series, the graphics were very cool and true to the films that they represented (down to the sound effects and music). LIJ is no different - you will love the ambience as it recreates the places that Indiana visited in the movies. It is so cool interacting in the places that you watched on film at a younger age (some 20 years ago) - it's like watching the movie again, only it is more exciting now because you are in engaging in it!

Another thing that delighted me was the number of characters that you can unlock. I won't give away any secrets, but basically, if you saw them in one of the three movies, you will see them in LIJ, as well. It is super-cool to play with the good guys and villains, as each have their own specialty moves and whatnot. Plus, it brings back memories with all the rest of the game interaction. Very cool. (Interesting that Indy is the focus of the movie/game, and yet there are over 60 characters you will be unlocking!)

And like LSW2, you can "create" your own characters. That is, you can mix and match character body parts to essentially create new people to play with in the Free Play mode. Kinda cool if you like the whacky things, but I did not find it particularly cool - sometimes it is not practical: like putting female body parts with a male's head. Kind of like LSW2 where you could put C3PO's head on Princess Leia's body. It's funny, in some ways, but not necessarily the coolest. That is all I am saying.

Anyway, to wrap this up, LEGO Indiana Jones is a superb game. I recommend it for people who like to play vastly simple and exceedingly fun games. Also, if you have kids, the simplicity will make it a playable game for them. However, unlike the LEGO Star Wars series, they may not be as familiar with Indiana Jones (unless you showed them the latest movie that just came out or have the previous collection). My recommendation is that if your kid was not overly impressed with Indiana Jones in the movie(s), then LEGO Indiana Jones may not be too fun for them as a video game, even if they like the LEGOs. That is, the LEGO theme should not be the reason why you purchase this game - Indiana Jones should be. Just a recommendation.

But other than that, I love these sorts of games. They generally take about 40 hours to complete, and if you shelve them for a moderate amount of time, you will still enjoy picking them back up and playing them later on, trying to rediscover all the hidden spots for things. Very fun concept, easy gameplay, and good strategy - and you will crack up playing it, too. An easy 5-star rating.

(P.S. I recommend the Windows/PC version over the game console versions, by the way, because of greater capabilities and a generally lower price. However, if you already have the consoles and are not a big computer player, then you will still have as much fun.)

I'm 9 years old and this is my first review. I have the game for Windows XP on a 3 year old laptop and had no problems installing it. I think Lego Indiana Jones is a great game. You can do more things than in Lego Star Wars. For example, you can pick things up and use them like dynamite, shovels, wrenches, and books. Also you can disarm people with your whip, and take the weapon they have from them. The only bad thing about Lego Indiana Jones is that it takes a while to load the scenes. I would highly recommend for anyone who likes a challenge and that enjoyed Lego Star Wars. But it is different in many ways than Lego Star Wars.

Wow, this is another amazingly well done Lego game! Although I have the Star Wars games for the Gamecube and have played them on the Wii, I decided to try the new Indy Lego game on the PC, and I am REALLY glad I did. It installed with no problem and plays perfectly on my Vista SP1 Quad 2.4Ghz PC with nVidia 8800GTS and 4GB RAM. Connected to my 60" Sony HDTV, it looks and plays great, and the HD gaming at 1920 x 1080P just blows away the low-res 480P Wii. At about half the cost of the Wii game, this is quite the deal!

The game works just fine with two Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 game controllers. Setting up the button assignments in the setup screen is very straightforward and obvious; just copy the buttons shown in the manual for the XBox 360 PC controller. Only drawback is that you seem to have to assign the second controller every time you start the game (e.g. after a PC reboot/powerup), but it's a minor point.

My kids and I have gotten through the first several levels with no major problems, although it can be challenging at times, but not too much so. The play is very similar to the Star Wars Lego games, along with the occasional humor thrown in just for fun.

This game is so good, I may actually get the Lego Batman for PC when it comes out, although I had not really considered it before.

This one's a real winner for all ages!!! :-)

I'll be drawing a lot of comparisons to Lego Star Wars OT in this review. I figure most people that are interested in this title are already familiar with the Star Wars titles.

First and foremost, you are going to want to make sure that your computer can handle the system requirements. This game requires a graphics card with shader model 2.0. Most GPUs in computers these days meet that requirement, but it is best to check beforehand. If you are unsure, a demo of the game is available online. If you can run the demo, you can run the full version of the game.

The game allows the use of the keyboard to control the game, but the controls become somewhat cumbersome during the jumping puzzles. I would also recommend using a gamepad. The game fully supports the X-box 360 controller and many others.

Lego Indy has one commanding plus over Lego Star Wars (L:SW), it is far less tedious. In L:SW, if you wanted to unlock everything the game had to offer you had to revisit each level multiple times. You also had to play all of the levels in story mode all over again one after the next to complete the Super Story mode.

Lego Indy has removed the Super Story mode and the minimum stud collection requirement in Free Play (known as "True Jedi" in L:SW, and "True Adventurer" in Lego Indy). Lego Indy has also lowered the cost of all the unlockables. This makes the game feel much shorter, but also removes some of the more tedious elements found in L:SW. This ends up being a mixed blessing. On one hand I've found that it makes the game very short, on the other hand the game wouldn't be more enjoyable by making stud collection a drawn out process or by making you repeat the same levels over and over again.

