Review of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

I had high expectations for this game. I don't know why. The last two Indiana Jones action games (Infernal Machine and Emperor's Tomb) were fun, but not great. That is what this game is: fun, but not great...just good.

The first problem is the story, which moves along without much context, logic, or narrative. Indy just moves from place to place following the mystery. The story is all bones, but no meat, which is disappointing for an Indiana Jones story, as well as one from LucasArts, which used to tell amazing stories through their games.

Another thing that really annoyed me was the controls, specifically, the fighting controls. A quick swing of the remote is a quick jab, that works fine. But a hard swing is a full on left or right hook (depending on which you swing, the nunchuk or the wiimote). This should have been a lot more intuitive, I found myself often swinging really hard with Indy not moving, which resulted in me getting pummeled from the 4 different enemies who were attacking me. This is the same control mechanic that is necessary for swinging one of the many weapons you can have in your hand, which means that swinging the weapon hardly works, and never worked when I wanted it to. I found myself dying during many of these brawls, and heading back to a checkpoint (you regenerate with full health), but there is no way to skip a cut scene (Really? This is game programmer 101!), so you could find yourself watching the same scene over and over if you die often. Also...I would have liked the puzzles to be challenging. They weren't challenging, and to be honest - I never really felt like there were any actual puzzles to solve. This is an action game, pure and simple.

On the plus side, the voice acting is great. The actor who plays Indy really sounds pretty close to Harrison Ford. When saying one-liners he is nearly indistinguishable. No matter what flaws there are in this game, it is still fun, even through the frustration. Oh, did I mention it has Fate of Atlantis, LucasArts' classic adventure game, bundled in? (You don't have to finish the whole game to unlock it - Fate of Atlantis can be unlocked within 30 minutes of Staff of Kings game play).I doubt I'll replay Staff of Kings anytime soon, but I'll spend a lot of time on Fate of Atlantis, which plays beautifully (in all it's talkie glory) with the wiimote.

Threadbare story, unintuitive controls, and a very heavy focus on action over puzzles bring the game down. Good voice acting, pure fun, and one of the greatest adventure games ever made bundled in make the package still worthy of buying.Who am I kidding? LucasArts should have sold this as Fate of Atlantis with Staff of Kings bundled in.



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