Gamertell

Title: Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
Price: $29.99
System(s): DS (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation2, PC, Wii, PSP)
Release Date: June 3, 2008
Publisher (Developer): LucasArts (TT Games)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone” for carton violence.
Pros: Good sense of humor, decent action, fairly easy to pick up and play, cute graphics and fun-to-play characters. Nice unlockables including touchscreen minigames.
Cons: Jumping can be a bit inaccurate and camera is sometimes wonky or puts playable character out of view.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one thumb sideways; 87/100; B+; * * * 1/2 out of 5

There’s something remarkably fun about Lego’s newly embraced Russian doll approach to game making: Take a movie, wrap it in a Lego shell and turn it into a videogame. They did it damn well with the Star Wars film franchise, and will soon stock shelves with a colored peg version of Batman.

One Peg at a Time

The story in Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures follows a silly interpretation of the first three Indiana Jones movies with Lego style humor. Objects burst into Lego pegs, gun turrets are built by piecing together Lego blocks and even the cutscenes keep the theme alive. For example, the big dude who gets diced by the airplane propeller in the first film is cutely portrayed as a stumbling Lego character with his single-peg head on the ground.

Playing through the Story Mode unlocks bonuses and the Free Play mode for each level, were you can go through any level as any unlocked character. You can even build your own character using parts from characters you’ve accumulated throughout the game. Yeah, you can put Indy’s head and hat on Marion’s body and arm him/her with a gun.

Characters have attributes and accouterments similar to their on-screen counterparts and offer varied abilities. Indy often carries a whip for distance physical attacks and swinging, while other characters carry a shovel for digging (and hitting), a gun or other useful items. A few even carry - and transform into - a tiny monkey who can climb vines and slip into smaller areas.

In the story mode, you play as Indy and at least one other character in each level, swapping with a single button press when in proximity. At times you will need one to partially progress through an area and then unlock a ladder, rope or bridge for the other to join you. It adds a fairly simply puzzle element to this stuff-grabbing, action platformer game.

Picking Apart the Pegs

Similar to the Lego Star Wars games, you collect Lego pegs as you play, which can be cashed in for additional playable characters, hints and other extras (a mode they wisely included). Each level also has hidden objects that can either be found by certain characters or by performing secret tasks (blowing out all the torches or something similar).

And, just like Lego Star Wars, this game is pretty damn fun. It’s not to quite the same high level of excitement and explosive action as the Star Wars games, but has enough action, humor and easy-to-use elements to make it thoroughly enjoyable.

Also like the Lego Star Wars games, there are a few areas with wonky camera angles, awkwardly positioned platforms or areas where you seem to be stuck without an obvious path. Once you fully embrace the Way of the Peg, however, these small interruptions are hardly remembered.

While the touchscreen is often useless in the main game (save the microphone where you actually blow out candles and a few cranks), it’s brought back into utility by several unlockable, worthwhile touchscreen minigames. You can use the touchscreen for characters’ special moves when available, but the developers wisely made those awkward pace-changing swipes redundant with a simple button press.

The game also includes a two-player co-op mode, which is one of the main reasons to get any movie-based Lego game. Co-orindating efforts - assuming your co-gamers is not a buffoon - adds to the games craziness and means you get to share the peg-collecting fun with someone else. Unfortunately, it also means that the other gamer must owns the game, too.

Embrace the Peg

Lego Indy offers the same great goodness we’ve come to love and expect from a game based on a toy based on a movie.

There’s plenty of hidden stuff and lots of unlockables, both feeding the addictive nature of completionist gamers and giving everyone else a reason to go back and replay levels as incongruous characters. It’s silly, it’s fun and it’s not going to be banned by anyone. Get it, play it and share it with your family and friends.

The real bummer of the game is that you just know that LucasArts will re-release an improved version of the game with the current movie (and maybe Young Indiana Chronicles?), much like they did with Lego Star Wars.

Read [Gamertell] Site [Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures]

Check out the gallery: Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures - DS screenshots