Indiana Jones is finally back for another adventure – on the Nintendo Wii.
LucasArts stays true to its tradition of creating unique games – The Staff of Kings is not based on one of the movies but is a completely new story, complete with all the Indiana Jones elements we know and love. There are Nazis, supernatural biblical artifacts, and an always charming archeologist. The classic Indy theme music as irresistible as ever, and adds a lot of feel-good atmosphere to the game. Indeed, it feels like playing the lead in an all-new Indiana Jones movie.
The Staff of Kings places you in the middle of World War II – a year after the events in The Last Crusade. Again, Indy has to win the race for a powerful artifact with a whole bunch of Nazis on his heels. The artifact in question is the Staff of Kings, which is the very same one that Moses used to part the Red Sea. Following a tutorial level in Sudan, you get to travel to several interesting locations including Panama, San Francisco, Turkey and Nepal.
Unfortunately one of the downsides to the game is that you don’t get to spend all that much time in these different locations as the levels are pretty short, and it doesn’t require a lot of skill. Each level takes about an hour to complete, so in other words you’d be able to finish the game during a weekend if you have played this type of adventure game before.
However, there are also a lot of things on the plus side. The Staff of Kings is a good game; it features some intuitive uses of the Wii nunchuk, engrossing gameplay, and most of all: it looks better than nearly every other game on the Wii. The graphics are almost on par with Xbox 360 games, and the environments are very detailed and nicely lighted. Things like the foliage in the jungle level and the way shadows are cast on cave walls take the game to another level than what we’re used to on the Wii.
As I mentioned earlier, Indiana Jones: The Staff of Kings is pretty easy – the game play involves some swinging of the whip (with the Wii motion controls of course), the occasional gunfight, some platform-jumping and puzzle solving. It’s a good thing that it’s easy to learn the controls, but at the same time it is too easy at times. If you’re used to the more intricate puzzles in the Tomb Raider games, you may think that The Staff of Kings isn’t challenging enough. It should be perfect for the younger players though.
An added bonus of Indiana Jones and The Staff of Kings is the inclusion of the classic Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis – one of the best point-and-click adventure games ever. It hails from the time when LucasArts’ game division was still called Lucasfilm Games and created timeless classics like The Secret of Monkey Island and Zak McCracken.
