Medium: Videogame
Hours Logged: ??
Genre: Action/Platform/Puzzle
Rating: E-10+
Console: Xbox 360
Soooo... yeah.
We're covering this one again.
After my previous review went live, I traded in the game and washed my hands of the whole affair. In retrospect however, I realized that not only had I left the thing unfinished (through no fault of my own), I had let my expectations color my bias (completely my fault, and very bad form). A brief recap: After feeling like I hadn't gotten my money's worth with the game and coming off of Lego Star Wars' superb level design, I thought an absolute minimum of effort had been put in. Worse yet was discovering that the first Lego Indiana Jones had made use of vast, expansive levels chock full of secrets and easter eggs, and then a crash corrupted my save and destroy all of my progress. I was livid, and needed a couple years (and some time with the original) to cool my head.
So, then, let's address my initial criticisms and lay this one to rest (properly this time, without all the scathing resentment).
Context Button: Assigning "switch character" and "drive vehicle" to the same button is still stupid. God help you if your partner character runs up to you while you're trying to jump into a car, because they will stop you from doing such and you have to jockey around until the prompt appears again.
Tools: Each character still has a 'specialization' as I called it- girls jump high and kids are short enough to use crawlspaces and Indy has his whip and natives can fling spears at posts to create bars to hang from- but tools add more abilities to a character, if only temporarily. This is not, as I stated, actually a logistical problem. No, the real issue here is that in some levels, the tools you can pick up seem to be covered in butter. "What's that?" the game says playfully, as you tap the B button to switch to something more useful, "You want to change from the wrench you picked up back to your character's sword? We'll just drop it then, even though in every other level you would normally just pocket it. Yes, into the lava- it's not our fault you were mid-jump. Have fun backtracking to pick up a new one!"
Ugh.
It's not a huge problem- it's rather infrequent actually. But, it is an occasional inexplicable nuisance.
Quantity Over Quality: Okay, I may have been onto something with the idea that the shorter but more numerous level set may have been to accommodate the level creator. However, I made another realization after playing the original: Lego Indiana Jones 2 is not a standalone game. I mean... it is, but it's more like an expansion pack, a slew of single-room flash-in-the-pan mini-stages meant to compliment the original game's level set instead of replacing it entirely. The original's levels still stand, and they're still great, but this is all new content.
Bosses and Kid-Friendliness: Again, all new content meant to compliment instead of replace. The original game did do appropriate bosses and a mostly-faithful (if goofy) retelling of the stories- it's just that the sequel takes things up to 11. Every 'episode' gets a puzzle boss to fight that (probably) didn't exist in the original movie, and in some sort of meta-joke some cutscenes in LIJ2 parody the parody cutscenes in the first game. So... no more problems here.
Extra Stages, Slaps On The Wrist, and Crystal Skull: You know what, I was just being salty here. Do all of the new stages correspond to a movie scene? No. No they do not. Nor do they have to. As far as 'coddling' goes... . It's not. Being forced to restart is disarming, I guess, but not as insulting as I made it out to be. And the Crystal Skull levels? They're fine. There's nothing wrong with them. The two based on the nuclear test site are actually really fun.
All that out of the way, there are in fact-
Actual Real Problems With The Game: That crash I mentioned earlier, that took out my save file? Yeah. That happens every so often. I thought it was my Xbox breaking down and even had it exchanged for a new one, but... no. Lego Indiana Jones 2 has a known bug that randomly crashes it after some straight hours of play. There's nothing to stop it from happening in the middle of an autosave, so for the love of Mike, quit the game and back up your freaking save file after you make significant progress. I've been doing so after every episode I complete 100%, 'cause I'm not letting that debacle happen again. On that note, there are some bugs that may render a player unable to complete some episodes 100%. Thankfully, these are smaller and pretty easy to avoid.
TL;DR: A fun but flawed expansion on an already great game. Can be bought and played separately, but it feels much better if you've spent time with the original first.
VIRTUES: Humor, solid gameplay.
SINS: Obvious bugs, time trial levels still feel lazy in construction.
