Reviewed: April 17, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Lucasarts

Developer
The Collective

Released: March 25, 2003
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

7
9
8
6
8.0

System Requirements

We last saw Indy near the end of 1999 when he unlocked the secrets of The Infernal Machine. Even then there were obvious comparison made to the Lara Croft series of adventure games and rightly so. Now LucasArts strikes first with an all-new adventure using next-gen technology and a powerful 3D engine to bring Indy to your PC.

Designed by The Collective and using their 3D engine that brought Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the very same platform, Indy has never looked or played better. My only regret when I came to the all-too-soon conclusion was that there simply wasn’t more adventure to participate in.

The story behind the adventure is a bit mysterious and you really aren’t even aware of what is going on or why you are playing until the first cutscene nearly 1-2 hours into the game. Only then are you given the ultimate quest to be the first man to locate and explore the Emperor’s Tomb and recover the Heart of the Dragon, an ancient Chinese artifact that grants untold powers.

You can be sure that if there is a supernatural artifact nearby the Nazi’s aren’t far behind, but they represent just a small faction of the opposing force that will be standing in your way on this adventure. Prepare to meet all sorts of evil goons and supernatural villains as you travel to ten exotic locales and explore more than 60 exciting levels.

There is a substantial arsenal of weapons to be found in this adventure ranging from a simple machete to handguns and larger automatic weapons. You can even take control over fixed weapons and shoot down planes or fire on pursuing vehicles. The body count has never been higher and the fighting segments will easily overshadow the rest of the gameplay elements.

When you aren’t kicking ass and taking names you will have to navigate some wonderfully inventive levels that are full of traps and puzzles. The traps rely on your dexterity and precise timing while the puzzles rely on common sense. Puzzles are disappointingly simple (actually they are insulting) and generally consist of opening a door using a remote switch or lever or playing around with a crane to pick-up a statue (think the crane game where you try to grab stuffed animals). I can think of only two puzzles in the entire game that even caused me to pause for more than ten seconds. Most puzzles solve themselves through casual gameplay and thorough exploration.

The action elements consist of a lot of running and jumping, grabbing and shimmying, and lots of creative whipping whether you are disarming your opponents, whipping them into submission, or swinging from the rafters over a pit of snapping crocs. The action puzzles are actually more challenging than the thinking puzzles. You will find yourself tumbling under dart traps, jumping over pits and doing multiple swings across large gaps. You will be jumping from chain to chain while suspended over a lake with a giant crocodile or sneaking through grassy paths while giant bats hang overhead waiting for you to slip and make a noise.

The PC version of Indy has some rather awkward controls unless you are using a gamepad. The WADS cluster combined with the mouse is moderately effective for controlling Indy but the directional keys move Indy relative to the camera rather than his direction. This can get a bit confusing, and for those who enjoy assigning MB2 to the jump command will find that you pretty much have to use both mouse buttons for left and right punching leaving your jump to either a key on the keyboard or a third mouse button if you have one. For some reason, swimming seems to be a real pain on the PC. It's difficult to control Indy and you have to keep pressing the jump button to kick and move through the water.

Indy interacts with his environment seamlessly. Walk into a low ledge and he automatically vaults onto it. Walk into a ladder or climbable wall section and he grabs on and climbs right up. Indy also auto-mounts ladders from the top, which means no more accidental falls trying to get on a ladder leading down.

Weapons combat is a breeze whether you choose to use the auto-target lock or manually aim your crosshairs in first-person mode. The manual aim gives you a more precise shot for faster kills and less ammo usage but the auto-target is handy for firing and moving at the same time.

I found the hand-to-hand combat to be more entertaining and often more effective than firearms. I could jump right in and start throwing lefts and right or put a guy in a headlock and pummel his head or better yet, flip him across the room or off high ledges. The best is when you can toss an enemy into some water with crocodiles and watch them flail helplessly as they are eaten – better them than you.

Enemy AI is very impressive for an action game. Enemies will react to sound so it is often impossible to sneak up on them. In one section I shot one guard in the head who died and smashed through a table. The other guard picked up a table leg and charge up the stairs to where I was shooting. The AI does an amazing job of pathfinding and uses objects within the environment during combat. If you disarm an opponent with your whip they will fight you with their fists but will make a break for their weapon at the first opportunity.

We now come to the portion of the review where I get to rant about the lack of a mid-level save feature. Indy features 65 levels and the game saves after each level. You can then access these saves by going to the load screen and picking the chapter then the level from that chapter. It’s a clever interface but there are many challenges that take place near the end of the levels where failure results in death and death results in reloading and replaying major portions of the game. This might be acceptable in console games but PC gamers expect to save whenver they want.

I’m sure The Collective knew they were releasing a 15-hour game, but making you replay levels because of a missed jump or getting blindsided by the fatal snapping jaws of a croc can get frustrating and is no substitute for original game content. Admittedly, most levels only take 10-20 minutes to finish so even if you die in the final encounter you won’t have to replay much.

Death is almost always instantaneous, a result of a fall, sprung trap, or one-hit kill. Indy has a health meter that can be replenished by numerous water fountains scattered about the levels. When a fountain isn’t nearby he also has a canteen that holds enough water to restore him to full health. Keeping both the canteen and Indy’s health bar full becomes second nature by the end of the first chapter.

Textures seem to have greater detail and the lighting effects are more evident. Fountains cast a gentle blue glow on the wall and torches flicker their orange light on the stone walls. The water looks great and there is volumetric effects like dust and smoke. Indy and all the supporting cast are exquisitely modeled and textured then animated so well you would swear there is some stuntman wearing a fedora and a mo-cap suit and brandishing a whip. The combat animation can get a bit jerky at times. Indy delivers left and right hooks but when you trigger a grab or combo move the animation jumps into the new routine with a small hiccup.

Unlike the flawless camera system on the Xbox I had nothing but problems with the camera system on the PC. Most of this had to do with the ratio of mouse movement to the speed of the camera rotation. It was almost as if I was playing with a dirty mouse, but since my mouse is optical that cannot be the case. I cranked the sensitivity way up which only made the rotation jerky and nearly impossible to control. I never did find a functional compromise and in order to get a smooth movement I still have to pick-up my mouse at least twice and reposition it on the pad to spin Indy completely around.

I was minorly annoyed that the menu and general interface was ported right over from the console with no support for a mouse. You have to use the arrows to navigate the exact same menu system used on the console version. That combined with the lengthy animations that take you to each menu keep you stuck in the menus longer than anybody wants to be there no matter how good that throne room looks.

The sound effects are some of the best around. The whip noise will have you feeling the sting and the various weapons all have appropriate and realistic sounds. Even swinging your machete to slice through vine-covered passages is convincing. The hand-to-hand combat sounds like your typical movie fights complete with exaggerated punching and kicking noises. Other effects can be as subtle as the poof of darts shooting across the hall or the metallic sounds of blades thrusting from the floor and I would be remiss if I failed to mention the horrifying sound of a crocodile’s jaw snapping down on our hero.

The voice acting is topnotch and the guy who does the Indy voice could easily be mistaken for Harrison Ford. All of the rest of the characters are professionally acted out with convincing accents and well-scripted dialog. Some speak complete foreign phrases and others have humorous idle conversations that make eavesdropping a fun diversion.

There’s not much of a reason to revisit the game after your first pass. There are plenty of hidden artifacts scattered throughout the levels but these don’t really offer any immediate benefit or long-term reward for finding any or all of them. If you don’t get these the first time through you probably aren’t going to play the game again just to find them unless you are a perfectionist.