Category: Video Games

I used to be a really big Indiana Jones fan before Crystal Skull killed my enthusiasm. I remember being really excited when the first Indiana Jones Tomb Raider clone came out, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I played that whole thing through during the summer after my first undergraduate year. Infernal Machine was, I believe, the first Indiana Jones video game to come out since Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which is a classic of sorts among adventure games. There was some buzz amongst Indy fans because Infernal Machine would once again star Doug Lee as the voice of Indy, providing a little continuity.

The gameplay of Infernal Machine was a disappointment, but the story was really good in spite of some missteps (it was set after World War II, and you fought Russians). The fighting in the game was especially bad, though there were attempts to fix it somewhat on consoles. Basically, you had to stand there and get shot repeatedly while Indy languidly pulled a gun out and pointed it in the general direction of the enemy. You could allegedly use Indy’s whip to snag guns out of bad guys’ hands, but attempting to do so was tantamount to suicide.

I was excited again in 2003 when the sequel (or prequel?), Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb came out. There was nervousness among fans because Doug Lee had been replaced, but it turned out that they’d got a new guy who does a pretty good Harrison Ford impression. Both the graphics and the gameplay had been massively improved. They used an engine previously created for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game, and this time the fighting was phenomenal. There was a big emphasis on fisticuffs, allowing you to do various combo moves and also fight with improvised weapons such as table legs, chairs, and shovels. It actually captures the feel of the fights in the movies. And this time, the whip is effective: you can snatch weapons from enemies, knock multiple enemies back, and even use the whip to choke them.

Unfortunately, while the gameplay had improved, the storytelling had tanked. They had set the game in the 1930s where it belonged, and made it a prequel to Temple of Doom. But it’s as if they’d written a story and then neglected to deliver it anywhere in the game, so Indy moves randomly around the globe with no clear goal in mind. He’s looking for the parts of a key that will open up the tomb of the first emperor of China, so he heads first to Prague. Why, we don’t know. Somewhere, there’s a draft of a cutscene that explains what he’s doing in Prague, but it never made it into the game.

I never managed to finish this game because I got hung up at a certain point. I thought I would attempt streaming my playing of it, even though I’m a lousy gamer—and I am also, apparently, a lousy recorder of gaming, because I’ve been sitting over here with OBS for several hours and have not managed to get it to work. I can make it record my desktop, but can’t make it recognize the game itself, which even though I can see it in full screen, appears in the video in a tiny window.

If I can make this work, I will record my way through Emperor’s Tomb, but not today, because I’ve already dedicated too much time to it and I have other things to do.

If nothing else, though, I can say that this video game has one of the coolest instruction manuals ever made. They created it to look like a journal with a bunch of objects stuck in it.