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Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

Score: 5.8/10

Indiana Jones used to be one of the most marketable characters out there. It spanned movies, games, books, comics etc making for an immense profit. Unfortunately Indy's adventures with games are not held in the highest regards. That is with good reason as the previous games could have done so much more to make it much better. The latest sequel doesn't do any justice for the Indy name either.

The year is 1935. Indiana Jones sets off to prevent a powerful Chinese artifact from falling into the wrong hands. You navigate your character through many levels against enemies such as evil Nazis and the Asian underworld. This time though, you're not alone and have a mysterious and seductive partner, Mei Ying. Indiana still has his trusty whip and piston but can use many 'new age' weapons he finds throughout.

Indiana has two different attacks. A primary attack and a secondary attack. With melee weapons like a whip the primary attack dishes out the most damage and finishes enemies fast. However with long range weapons like pistols and sub-machine guns the secondary attack is the best and the primary is just simply used to make enemies keep their distance. Everyday objects like shovels and chairs can also be used as weapons but they cannot go into your inventory.

And this leads to one of the game’s faults. You switch between your weapons in your inventory by used left and right on the D+Pad. To equip them you have to press up. This simple task becomes extremely difficult, as you have to switch weapons in the middle of battles as the situation dictates. Trying to do that while fending off swarming enemies with your current weapon becomes a chore.

 

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You also have a quick select button that you can only use when a symbol appears. It will automatically equip the necessary weapon. It usually is the whip, which you used to swing to platforms beyond jumping range. This button often makes you cycle the inventory to equip the weapon you need to survive the next encounter.

The graphics on Indy are very sub-par. Even though the PS2 is not as good as the Xbox in terms of graphical 

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capabilities it still falls below the mark. The character models are average but lack detail. The levels are almost painful to look at with bland texture mapping being used everywhere. Many parts of levels look like they've been ported from a PSOne game.

The AI is smart and adapts to the situation. If equipped with long range weapons they will keep their distance and try to stay away from your reach. With melee weapons they surround you and swarm. This is where Indy's whip comes in handy, as the secondary attack is mace like swing. You can disarm the AI using your whip but they try to reacquire it as soon as you're distracted and even pick up a better one that Indy may have dropped.

Each level contains one or more dynamic element that changes the layout of the level and the path you have to travel. However it can hardly be called dynamic as the path you will have to take is already laid out and the changes just occur to keep you from straying from it. The game involves too much platform hopping to make it fun and even the platform hopping is flawed. You cannot jump to a platform that would be easily jumped over but have to run up to it and wait till Indy climbs the obstacle, which wastes a few second. In areas where platforms are more common then cars in our world it becomes really frustrating to watch Indy go through the motions. If you try to jump to a platform you'll meet the dreaded "invisible wall' that has plagued many games in the past.

The replayability is very poor as it is already boring the first time you go through it. Levels are very predictable and the action is weak. Indiana Jones has been spiralling in a freefall in terms of popularity and this game doesn't do it any favours. It's simply just not worth your time.

-Stefan Shetty

(July 20th, 2003)

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