GRADE: C
Hours Logged: ??
Genre: Action/Platform/Puzzle
Rating: E-10+
Console: Xbox 360
Soooo... yeah.
We're covering this one again.
After my previous review went live, I traded in the game and washed my hands of the whole affair. In retrospect however, I realized that not only had I left the thing unfinished (through no fault of my own), I had let my expectations color my bias (completely my fault, and very bad form). A brief recap: After feeling like I hadn't gotten my money's worth with the game and coming off of Lego Star Wars' superb level design, I thought an absolute minimum of effort had been put in. Worse yet was discovering that the first Lego Indiana Jones had made use of vast, expansive levels chock full of secrets and easter eggs, and then a crash corrupted my save and destroy all of my progress. I was livid, and needed a couple years (and some time with the original) to cool my head.
So, then, let's address my initial criticisms and lay this one to rest (properly this time, without all the scathing resentment).
Context Button: Assigning "switch character" and "drive vehicle" to the same button is still stupid. God help you if your partner character runs up to you while you're trying to jump into a car, because they will stop you from doing such and you have to jockey around until the prompt appears again.
Tools: Each character still has a 'specialization' as I called it- girls jump high and kids are short enough to use crawlspaces and Indy has his whip and natives can fling spears at posts to create bars to hang from- but tools add more abilities to a character, if only temporarily. This is not, as I stated, actually a logistical problem. No, the real issue here is that in some levels, the tools you can pick up seem to be covered in butter. "What's that?" the game says playfully, as you tap the B button to switch to something more useful, "You want to change from the wrench you picked up back to your character's sword? We'll just drop it then, even though in every other level you would normally just pocket it. Yes, into the lava- it's not our fault you were mid-jump. Have fun backtracking to pick up a new one!"
Ugh.
It's not a huge problem- it's rather infrequent actually. But, it is an occasional inexplicable nuisance.
Quantity Over Quality: Okay, I may have been onto something with the idea that the shorter but more numerous level set may have been to accommodate the level creator. However, I made another realization after playing the original: Lego Indiana Jones 2 is not a standalone game. I mean... it is, but it's more like an expansion pack, a slew of single-room flash-in-the-pan mini-stages meant to compliment the original game's level set instead of replacing it entirely. The original's levels still stand, and they're still great, but this is all new content.
Bosses and Kid-Friendliness: Again, all new content meant to compliment instead of replace. The original game did do appropriate bosses and a mostly-faithful (if goofy) retelling of the stories- it's just that the sequel takes things up to 11. Every 'episode' gets a puzzle boss to fight that (probably) didn't exist in the original movie, and in some sort of meta-joke some cutscenes in LIJ2 parody the parody cutscenes in the first game. So... no more problems here.
Extra Stages, Slaps On The Wrist, and Crystal Skull: You know what, I was just being salty here. Do all of the new stages correspond to a movie scene? No. No they do not. Nor do they have to. As far as 'coddling' goes... . It's not. Being forced to restart is disarming, I guess, but not as insulting as I made it out to be. And the Crystal Skull levels? They're fine. There's nothing wrong with them. The two based on the nuclear test site are actually really fun.
All that out of the way, there are in fact-
Actual Real Problems With The Game: That crash I mentioned earlier, that took out my save file? Yeah. That happens every so often. I thought it was my Xbox breaking down and even had it exchanged for a new one, but... no. Lego Indiana Jones 2 has a known bug that randomly crashes it after some straight hours of play. There's nothing to stop it from happening in the middle of an autosave, so for the love of Mike, quit the game and back up your freaking save file after you make significant progress. I've been doing so after every episode I complete 100%, 'cause I'm not letting that debacle happen again. On that note, there are some bugs that may render a player unable to complete some episodes 100%. Thankfully, these are smaller and pretty easy to avoid.
TL;DR: A fun but flawed expansion on an already great game. Can be bought and played separately, but it feels much better if you've spent time with the original first.
VIRTUES: Humor, solid gameplay.
SINS: Obvious bugs, time trial levels still feel lazy in construction.
GRADE: C
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