Review: LEGO Indiana Jones

LEGO is a toy that has almost unlimited possibilities in gaming. The LEGO Star Wars games were genius. Cute, inviting gameplay elements with only slightly infuriating controls and level design. They sold a crap-ton of copies and everyone loved them.

LEGO Indiana Jones, though, is that annoying cousin that comes over to your house and cons you into trading all your good baseball cards to him for candy and bends all the others.

Everything I loved about LEGO Star Wars is in Indiana Jones, but as sequels sometimes do, the developers tried to take advantage of that love and beat it to a pulp, reconstitute it and serve it to you again. It looks a little different, but when you taste it, it's sour. Beautiful level design is flawed with a bad camera, making jumping around ledges and working with a friend co-op harder than it has to be. Figuring out what to do to get to the next scene is sometimes only accomplished with dumb luck. Long character animations get in the way. Set pieces like ladders and tables are hard to navigate. The list goes on.

I honestly cuss more at this game than I do enjoy it. I used to love playing Star Wars with Nicole every night until we 100% completed both of them. But Indiana Jones frustrates me and, in-turn, makes the game less fun for Nicole. I fight the game every step of the way and just want it to be over. I'll care less if we get the game done much less 100% complete.

This is also making LEGO Batman look less appealing. I'll probably either wait until reviews come out or try to buy it used.

Gaming Wife

Nicole will play games with me. Fun games. Games that both of us can play at the same time. It was part of the wedding vows.

We first played LEGO Star Wars. It was two player co-op and ultimately a test of the strength of our relationship. Two people controlling characters on the same game screen and sharing mutual game goals and game lives. Trying not to yell at each other was half the fun.

She has the genres of games that she likes. I have mine. Occasionally they converge and we experience a co-existence in the living room. I'm not saying we spend a lot of time apart, but my hobby is one that tends to lean toward a solitude that even some life-long sailors would respect. The language alone would make them blush.

Tonight Nicole has gotten bit by my latest gaming bug that involves an Xbox Live Achievement and me driving all 1000 miles of road of a polygonal representation of the island of Oahu to get it. It's something I've been working on for almost a year off and on and I'm finally at 98%. Keep in mind that driving games are not one of those genres we share in common, so when I threw her the controller and she picked it up with moderate interest, I was surprised.

But her ability to become obsessed with trivial things is something that brought us together. She can dive deeper into a subject than I can most times. I imagine that's what makes her a good editor.

But tonight, we won't sleep until all the roads have been covered. Something I like to think bleeds into our real life in some form or another.

I think she just cussed at the police car.

LEGO Indiana Jones?

I was hoping for more news about LEGO Batman at this years E3, but I'll take some LEGO whip action, boulder escaping, motorcycle riding any day.

Link: Kotaku on LucasArts

Finished: LEGO Star Wars II

100% complete.

That 3,840 stud multiplier in the theater is freakin' awesome (we've already got 1 billion studs). So is the 180 Xbox Live Achievement points.

41 hours of play with Nicole and this thing is ready to be put to bed. I never want to see this game again. Ever.

2 Hour Review: LEGO Star Wars II

If I had to chose to take it or leave it, I'd still take it. And even
though that might involve keeping the stray puppy even when it pees on the
floor, you know it's still cute and cuddly. Puppy dog eyes exist for a
reason.

And this puppy is shiny cute. "Polished" is a word that comes to mind. But
we're talking all graphics, sound and story here. The desert and starship
locations are just as you would hope they would be an the 360 and an HD
screen. The black metal floors of an Imperial Cruiser are fantastic.
Reflections are clean like mirrored glass. There are no pixel jaggies
anywhere and the camera creates a beautiful in and out of focus effect
(probably the only thing the camera does well, in fact). The new character
animations are also top notch and true to the LEGO Star Wars
tongue-and-cheek style.