As far as puzzles go, Lego Indy uses a combination of digging, repairing, high jumping (the jedi double jump in L:SW), exploding silver barriers, thugee (limited character entry only in L:SW), hieroglyph solving (limited character entry only in L:SW with the added caveat of solving a quick memory game), entering small tunnels (as in L:SW), using the whip to access areas, and guard stations (limited character entry only in L:SW). Power bricks are replaced by finding parcels and a post box to mail them in and there aren't any pure vehicle levels like there were in L:SW.

All the standard cheats that were available in L:SW are also present in Lego Indy. Lego Indy also has many characters that can be unlocked, but this time around they feel more generic, as the Indy universe has less unique characters to work with.

Some of the jumping puzzles are a bit tricky, as the controls are often inconsistent when jumping off ladders and ledges. A few jumping puzzles become frustrating, especially in story mode, as the distance that needs to be jumped is right at the character's jumping distance limit, meaning you'll probably have to try several times before you make that jump. This is especially frustrating in areas where you make several jumps just to miss that last one and have to go through an elaborate sequence to arrive at your next attempt.

There are a few kinks. I found myself in situations where my character would spawn over pits or other obstacles resulting in an endless cycle of dying until you revert control to the other character. Lego Indy also employs a new feature where one character remains stationary, like on a switch or movable block, while the other completes a puzzle or moves the block the other is standing on. The CPU controlled character often has problems staying put and doing what you would expect them to do. In most cases this is just an indication that you are solving puzzles out of sequence, but in some cases it's an obvious bug.

All in all this is a great game, one that shouldn't be missed. Lego Star Wars has the slight edge as far as variety goes, but this game makes up for it in avoiding much of L:SW's tedium.

The standard USB gamepads most people already own for use on their PC will not work with Lego Indiana Jones. For some reason (bad programming), a basic USB gamepad like the Logitech Precision gamepad, which has 10 buttons and an up/down/left/right stick is not sufficient for this game. This doesn't mean that you can use the gamepad, but just miss a few functions; it means you CANNOT actually play the game at all with this gamepad, it won't let you start. Read the official LucasArts forums for more details. Here are a couple good responses from Lucasarts: remember that this is a basic game, not a flight simulator or WoW.

"That controller does meet the minimum number of inputs required for LEGO Indiana Jones."

"The game supports dual-analog gamepads,

Required number of controller inputs:

2 analog sticks (4 axes) and 11 buttons
or
1 analog stick (2 axes) and 15 buttons
or
19 buttons."

i played it on a laptop computer and there were lots of glitches, times where i would have to make changes in the resolotion just to get past a certain point.
It was fun to play but without being able to use arrow keys it was also hard at times.

I got this game for my 9 year-old that loves just about anything Lego. We also have the Lego Star Wars game and it ran without any issues on our Windows 7 x64 system with multi-core AMD processors, but this game had some issues that took some time to figure out. Initially after installing the game, the game would show the first couple splash screens and play the audio, but then the screen would go blank and the audio would continue. Not cool. After doing some digging I found a couple references to issues running this game on PCs with multi-core processors that showed the solution to be to run the game with the affinity set to one of the processor cores. I did that and was able to get the initial menu to display, but then game play wouldn't work properly after that. So I did some additional troubleshooting and found the culprit. Long story short, by setting the "enhanced video" setting to OFF the game played great without requiring the single CPU core affinity work around previously mentioned. Here are the steps I did to get it working.

Install game.
Run game, then minimize it by pressing [Alt] + [Esc] or the Windows logo button on your keyboard.
Open Task Manager and then the Processes tab.
Highlight the "LEGOIndy.exe" process and right-click and select the Affinity option.
Uncheck all but one of the processor cores.
Switch back the game and you should be able to see the menu screen.
Go into the Options/Video Options menu and turn off the video option named Enhanced Video.
Save your changes and exit the game completely.
Run the game and it should work as expected.

After all of this, my son loves it and really enjoys the game. You would think that the default settings would be a bit more basic so as to avoid these types of issues. Hope this helps anyone else that had this issue.

Its a great continuation of the Lego game series. Like others I had problems getting the game to run properly. After I turned down the settings it runs fine. This game has way more graphics going on than the Star Wars games remember the Star Wars series is a few years old. Makes sense that the newer game would demand more of your computer. Check to make sure your computer is up to snuff and don't assume if you were able to get Lego Star Wars to work fine that Indiana Jones would be the same. Its a fun game, I can't wait for Lego Batman.

Its a very fun and entertain game however, this is a port from the X-box. The controls should have been redone with the PC in mind. Using the keyboard or a non-X-box controller is very ocward at times, especially when jumping diagonally. The game does work with a Xbox controller but, I am not going to dish out another 40 dollars for a 20 dollar game!!

My other complain is that the game camera doesn't turn, you are stuck with one view of the game environment. This is really annoying when you have to jump toward yourself!!!

That being said I would give the game a 8 out of 10.

I loved the Lego Star Wars series, and this game delivers just as well. very fun to play, especially for my 10 year old brother. Great gift, and even better for yourself! I would reccomend the Star Wars Series before playing this game though