Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

"Indy Jones returns to the PC in top form"

This is a good game. Unfortunately, it has yet to receive a review here, so let's change that.

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb is the fifth installment in the PC adventure saga to involve everyone's favorite fedora-sporting good guy. The games have long been known as solid adventure titles that stayed faithful to the source material.

In November of 1999, the success of the Tomb Raider franchise had inspired the folks at Lucasarts to convert the Indiana Jones games from isometric point-n-click adventure to the more mainstream Tomb Raider styled action-adventure.

The first venture into the mainstream for Indy was a fun, but terribly buggy and so-so game called Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I also own this game, and while it is a fun, more enjoyable knock of the original Tomb Raider game, it also has severe flaws in it's design. Lack of a brightness setting (not even in .INI), archaic menu system, and buggy joystick bindings, not to mention a horrid keyboard/mouse scheme that forced the use of a solid gamepad. Even so, the game was a entertaining if ultimately forgettable, romp.

Enter Emperor's Tomb. The team from Xbox's Buffy was put in charge of the development. The JK engine was scrapped. And this game is all the better for it. Now let's get to the good stuff.

Graphics: 8 - The heart of any game. Emperor's Tomb is no different. Thankfully, the graphics are quite solid, though they could be better. Developed first on the Xbox console, then ported to PC. They hold up well. The occasional 2D sprite is used, and ATI cards will get strange texture flicker, but it's rare, and still looks good 95% of the time. Clipping issues mentioned in other reviews are over-exaggerated, and made out worse than they actually are.

Sound: 9 - Great sound, awesome licensed music by the master John Williams, with very fitting original tracks that blend in flawlessly. Music manages not to be annoying as it drones on in the background. Voice acting is also solid, with a great performance from David Esch who does the voice of Indy. He's sorta hit and miss; when he misses you won't be fooled for a second. But when he hits, OH BOY does he hit! I'm talking doppelganger levels of accuracy here. You'll swear that Harrison Ford himself is moonlighting some of these lines! Yes, they're that good.

Control: 7 - Much improved over Infernal Machine. Bindings are solid, controls are much improved. But there are some flaws here. Mouse sensitivity, even on the highest setting, is a little sluggish. Confirming resolutions and other game settings require a press of the Enter key when they're selected to save them permanently. If you just select 'em, change 'em, and don't press Enter after you've changed the setting, they'll revert back to their former settings once you've exited the game. They should have either notified you of this, or simply not required it.

Gameplay: 10 - Quirky camera aside, this game is EONS ahead of Infernal Machine in gameplay mechanics. The fun factor is through the roof. Infernal Machine, in it's desire to mimic Tomb Raider,
uses the same awkward combat scheme. Weapons are bland, fist-fighting was near useless.
But Emperor's Tomb changes that. Emperor's Tomb does for IJ combat what Jedi Knight II did for SW combat.

Yes, it's true. Compare a lightsaber battle from JK1 with JK2. See the difference? Now compare a fistfight from Infernal Machine with a fistfight from Emperor's Tomb. The games almost mirror each other in that respect, and you can be sure it was intentional.

Let me go into detail about hand-to-hand combat a bit more. Infernal Machine: about 2 or 3 canned animations, decent damage to make the weapon viable. Now in Emperor's Tomb, The Collective have done something great. A level of depth only seen previously in fighting games, you can wall-juggle, push/throw, Tekken-like Left/Right hand combo attacks, counters, blocking, attack collides like lightsaber collides in JKII, where you must tap a punch button repeatedly to overwhelm the opponent, and more. You can even counter throws!

Overall: 8 - But with the incredibly fun fist-fighting model, the game has too many flaws to make it a perfect buy. Glitchy menu confirm, freaky camera if using keyboard/mouse combo for control, low mouse sensitivity, no in-game save points (at least make the healing fountains quicksaves as well?) hit and miss voice acting by Indy, and a cool, but ultimately lacking manual makes this a flawed gem, a tainted classic. Like Daggerfall, Battlecruiser 3000, and Sacrifice before it, it will be remembered as the perfect game...with a catch.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/09/03, Updated 04/09/03