Lego Indiana Jones - Achievements

I've already mentioned that you can finish Lego Indiana Jones in a weekend, Achievement whores are probably already thinking that it might be a good source for easy points. Well, for the most part they're right! It's no Avatar, but LIJ gives up the points pretty easily.

Each of the game's 18 chapters yields an Achievement as you progress. That's over one third of the awards right there. Another group of Achievements are earned by performing task X at total of Y times. Examples include digging up buried Lego parts 50 times or building Lego objects 250 times. If those sound like a lot, don't worry...you do most of this stuff a lot during the course of the game.

Then there are the more unique Achievements, which are usually my favorites.

"How dare you kiss me!" - 15 points
You get this one for using your whip to grab Indy's three main love interests from the movies (Marion, Willie, and Elsa) and giving them each a kiss.


"That's for blasphemy!" - 20 points
Recalling the classic scene from Last Crusade, you need to pummel Jones Jr. with Jones Sr.


My favorite aspect of the set were the titles. As you can see in the above examples, each Achievement is denoted with a related quote from the movies. Favorites include "It belongs in a museum!" and "How we say goodbye in Germany".

My least favorite aspect is probably the icons themselves. I like the ones that depict scenes from the movies with Lego characters, but there are far too many like this:

"Start the engines, Jock!" - 20 points
Fix 50 Lego objects with the wrench. So it's a wrench and it has the number 50...I guess that covers the basic gist of the Achievement but it's not exactly inspiring. How about Lego Jock holding the wrench, and get rid of the "x50" bit altogether?

I'd estimate that you can get all 1000 points for LIJ in around 15 hours of play without much trouble.

Lego Indiana Jones - Review

I finally put a stake through Resident Evil's heart last Saturday, so that night I started playing Lego Indiana Jones. The next day, around noon or so, I beat Lego Indiana Jones. And no, I wasn't up playing it all night or anything. The game is just really short and really easy.

Backing up a bit, I played both of the Lego Star Wars games and I thought they were pretty fun. They weren't gaming Hall of Fame caliber or anything, but they were amusing diversions. Now I'm a big fan of Indiana Jones (both Raiders and Last Crusade would probably make my top 20 films list), so I thought I'd give this game a shot.

To end any suspense, it's not as good as the Star Wars titles. That may be a little surprising since it came after them and benefits from some additional polish. But I think the failing is more conceptual, an inherent difference between Star Wars and Indiana Jones. In the Star Wars games, some of the levels are played on foot, say blasting Stormtroopers in the halls of the Death Star while saving Leia. Others are played in Lego vehicles, like piloting an X-wing or the Millennium Falcon. There was enough variety that the game didn't get dull...about the time you thought "I'm tired of jumping around this swamp with Yoda" they'd stick you on a speeder bike on Endor to mix things up.

But Indiana Jones doesn't really have that. Oh, there's the minecart section from Temple of Doom, but for the most part it's Indiana Jones running around in tombs, solving puzzles, and avoiding snakes. It's fun for a while but if you get bored of that formula, there's just more and more of the same. On top of that, the game really plays up the 3D-platforming during the puzzle solving sections, and you don't get any control of the camera. That leads to some unnecessary plunges into instant-death pits.

The designers tried to make up for these issues by making the game easy. Really easy. You can die as much as you want with essentially no consequences (just a little lost money...er Lego studs). Now, I don't mind if a game is easy as sometimes it's fun to just experience a game without the frustration of constant failure. But combine the fact that it's easy and the fact that it's short, and you can see why I beat the game in just a few hours. You can go back into each level and comb for secrets, but unless you're trying to get all the Achievements or just desperate to justify purchasing the game, there really isn't much draw to do so.

Ultimately, Lego Indiana Jones is like the little bag of potato chips that comes with your Subway sandwich. It's tasty for a few moments, but ultimately it's disposable.