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Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings


Quick-time events. Why'd it have to be quick-time events?

We’re playing one of the greatest adventure games ever made, a title with excellent dialogue, a wonderful plot and satisfyingly fiendish puzzling. But enough about Fate of Atlantis – what about Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings?

You see what we did there? LucasArts’ fondly remembered 1992 point ’n’ clicker is included here as an extra, but to a certain type (and age) of gamer it’s going to seem like the other way round. If you’ve never played Fate, see it as an added bonus; if you’re familiar with the game, the Wii port doesn’t offer anything new. In either case it’s not a big enough gesture to excuse the things wrong with the main game.

But perhaps we’re being hasty. To describe Staff of Kings as a game seems a bit disingenuous – this is a collection of smaller sub-games, similar to Disaster: Day of Crisis. There are puzzley platform bits, typically involving copious whip-cracking and vigorous remote-pumpage; there’s brilliant environmental combat, which lets you hurl pool balls at bad guys, shove enemies into aquariums or whack them in the head with garden tools. On-rails gun battles will also occasionally break out, dumping Indy behind cover and letting you peek out and aim with the remote.

If you were hoping for a robust plot to hold these elements together, expect to be disappointed. Indy has his passport stamped everywhere from San Francisco to Istanbul, but cutscenes are so stilted and awkward it’s difficult to be entirely sure why. He’s searching for the legendary Staff of Moses, we know that much for certain, and, as ever, heaps of Nazis are right on his tail.

Previous Indy games The Emperor’s Tomb and The Infernal Machine translated the license into Tomb Raider-style exploratory platform outings, but aside from similar pastimes Indy has very little in common with Lara Croft. This series has always been more at home with spectacular action sequences than precision acrobatics or slowly dragging a box across a room. With a focus on the action, Staff of Kings is probably the closest a game has ever come to recreating the spirit of the movies, even if it does fudge the execution quite a bit.


 
5 Comments
Order Comments: Newest First | Oldest First
Ezekiel17  - 5 months 21 days ago 
Hmmm... I was looking forward to this game.
Maybe not worthy of a buy (atleast untill it hits bargin-bin status), but atleast a rental.
Great review! :)
TheWebSwinger  - 5 months 21 days ago 
@Ezekiel17: You were? Why?
skyguy343  - 5 months 21 days ago 
nintendo power is very pursuasive. i went down that road before too
Ezekiel17  - 5 months 20 days ago 
@TheWebSwinger: Idk, something for Wii that isn't kiddy-fare or another stupid minigame colletion. I hate only owning a Wii. :P
pmccarthy  - 5 months 11 days ago 
got this game today what a fustrating game to play.the fighting can be fun but the platform parts are messy and riddled with bugs.cant see how it was given a seven the control waging can get comical at times u will look like an ape on storoids.hope they get resident evil 5 on the wii now thats a game.
The Knowledge
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

Genre: Adventure
Release date: Jun 9, 2009
Published by: LucasArts
Developed by: A2M
Multiplayer Modes:
Offline
2 player CO-OP
Latest Articles About This Game
Quick-time events. Why'd it have to be quick-time events?
Wii Review  -  Jun 10, 2009