Did you like Kindgom of the Crystal Skull?
By now you are either a fan of this Lego revolution or not. Traveller’s Tales has made buckets and buckets of money turning your favorite franchises into cute and cuddly family friendly coop Lego games. Little did they know after taking a chance on the first Lego game, Lego Star Wars, that they would be doing that same game over and over and over again years later. Following the success of the second franchise to be Lego-ized, Indiana Jones, the developer’s thought it was time to mine a little bit more cash out of it by releasing a sequel including the newest iteration, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Though I am a fan of Lego revolution obviously, I can’t help but wonder why adding one new movie (which is the epitome of suck) is enough to warrant a second release. Failing to justify your purchase, Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues has some better implementation but ultimately is just a mad cash grab for your money.
When the first Lego Indiana Jones came out, it was pretty well reviewed for what it was. Who wouldn’t love to see those treasured movies broken down into fun to play Lego levels? Though that game had many shortcomings, it was fun to play so success on their part. Now with the release of a horrible forth movie to staple on to the trilogy, it was decided by someone who hopefully doesn’t work there anymore to go back and rethink that last game and cram in some Crystal Skull. The game is broken up into six main level chunks the first three making up the original trilogy and the last three being from the new movie. Now I will admit the way they go about the stories is interesting. Each main level chunk is an open world environment. As you explore the open world you will come across the five story missions. On top of that each story mission as an alternate treasure seeking iteration and there are an additional 5 bonus levels. With the 15 missions to be found there is also the three bricks to find that once purchased make up the games notorious gameplay tweaks such as score multipliers.
Following the Lego collection as closely as I have I can appreciate how they break all the collecting out of the actual missions and keep them all in this one open world. This is much better than the constant searching through levels trying to find that last canister we all did in the other Lego games. Now you don’t have to keep playing those same missions over and over again. That’s great! On top of that, the various gameplay mechanics featured in this game are vast improvements over the first game. The fighting is more fun, the whip is much more useful and well realized, an important aspect for an Indiana Jones game, all in all this is more fun to play then the first one. Unfortunately, you can’t give too much praise to a game that spends most of the time pushing a crappy movie in your face.
I am of the opinion that a Lego game is only as strong as its source material. The Batman game has strong source material to draw from. Same is true for the Star Wars universe. The Indiana Jones TRILOGY is fantastic. Take those first three level blocks by themselves and though it would be a short game, it is fun to play through all the same. But when you shoe horn in this last abomination and make it half the game, you are doing a disservice to your fans. I understand the thinking behind it. You are trying to make a sequel to a game with only one new movie to draw from. More often than not, you just shouldn’t make that game. But they did so now I get to criticize it. The back half of the game is garbage. Unless of course you enjoyed Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? I didn’t think so. They include a first of a kind level creator, but it is just a starting point and needs some work. At the end of the day, I just can’t give a pass to this game. Don’t buy it.