Reviewed: July 12, 2009
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
LucasArts

Developer
Amaze Entertainment

Released: June 9, 2009
Genre: Action
Players: 1

5
6
6
5
5.2

Supported Features:

I recently had the chance to play the Wii and PSP versions, pretty much side-by-side, and while the Wii is far interior to what I saw so many years ago at E3, it was still an engaging and enjoyable experience thanks to the game design and the cool motion controls. The PSP version takes the story, events, and locations, and chops it up to create some sort of Indiana Jones mini-game collection that is neither fun nor engaging.

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, borrows elements from the console story that has our globe-trotting hero, racing around the world in search of the Staff of Moses. But rather than presenting the game in a story progression of levels and events we get this arena-style challenges that don’t feel very “Indy” at all.

You go from one location to the next that range in size from a single hall or passage to a single room, or if you are lucky, several rooms strung together or perhaps a series of streets, alleys, and rooftops, but everything seems rushed right down to the game design that rewards you for completing these levels in record times. I despise any game with a timer (except racing games).

Staff of Kings reminds me of the old Tony Hawk games where you have a level and a laundry list of objectives or goals. You can’t complete everything in a single pass so you have an automatic repetition factor built in. The game will incrementally log your progress and check off these objectives as you complete them on subsequent passes through the same level, but it grows extremely weary trudging through the same short level designs and fighting the same boring enemies over and over again. They call this “burst gameplay” but I call it uninspired and boring.

As you complete the goals and finish the levels you will earn points that you can use to unlock bonus items or more importantly, enhance Indy’s abilities like doing more damage or receiving less damage during combat. There is a bit of imbalance to this RPG system in that if you perfect all the early levels you can easily boost Indy to the point where the levels near the end of the game present little or no challenge at all.

You have a few puzzles that actually get a bit challenging as the game progresses, but the enemies you encounter are mindless idiots that only increase in threat as they increase in number and strength. You get to mix it up with a blend of fisticuffs and whip and pistol combat as well as some interactive environment hot spots to stun or even incapacitate your foes. Most of these Indy moments are called out with icons and button prompts leaving very little for you to figure out as a gamer.

Glitches abound in the gameplay with Indy and other getting stuck in the environment on random objects and scenery. The target lock is problematic and you won’t also lock on who or what you want and getting unlocked is even harder. Boss fights are a bit more interesting and clever gameplay nuances crop up from time to time but overall, the experience is unpolished, repetitive, and quite boring – nothing at all like an Indy game.

Graphically, the game is rather bland. Character models are generic although some extra attention did go into the Indy character. The locations are basic with low to no textures and the interaction icons take away from the overall design. Colors are bright and there are some cool lighting effects in play, but the camera can create problems, often associated with the troublesome locking mechanism.

The audio is okay, with fun and familiar Indy theme music and enough sound effects to support the action. It’s mostly the sounds of melee combat and the occasional sounds of gunfire. There is little speech other than the mission briefing that has a respectable Harrison Ford sound-alike.

I just wasn’t impressed or even that entertained while playing Staff of Kings on the PSP. It seemed more like a collection of exercises or training scenarios rather than a flowing adventure. If you like that kind of thing then you’ll probably like this game but for my money, The LEGO Indiana Jones is clearly the better game when it comes to true Indy-style adventure on the PSP.