Mike Bantick
Saturday, 28 June 2008 09:06
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
And it is all about team work, an expanded range of character skills will be needed to solve the scene contained puzzles. For example, academic characters such as Prof Jones Sr need to use their translation books to decipher ancient temple texts. This will then unlock a container containing a shovel that can be used to dig up a key to LEGO machinery that opens the door to the next scene.
Moreover, with the addition of ropes and pressure plates, one character (Indy can use his whip to swing to out of reach areas) might need to climb onto a pressure plate high up while the other character throws a banana to a monkey to get him to toss a wrench, enabling the fixing of another mechanism in order to progress.
Most puzzles are obvious and easy enough for all ages to work out. There are frustrations in judging jumping around the 3D environments, having a fixed camera does not aid judgment in this area. Though, with the penalty of plunging to ones death being nothing more than the cost of a few studs, the frustration becomes more about retrying several times rather than loading and starting all over again.
Nazi’s provide the enemy to beat up in the game, reducing your foes to their constituent bricks becomes secondary to the puzzles in each scene. The puzzle solving game mechanics include the use of vehicles, building objects, pushing/pulling, dynamite, torches, bananas/monkeys, digging, throwing, impersonation, jumping (females jump higher than males) riding camels, horses, elephants and much more.
