LEGO Indiana Jones

This carrying ability affects combat as well, as you can now throw chairs and bottles at enemies, and pick up their weapons once they've been defeated. It definitely feels strange at first, having an Indy who doesn't come with a gun as standard, but once again it's an idea that opens out the gameplay a lot more. Everything from swords to pistols, machine guns and bazookas can now be wielded by any character, and by having them run out of ammo the game encourages you to keep finding new ways to do battle.

Indy himself proves to be much more agile than any of his Star Wars predecessors, with an array of context-sensitive attacks that go a long way to dispelling the slightly monotonous punch-punch-punch action of old. Not only can he dropkick bad guys, but he'll also wrestle with them and toss them over his shoulder. His whip adds yet more cool tricks to his arsenal.

Obviously, it can be used as a weapon, spinning enemies around, stunning and even killing them. It can also be used to swing from designated spots, or to pull on distant levers. Whip an object, and Indy pulls it into his hands - very handy for grabbing something to throw, or for retrieving a vital puzzle item from an unreachable place. He's not infallible though, as Indy's phobia is also incorporated into the gameplay. If you encounter snakes, Indy becomes a gibbering wreck and it's up to the other characters to find a way of removing or circumnavigating the serpents. The same is true of Willie and her fear of insects

The downside to all these new abilities seems to be some confusion, at least for my posse of toilet-obsessed games testers. Friendly fire was a recurring problem in co-op play for LEGO Star Wars, and it seems more prevalent here. Catching your friend with a stray punch in the middle of a fight is understandable enough, but often the player in control of Indy would find himself whipping his companion while trying to activate a lever or find the right position for a swing, or accidentally shooting a gun rather than throwing a punch. Couple this with the push-pull co-op camera system, which still has am unfortunate habit of trapping characters off-screen or dragging them off platforms as it tries to keep everything on-screen, and tempers did tend to flare up. It's hard to explain how a virtual 3D camera works to kids, and cries of "Why do I keep falling off?" and "You made me dead!" were common, at least for the first few levels.

All the familiar Indy scenes are here, and the boulder chase at the end of the first level of Raiders of the Lost Ark proves to be a big hit. This is quite revealing, since it's a run-towards-the-screen action sequence, and I know from patience-testing experience that the similar sections of LEGO Star Wars (in particular the final level of Episode III) were among the least popular with Dillon and company. It seems that Traveller's Tales realised this, since the improvements are evident - and indicative of the general gameplay polish. The boulder chase is short but sweet, for one thing, and just the right length for the kids to find the timing without being frustrated by constant restarts. It seems more forgiving as well, giving characters a chance to jump out of a hole should they stumble, rather than booting them back to the start for the slightest infraction.