'Lego Indiana Jones' Whips Up Family Gaming Fun

June 6, 2008 — -- With the larger-than-life Indiana Jones cracking his whip across the big screen in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," a smaller, blockier version is leading families on a humorous romp through the earlier movies in "Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures," a video game released across all platforms this week.

In a style very similar to the popular game "Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga," the game features tongue-in-cheek recreations of the first three Indiana Jones movies ("Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade") with all the characters and landscapes constructed out of Lego blocks.

To unlock the game's content, you must start in the story mode. Once you play the first level, all three movies become available to you. You can move among the three at will, but must play each movie's chapters in order. Each movie adventure is presented in six chapters, and once you have completed a chapter in story mode, a free play mode becomes available.

Barnett College, where the fictional Indiana Jones teaches when not adventuring, serves as the hub for the game. You access the three movies by walking up to one of the three maps hanging on the walls in the college building.

As you relive the movies in story mode, you will visit all the movies' famous locales, from the Amazon jungles to the remote mountaintops of India. At each location, the game automatically places Indy and one other scene-relevant character in the game and permits you to toggle between the two as needed. The stories are retold, Lego-style, through video scenes.

The gameplay is a cross between puzzle play and adventure. In each location, you must figure out how to manipulate your environment so that you can move through it. For example, you may need to find a key to a machine that will open a door, but the key will be located at a place you cannot reach by walking or jumping. As Indy, if you walk up to a wooden whip platform and flip your whip, you may find that you can pull down platforms, or latch onto pegs to swing across an abyss. Other situations may require you to navigate minefields without triggering Lego-piercing spears. This is a world full of hidden levers, switches and bridges.