lthough this is a review of the Xbox version of Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, the game will eventually be out on the PC and the PS2 as well. The versions are identical, although the graphics are obviously better on the Xbox and on PCs with good video cards. In all three versions, the player takes the role of Indiana Jones, the movie icon who made archaeology sexy. In the game, it is 1935 and the quest is for a giant black pearl with mind-controlling powers. The enemies are ivory hunters, Chinese Triads and the ever-popular Nazis.
The form of the game is third-person action. The player can move the camera, but spends most of the time over Indy's shoulder. The pull of a trigger changes to first-person view for shooting guns and slightly easier viewing of the terrain. The terrain is set in various globe-hopping locales, from jungle-encrusted ruins in Ceylon to sunken ruins in Istanbul to the urban ruins of Hong Kong to the medieval ruins of Prague, and so on. All these locations are multitiered, and Indy moves about them by climbing, jumping, swinging, swimming and rolling. The swinging most often involves his trusty bullwhip.
When Indy isn't swinging from the rafters and leaping from ledge to ledge, he is avoiding traps, solving puzzles and fighting for his life. The traps are the sort of deadfalls and spinning blades the movies have prepared players to expect. The puzzles are the sort of find-A-and-put-it-in-B affairs that other video games have prepared players to expect. The fighting is rich and varied. Indy can fight with his hands, a machete, swords and, of course, the whip. He starts with his pistol and along the way adds a shotgun and a submachine gun. Added to those are numerous found weapons: bottles, chairs, shovels, etc.
Indy sings a different Tomb
It is impossible to talk about IJ&tET without mentioning Tomb Raider. The Indy movies made archaeology an action-movie genre, but TR translated that genre to the video-game screen. Without Indy, there would never have been a Lara, but without Lara, this Indy game would have looked and played completely differently. Perhaps like Myst or like Quake. As it is, what IJ&tET plays like is TR. There are no handstands and no breast mechanics (although there are female NPCs), but any player who has ever logged long hours jumping and running Lara through her various ruin crawls will feel right at home with Indy in short order.
There are things wrong with IJ&tET. One is the video clipping. Considering that the Collective built the game using the same engine as their Buffy the Vampire Slayer game, which had very clean video, it is puzzling why there are gaps in the walls and why objects pass through one another so often, but they do.
The second complaint is that players cannot save the game in the middle of a level. Particularly on the Xbox, with its great hulking hard drive, this is annoying enough in any game, but it is very irritating in a game where so much time is spent jumping from one narrow ledge to the next. Usually the game punishes a missed jump with a fall into water. Too often the fall is onto spikes and means a trip back to the beginning of the level.
The best things about IJ&tET are the fighting and Indy's whip, which often go together. The fighting animations are clean and varied. Indy can fight with both hands and chain maneuvers together. He can pick up foes and throw them, a particularly handy thing when fighting on the numerous ledges. The found weapons are great fun, but best of all is the whip. Not only can opponents' weapons be knocked from their hands, but the villains can be entangled and drawn to Indy for a quick right hook. IJ&tET is one of those games where players will actually wish there were more bad guys to put down.
If you are the sort of player who doesn't mind having to replay a level a time or two, then you will like this game even more than I did. And I liked it quite bit, particularly every time I got to bash a chair over a Nazi's head.
— Eric
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