Game Review: Indiana Jones And the Staff of Kings
Mclatchy -Tribune News Service
Jun 11, 2009
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings
Reviewed for: Nintendo Wii
Other versions available for: Playstation 2, Nintendo DS and PSP
From: LucasArts
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, violence)
"Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings" is, when its ideas are working, a crazy good time that deftly embodies the spirit of the films.
That's a good thing, too, because when its ideas aren't working, "Kings" is a mess teetering on collapse.
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Structurally, "Kings" is attention-deficit gaming at its finest. A brief adventure sequence, which finds you swinging between and sidling along ledges, is followed by a brief brawling sequence in which you use the Wii remote to throw down with a handful of indistinctive goons. A 30-second quick-time event might follow that before the game whisks you into a brief cover-based shooting level (hold the Wii remote like a pistol), a jaunt on a plane (steer it like a flight stick) or some other means of navigation through some other set piece.
More than not, the ideas come together satisfactorily, if not necessarily spectacularly. The fighting controls are sloppy due to the Wii's inability to always differentiate jabs from hooks, but the degree to which the game lets you use foreign objects (either as weapons or as an environmental tool for Hollywood-perfect finishers) makes these sequences more fun their technical deficiencies would suggest. The vehicular missions are enjoyably arcade-like in their simplicity, and once you realize the shooting bit are more like cause-and-effect puzzles than traditional shootouts, they mark a nice diversion from the rest of the action.
But "Kings" never stands more than three steps away from some miniature breakdown or another. The motion controls work, but not always, and the whip-cracking motions aren't as responsive as they should be. The shooting cursor occasionally falls prone to jerkiness, and every now and then - be it during an adventure sequence or a quick-time event - stuff simply doesn't respond like the onscreen example suggests it should.
A puzzling checkpoint layout, easily "Kings'" worst issue, occasionally turns these small problems into big ones. A slip can cost you five or 10 minutes of effort, and sometimes, you'll have to watch an unskippable cut-scene multiple times before you pass a checkpoint that finally leaves it behind. The first post-tutorial shooting sequence is particularly maddening: You might require two or three attempts before you realize how these sequences truly operate, and if you die figuring it out, you have to start the entire (long) tutorial over.
That "Kings" is fun in spite of these slips is a testament to its willingness to try so much and mostly succeed. Still, those with options might wish to inquire about the Playstation 2 version instead. A review copy wasn't available for testing, but if it's the same game with foolproof button controls (and a $20 price difference), it likely is the way to go.
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Copyright 2009 by Mclatchy -Tribune News Service
