By Alec Meer on November 29th, 2011 at 9:33 am.
I was nosing at Uncharted 3 on the playbox last night (professional curiosity!), marvelling at its graphics and likeable characters but becoming exasperated at its extreme train-track constraints, and its acrobatic adventures had me yearning for another good Indiana Jones game. A character who doesn’t say too much but when he does it’s gold; a character who doesn’t immediately die if he jumps from the wrong place because he’s got a whip to save him; a character who doesn’t say ‘crap’ every two minutes. When did we last get a proper, decent Indiana Jones game? There were, of course, two Lego Indiana Joneses, but I’ll discount those because, while joyful, they’re pastiche in many ways. Sensibly, there wasn’t a specific one for the Doohickey Of The Crystal Thingum, as no-one wants to play a game about four old people shuffling around a CGI temple while Shia LeBeouf trails along doing his best plank of meat impression.
Could FarmVille overlords Zynga resurrect Indy’s gaming legend? They’ve just rebranded – apparently permanently – their Facebook game Adventure World as Indiana Jones Adventure World. Does this mean that if adventure has a name, it’s micropayments? Let’s take a look.
Hmm. Well, it looks like Bastion and it’s got boulders and snakes in it, so there’s that. I suppose Indy having a perky army of Indy Jrs is the natural evolution after George Lucas’ abortive attempt to replace Harrison Ford with Shia The Beef, but all those identi-hatted young explorers do look a little culty to me.
29/11/2011 at 09:45 SiHy_ says:
The ancient civilisation that built these temples were damn good at monetising the paths to their ancient artifacts. Gold coins to pull a lever? Genius.
29/11/2011 at 10:04 terry says:
I think I’ll stick to Desktop Adventures :-)
29/11/2011 at 11:54 P7uen says:
Yoda Stories was the superior game.
29/11/2011 at 15:22 siegarettes says:
Or you could also play the delightful tribute to the rolling boulder, in which you run over many Indy lookalikes on their way to treasure:
http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/boulder
29/11/2011 at 10:25 kristian says:
Sure.. go ahead, if you don’t mind paying 40+ euros to continue to play.
After 2 weeks of playing you will hit a where you cant continue without either grinding the same levels for over one year or using real money to pay for items needed to unlock new content.
Well.. I guess everyone knows Zynga games are like this.
29/11/2011 at 11:59 GeneralSalad says:
The sad thing is people actually pay too.
29/11/2011 at 13:18 Dances to Podcasts says:
I’ve been playing a few of those latest Zynga games recently and I’m starting to run into what I’ve decided to call the ‘Zynga Wall’. The point where you either have to a) nag your friends to come play b) nag your friends for ingame items c) spend money d) incredibly hugely massively grind.
They could have some lovely games otherwise, but less money hats, I guess.
29/11/2011 at 16:43 mouton says:
Some people simply add millions of like-minded zynga game facebook friends. They just gift/click each other stuff all the bloody time. This DOES skirt the “paying” part, but it doesn’t change the fact how horrible those games are.
29/11/2011 at 10:34 Nevard says:
I looked at the screenshot and in my sleep-addled mind immediately thought it was some kind of Bastion DLC
I was fairly disappointed when I looked closer
29/11/2011 at 10:40 jezcentral says:
I know it’s early and all that, but: “had me yearning for”?
Really?
You couldn’t have said “had me Jones-ing for”? Really, the level of puns at RPS are slipping….
29/11/2011 at 10:56 Hoaxfish says:
unless you count yEarning as a reference to micropayments (I don’t, but you never know)
29/11/2011 at 14:22 Pod says:
Why would RPS, a UK site, use a slang term from the USA that they’ve probably never even heard of?
29/11/2011 at 11:26 Lemming says:
I’ve always said that If you took the Uncharted fomula, but got rid of the gunfights and had Batman:AA-inspired drunken brawling instead you’d have a pretty awesome Indy game.
29/11/2011 at 12:05 pilouuuu says:
They were going to create an Indy game which used Euphoria system back in 2006, which looked quite interesting. But that was before they cancelled it for the PC and then cancelled it completely altogether. It seems Lucasarts will never be the amazing gaming studio it used to be…
29/11/2011 at 11:34 Nexus42 says:
I suddenly got an idea for a tower defense game where instead of towers player builds maze of traps that adventurers have to navigate. Has anything like that been made?
29/11/2011 at 11:43 Chris D says:
Dungeons and, for a fairly loose definition of Adventurer, Orcs Must Die. But there’s always room for another one. If we can have more than one game about shooting men in the face I don’t see why traps should be any different.
29/11/2011 at 16:44 mouton says:
Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2.
30/11/2011 at 01:33 Ludomation says:
No. They haven’t. Go build it and report back to us before sun down.
29/11/2011 at 12:02 pilouuuu says:
Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis was such a magnificent game. It was better than the last movie in many ways too. I don’t know if I’d have the patience to play it again though. I was expecting a special edition in the same fashion as Monkey Island’s, but they’ll probably won’t make it.
29/11/2011 at 12:33 cpy says:
Actually that 39 second video showed us complete gameplay. Yep there’s nothing more to it, except handing over your credit card number.
29/11/2011 at 13:37 malkav11 says:
It’s always had the Indy branding. Maybe it’s just now officially part of the name?
29/11/2011 at 14:51 westyfield says:
Indie games.
29/11/2011 at 17:51 Zarunil says:
Anti-social games.