Gamesradar review:

Here

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.

You do get to trudge around ancient environments, but stages are limited in size and not that interactive – you can only use your whip to climb walls, topple structures or swing across gaps at particular moments, and never at your discretion. ‘Exploration’ soon comes to mean ‘running around, triggering occasional quick-time events’. As such, the platforming’s never particularly exciting, but as the glue that holds the superior combat and puzzle sections together it suffices.

 

Indy’s all about the set piece, you see, and there are some genuinely impressive moments here. Puzzles are typically of the block-pushing variety, but some – including one based on Mayan football – are inspired. On your travels you’ll happen upon a pirate ship that was somehow moored under San Francisco, ride an elephant through the streets of Istanbul, and stumble into messy bar fights with Chinese hardmen. It’s all terribly Indiana Jones.

The combat also embodies the spirit of the films, and for the most part involves highly enjoyable man-punching, with the ability to pick up tools and make use of your surroundings. The Nunchuk’s your left fist, the remote your right. You can dish out jabs and hooks, dodge blows, grapple and throw people, and chuck anything littering the environment at enemies’ heads. Your trusty whip will also bring bookcases and the like down on enemy heads, offing them in one crushing swoop. It’s great fun, reminiscent of a number of fights from the films, and with masterful use of motion controls.

Still, brawling’s only part of the package. The on-rails gunfights can be mediocre in comparison, while the (blessedly) few minigames are never less than soul destroying. The combat may be a triumph, but as it’s dumped on you in huge chunks – rather than integrated properly into the flow of the game – it soon becomes a tad repetitive.

 

As with a deep-fried Mars bar, Staff of Kings’ disparate elements shouldn’t work in combination – and, indeed, they don’t quite – but the individual ingredients are right tasty. It’s an enjoyable game, but so bitty and shallow it’s difficult to recommend. Still, as a free aside to the brilliant Fate of Atlantis it doesn’t really matter, right?

Environmentally aware brawling
Environments look lovely
The most authentic Indy game yet

7/10

GAF impressions

The IGN review is weird because they say that its a good game with a lot to like, other than the controls and I really haven't heard control complaints that bad in other reviews at all.

In fact the gamesradar review posted above says:

"The combat also embodies the spirit of the films, and for the most part involves highly enjoyable man-punching, with the ability to pick up tools and make use of your surroundings. The Nunchuk’s your left fist, the remote your right. You can dish out jabs and hooks, dodge blows, grapple and throw people, and chuck anything littering the environment at enemies’ heads. Your trusty whip will also bring bookcases and the like down on enemy heads, offing them in one crushing swoop. It’s great fun, reminiscent of a number of fights from the films, and with masterful use of motion controls."

I wont buy it till it comes down to £20 or less but I must have it eventually for FOA and to blast through the main game.

GameUK review

Whip-cracking adventure with the world's coolest archaeologist.

Despite what its millions of fans say, Star Wars is only the second best movie franchise of the 80s. Intelligent movie-goers know that the Indiana Jones trilogy provided the most iconic cinematic moments of that era. The be-hatted adventurer has also provided some pretty memorable gaming moments, although arguably his biggest contribution to gaming was to provide the inspiration for Tomb Raider. Past exploits aside, though, it's incredibly exciting to be able to welcome this completely new Indiana Jones story to Wii and PS2.

Story-wise the game slots nicely into the whole Indy legend. Fortunately it takes place a full 18 years before Dr Jones' creaking efforts in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In fact this chapter is set in 1939, just a year after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. As well as featuring an Indiana Jones still in his prime, Staff of Kings also features a suitably epic quest. This time around our whip-wielding archaeologist is searching for nothing less than Moses' staff (you know, the one that could turn into a serpent, part the Red Sea... stuff like that). Unfortunately the Nazis are also after the artefact so that they might use its phenomenal power to further their aims of world domination. We always knew those Nazis were a bad lot.

As you'd expect from an Indiana Jones tale, this is a thrilling blend of exotic locations and fascinating characters. During the adventure Indy gets to apply his unique brand of archaeology to locations in San Franciso, the deserts of Sudan, Nepal, Istanbul and Panama. Each of these great locations sees Indy caught up in some classic cinematic set-pieces including a shoot-out on a San Francisco tram car, tank battles, elephant rides and many more. Plus of course there's a constant supply of pantomime Nazis to deal with. Not everyone you encounter is an enemy, though. Familiar faces, including Charles Kingston - Indy's mentor - also crop up along the way.

As well as the standard control set-up found in the PS2 version, it's the Wii's motion-sensing controls that bring a little extra to the Indy party. As we all know Indy is pretty tasty with his fists and now, thanks to the Wii Remote and Nunchuk set-up, you can fight just like the man-in-the-hat himself. Both hands can be used to perform jabs and uppercuts, hold objects to be used as weapons, or grab enemies and throw them.

When circumstances require it, Indy is also happy to use weapons. His trusty revolver is used sparingly, but is nevertheless fun to wave about. More entertaining is Indy's whip. Flick the Wii Remote and you can use the whip to disarm enemies before wading in for a fist fight, and elsewhere you can use it to swing across hazardous drops or to clamber up to previously out of reach areas.

The most impressive thing about Staff of Kings, however, is not the story, the characters, the locations or the Wii controls. It's the effort that's been made to reward success. Over the course of the game you'll be able to unlock movie clips, puzzles, additional co-operative games featuring Indy and his Dad, combat arenas in which you can take on hordes of Nazis and you can even partake in multi-player tank battles. It's an impressive list and it's made all the more impressive by the inclusion of a complete version of LucasArts' classic 1992 point-and-click adventure Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. That alone is almost worth the asking price. So what are you waiting for? Get your hat on.

GAME's Verdict

• Exotic and epic story
• Whip-cracking fun
• The classic Indy theme tune
• Loads of unlockables

• Graphics are not quite cutting edge
• Flight controls are dodgy