Who says you can keep an old hero down? For years we had nothing new from Indiana Jones and then last year we had a new movie (slated by some loved by others) and the brilliant Lego Indiana Jones game and now this year we are treated to a brand new Indiana Jones title on the Nintendo Wii. Would it prove to be Indy’s finest hour or would it be a critic’s nightmare? A Raiders of the Lost Ark or a Temple of Doom? Well actually it probably falls somewhere in between!!! The game is set in 1939 and the world is on the brink of war and as told in R.O.T.L.A. Hitler and the forces of evil are actually searching for ancient treasures that will help in their efforts to control the world, & of course there is only person on Earth that can stop them – Professor Henry Jones Junior – or Indiana Jones to you and me. This time the object in question is The Staff of Kings which is the staff used by Moses in the Old Testament and Indy must find it before his arch nemesis called Magnus Voller.
As in the movies Indy’s quest takes him to various locations including San Francisco and the lush jungles of Panama, each of which are quite well detailed considering this is a game that is presented on both the PS2 and the Nintendo Wii. Previous Indiana Jones games developers have presented us with a ‘rip off’ of a Lara Croft type game with Indy leaping from platform to platform and doing the odd bit of shooting in between. Here A2M have thankfully decided not to do that and have presented us with what is essentially a series of set pieces, which surely mimics the films themselves? The controls have been adapted to suit the machine that the game is played on with the Wii remote and a combination of various button presses being used to do all types of actions such as whip cracking, punching, throwing objects etc. The fighting presented in the game really is a delight and possibly the highlight of the whole game which is a good job because there is a lot of it. Having said that there are also some very interesting puzzles to be solved throughout the game and they are surprisingly not all of the block pushing variety that we are used to in action games such as this one. Graphically in places this game is very lush. Indy actually resembles Harrison Ford (And even sounds a bit like him but I doubt it is) and the animation on a whole is reasonable. There are some good uses of visual effects throughout and as said before the environments are very well designed and thought out even if a lot of what you see you cannot interact with. Sound wise the game perfectly represents the movies. The soundtrack (music) is excellent and the vocal acting is well done. There are periods where they seem to have forgotten to add any sound though for some reason. Overall I would go as far as to say this is the best Indiana Jones game yet! It certainly captures the spirit and the feel of the movies more than any other Indy game that has gone before. It is not an easy game though, even an early stage where you are flying a plane is quite tough, but stick with it and you will find quite a number of unlockables to collect as well as a co-op mode and a multiplayer mode if the single player game is not enough. The main problem with the game is that it is very linear and although that is not unusual in a game like this, other action titles that have been released in the last twelve months have kind of spoiled us where this is concerned. You actually will go through the game without noticing this unless you specifically set out to see it because you will be too busy fighting the Germans etc. Certainly a game for all Indy fans to enjoy. | 
Wii 
