Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings Review

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This time, however, dishing out blows matches the left and right swings of your nunchuk and Wii remote. Throwing a standing punch-like gesture results in fast but feeble blows, while a hook-like gesture does more damage, albeit at a slower pace. On top of that, you can pick up objects and wield them like bats, or just pick them up and lob them for a quick and effective alternative attack. If that's not enough, you can grapple enemies, or go for unique 'Hero' moves by being clever enough to spot when wobbly scenery might come in useful during a scrap. At its best, it captures the brand's comic spirit.

But having implemented a satisfying, flexible and easy-to-learn gesture-based combat system, the whole thing's let down by the predictability and repetition of the encounters. Enemies dodder around waiting to be clobbered, and it's rare that you have to adopt any meaningful strategy. Simply select whichever attack you feel like pulling off at any given time, and the chances are that you'll win through without much trouble. A few more interesting and varied adversaries would have helped no end, but instead the AI routines might as well have been scripted over a lazy lunch.

From there it gets even worse with dismal stop-and-pop shooting sections. Like a tired riff on Time Crisis, you push the nunchuk analogue stick forward, left and right out of cover, and aim with the remote. Enemies take up the same cover points every time, bob up and down like a fairground duck and go down with one shot. Once you've cleared a section, Indy automatically runs to the next cover point, and off we go again. The only thing that prevents these sections from being completely objectionable is that they're over and done with in no time.

The puzzle-exploration element isn't any better. Puzzles are at best rudimentary and at worst insultingly easy. Staple gameplay mechanics like trap-avoidance and ledge-shimmying are present and correct, but the environments are so generic and boxed-in that there's almost zero exploration, and no feeling of discovery or achievement when you romp through to the next level. Persistence merely brings more of the same, with yet another pointlessly simplistic statue-shifting, pressure-plate-activating puzzle that a small child could figure out in seconds. That the game is a PEGI 16 rating is staggering, as it implies maturity and edginess. The only edges you'll be seeing here are the angular polygons in the character models.

Smash the tank, Indy.

Given the game's Wii/PS2 development cycle, the production values are unsurprisingly low, but there's no excuse for the game to be less impressive than the six-year-old Emperor's Tomb. The environments are merely so-so, enemies are generic and poorly animated, and it's only the reasonably impressive Indiana Jones likeness and voice double that saves the day. The storyline is forgettable, however, and the game doesn't even bother to try and play it for laughs. It's a pretty straight, join-the-dots exercise with none of the witty flourishes that characterised both the movies and the earlier Indy Jones games.

In fact, the only reason I'd recommend purchasing Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings is because the game contains The Fate of Atlantis as an unlockable. Playing the game with a Wii remote makes perfect sense, and although the graphical fidelity takes a bit of getting used to, it's still a masterclass in puzzle design, features a superb plot and benefits greatly from a fantastic voice cast. Whether you'll want to shell out for a substandard title in order to get a basic port of a game you've played before is something you'll have to wrestle with. Maybe once the price drops, eh?