Builders of the lost ark

by ERIK LEIJON

To dislike the name brand mash-up that is Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures (Multi/Lucas Arts, Traveller’s Tales) would be the equivalent of someone saying they hate cute baby farm animals or cotton candy. Things so wholesome and designed purely for amusement that any animosity towards them would make anyone seem like the worst killjoy ever.

Lego remains the coolest toy ever, while the original three Indiana Jones movies (the fourth is not represented in this game) were big Hollywood-style blockbusters with inventive locales, great catchphrases and old-time car chases.

One can make a lot of parallels between Lego Indiana Jones and cotton candy: both are so light and airy, the novelty of consuming such a unique product outweighs the lack of consistency.

WHOLESOME AMUSEMENT:
Lego Indiana Jones

A brisk play, the tropical Third World jungles and tombs have been recreated with a mix of Lego blocks and cartoonish graphics. In a similar vein to the Lego Star Wars games, Lego Indy follows the storylines of the first three films, except the Lego characters speak in mumbles instead of actual dialogue. Because it’s Lego, the more frightening scenes are done to comedic effect here, except killed characters break into various pieces and some villainous strongman gets his head chopped off. Nazis have also been replaced by trenchcoat-wearing military men with blue eyes and blond eyelashes.

The gameplay is a combination of platform-jumping puzzles and button-tapping fist fighting. Since the game is skewed to a younger audience, the puzzles involve little more than finding wrenches to fix machines, or finding pegs that can operate doors.

Lego Indy is played in tandem, so Indy must work with other characters in order to complete missions—usually one character will hold a switch, allowing the other to walk through a trap. In keeping with the longstanding ingenuity of Lego builders, there are instances where Indy must hastily put together a makeshift item from Lego pieces strewn across the ground. The sound effects of building, coupled with Indy furiously moving his hands, makes building things one of the title’s unique pleasures, even if the feat is accomplished by merely holding down the action button.

The game is split into three sections, each representing one of the films. If you haven’t seen the movies before, the Lego versions of the stories are largely indecipherable since none of the characters are introduced and nothing is explained.

Still, the cutscenes offer a lot of family-friendly physical comedy, and considering it’s smiling Lego people portraying violent tribesmen, politically correct Nazis and gun toting Europeans, one can’t help but laugh at the overt cuteness being exhibited. Even the developers’ attempts to give Lego Marion and Lego Dr. Schneider cleavage and sex appeal are awkwardly funny.

Technically the game is fairly rudimentary and the fixed camera angles are bothersome, but since the game is designed to be light-hearted, getting worked up or angry about Lego Indiana Jones would be to misunderstand the goal of the project.

Eidos advancing

Back in January, Eidos’s parent company, SCi, underwent some major changes at the top. This includes Bill Ennis—the managing director who attended the first Eidos Montreal press conference in 2007—who quit under shareholder pressure.

Despite the turbulence, the future of Eidos Montreal appears rosy. Phase two of development is three months ahead of schedule and should open in July. This new team’s opening could coincide with a new game announcement. Eidos Montreal will also be opening an R&D department and an internal marketing department, which wasn’t part of the original plan.