Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

Many years ago, I bought this game for £3 because I heard it came with the classic point-and-click adventure Fate of Atlantis (which is true), and it should be worth it for that.

Staff of Kings is on the Wii, so I expected the usual blurred graphics and forced motion controls. Then it's based on a licence, so usually those games are bad too. However, despite these aspects (and critics such as Gamespot giving it a 3.5), it's actually a decent game.

The game features a typical Indiana Jones story (Nazis are after an artifact called the Staff of Kings aka the Staff of Moses); quest for an artefact sees him on a globe-trotting adventure (Sudan, San Francisco, Panama, Istanbul, Nepal and "Odin" (one of the German's zeppelins). It features good voice acting (with a good Harrison Ford substitute), music and sound.

The game does really well in mixing up the gameplay. There's always lots of action and tension; it always feels like there is something going on. There's some platforming such as shimmying along ledges, some puzzles (hitting switches, moving blocks, placing items), fist fighting, gun fights, Quick Time Events, then the occasional mini-game often involving vehicles of some kind.

There's lots of motion controls. In the platforming, you need to waggle if Indiana slips. Sometimes you need to rope swing. There's some context sensitive actions such as lighting torches by mimicking a flint, or barge down doors. QTE's involving running require waggle to imitate swinging arms. In the fight sequences, you move the nunchuk or remote to imitate jabs and uppercuts. In the gun fights, it becomes more like a light-gun game where you aim at the screen, press a button to hide behind cover, and shake to reload.

I thought the controls generally worked well, it was when you have to put your back against the wall and side step on ledges that were a problem. The movement is overly fussy on the angle of the control stick. Sometimes it was awkward to pop out of this manoeuvre, and rarely the pulling up/dropping from ledges.

The fighting tutorial in the intro level is long and features constant interruptions which drags the early pacing. If you fail in these sections you have to replay and cannot skip the tutorial pop-ups. I found the gun-fight tutorial (which comes a bit later) annoying because you are actually supposed to blow up the ledge but you would assume you attack the enemy directly. Most enemies can be dispatched by shooting at them, some can be optionally defeated with explosive barrels, and some specifically require environment takedowns.

You do have a lot of moves when it comes to fighting. Jabs, hooks, grab, dodge, pick up items, whip to disarm. The "brute" enemies generally need to be countered. In the environment, there's usually many improvised weapons lying around (Objects such as wrenches, pipes, oars, plates, chairs, bottles), as well as objects that can be smashed (fish tank).

There's good puzzle variety, although I found some of them to be quite straightforward - the usual "here's a thing I can push" so I’ll push it and see what happens.

Some of the vehicles require you to hold the remote differently, like the aeroplane level, or controlling a crane where you use the remote vertically. A bike sees you hold the remote and nunchuk to represent handlebars.

The game is fine graphically, but you see the usual dull colour pallet, aliasing and a bit of dithering that you see in many other Wii games.

There are several Hat icons in the levels. Some of them are just out in the open and possibly tricky to get to, but many are tucked away in alcoves, or alternate paths. There were a few occasions where I thought the secret was easier to find than the way forward.

I recently played Tomb Raider Legend and you could say this game is a good alternative. It’s a globe-trotting adventure with lots of action, and I felt this was actually a slightly better game. I think Indiana Jones fans should be happy with the game. It’s about 6.5 hours long, but then there’s Fate of Atlantis too as a nice bonus for another several hours.