The sound, oh the glorious sound, is only being held back from my
exaggerated comments because I'm missing two surround sound speakers. Had
I have them installed, I know I'd be in Star Wars heaven. All the
different blaster sounds, character battles and LEGO peices exploding are
crystal clear and fluid. In a shooting match with Luke, Obe-Wan, and some
Tuskan raiders, you think you were geek dreaming to be in the movie.

The controls get the first negative marks on the game. Mostly due to poor
implementation of the camera, controlling in two-player mode (cause that's
how we do it) involves a lot more player drop outs than before. I had read
that the camera had been improved this trip around, allowing for further
zoom outs for players to split apart. I don't see any evidence of this.
Last night, while driving around two land speeders, I jumped out and
walked around and Nicole got stuck behind a house. Then all of the sudden
the screen zipped up to a previously visited island that you can only
visit with the land speeder by herself. There was no way off the island
without a speeder and no way for me to re-join back in and drive out to
get her. True Jedi status be damned. And if controlling a Halo Warthog was
difficult for anyone, try controlling a Land Speeder or AT-ST. It's nearly
impossible to play two-player with one person in at AT-ST without crushing
your teammate. The camera gets so stuck on the huge machine, if meatlegs
doesn't run a good clip ahead of your stomping metal paws, a Jedi pancake
they will become.

The other negative mark is going to fall on the collectables. Holy cr4p.
There are a lot. Usually three trips through a level in Free Play mode
would get us all the mini-kits and studs, but now we're going to have to
wait to unlock all the characters and just go through once toward the end
of the game. Half of the first chapter's mini-kits are nowhere to be seen
and the Easter Bunny himself must be hiding those damn red bricks. Nicole
and I are pretty thorough, but we just don't see how or where to finish
our collections.

But in reality, we have a freakin' long way to go. So I'm sure the game
will not only surpase the first game, but make up for these two little
thorns in our side known as the camera and collectables with witty Star
Wars humor and quality time with Nicole. We love the levels. We love
blowing up and building LEGO structures (AT-STs!!!). We love the
characters.

So, okay...I guess we can keep her.

LEGO Star Wars II + Original Trilogy DVDs

This is just solid.

The sequel to one of the most fun Star Wars games ever and the original, undoctored DVD release of the first trilogy. September 12th is so far, far away.

LEGO Star Wars 2 Screens

IGN has another article up on LSW:2. Not much more info, or new shots for that matter, but they do offer a quite an insight into the new game. The graphics are cleaned up quite a bit and in addition to the character creation, each standard character will have a special move: Darth Vader has a Force Choke and Chewbacca will be able to rip people's arms off.

LEGO deforestation. Fantastic.

LEGO Star Wars: Interview

IGN has an interview with David Perkinson of LucasArts.

I'm tellin' ya, if you ever wanted an in with your video-game-playing counterpart, pick up the first LEGO Star Wars and then keep bugging each other about how good the second one is going to be after you read this article.

LEGO Star Wars: Details

1up has some details on the new Star Wars coming out in the Fall.

The quick facts, it looks like it's handling some major play issues:

• Playable vehicles in non-vehicle based levels
  
• An "adaptive difficulty"
  
• More collectables for longer replay value
  
• 50 playable characters + L:SW I save import = 100 playable characters
  
• Create-your-own-character(!)
  
• Greater panning for further distances between two players

LEGO Star Wars: IV, V, VI

Looks like there going to make the sequel game to LEGO Star Wars based on the original trilogy movies, and by LucasArts themselves no less (Oh please, oh please don't mess this game up you dolts). Here's for LEGO speeder bikes, a Millenium Falcon battle for two gunners, and a an X-Wing trench run. And hopefully they'll do that a little better than the pod racing. Getting two players through that was disasterous, let alone...uhh...alone.

Nicole and I played the first one and collected everything in the game. We liked it so much we took lunch breaks at home together to get in 20 minutes of play. It was addictively fun watching those little LEGO guys blow up.

If I could add something to the new game? Better cameras. Or split screens. Yeah, that's about it.