Indiana Jones SCUMM Adventures

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/indy/indy.htm

Sotenga provides us a look at two of Indiana Jones Graphic Adventures - The Last Crusader and Fate of Atlantis. There's also a brief history of other Indiana Jones video games, including an action game based on Fate of Atlantis that I didn't know about (and is really, really bad.)

[roushimsx]

I was never much of a fan of Infernal Machine, but I've been reassured many times over that the N64 version is a major improvement over the PC release. I honestly haven't cared enough to bother looking in that claim since I really didn't care for the PC game in the first place.

Emperor's Tomb, on the other hand, is yet another good game from The Collective. There's a company that could use a nice article...they did a number of really solid licensed third person action games, ranging from Deep Space Nine to Buffy to freakin' Marc Ecko.

[Discoalucard]

I bought the PC Infernal Machine at a thrift store awhile back but never played it. Emperor's Tomb I bought way back when and thought it was pretty alright. The Collective's run was generally pretty good, I never played the Mark Ecko game but Buffy was surprisingly good.

[jorpho]

I get confused about all the different incarnations of the Last Crusade action game, but The Angry Video Game Nerd covered most of them already, I think.

Much like I think McKraken might be greatly improved with proper RPG elements, it would be cool to see Last Crusade done with a proper fighting game engine.

Amusingly, the Classic Adventures re-release of Last Crusade, while it did include the Grail Diary excerpts and Breath of God picture, left out the clue to solving the "leap from the lion's head", though you could possibly intuit it.

By the way, all releases of the EGA version have a copy protection question from Brody. (Some releases of the VGA version might have had copy protection as well, but as is the usual case with these things, it is disabled in ScummVM, since ScummVM cannot differentiate between versions with or without copy protection.)

Quick nitpick:

Also, that portrait of the Grail you found at Henry's house in the beginning

This makes no sense.

[Deleted]

Jan 2, 2010 10:48:18 GMT -5 jorpho said:

Quick nitpick:

Also, that portrait of the Grail you found at Henry's house in the beginning

This makes no sense.

Hmm... that sentence is a bit messy, even when it's in proper context. I'd like it to be changed to such:

The castle also contains an important painting of the Holy Grail itself, and if you miss seeing this painting, finding the true Grail at the end of the game will be difficult. If you forgot to pick up that other picture of the Grail at Henry's house in the beginning of the game (before leaving for Venice), then you can't get to the Grail picture in Brunwald.

... hmm, that's a bit verbose. Edit as you will, DA. And if anyone else has any typos, awkward grammar, or otherwise criticisms to point out, lemme hear them!

[jorpho]

I'd like to add that any adventure game designer who thinks it's a Good Idea to make the player go on a pixel hunt through an entire bookshelf full of completely undistinguished book spines should be thrown out into the street and barred from designing games ever again. Horrible! (Teen Agent did this too.)

[dire51]

Nice work, Mike.

For the record, my favorite Indy games of all time are the Temple of Doom arcade game and Greatest Adventures. I never did play either of the graphic adventures.

[Deleted]

Jorpho: Yeah, that's actually something rather annoying in the library segment. None of those books are absolutely required to beat the game, but they sure make things easier. I'd like something to be added to this sentence:

...but failing to get them before leaving Venice means that they're gone forever, and it can be a pain to find these slim books from the many extensive shelves in the library.

D-51: Thank ya! I see you've sighted out a certain screenshot as your new avatar over at T3M. When you look at the corpse, a nice scare chord pops up in the game to give you a random bejeezus-outing shock.

Also, those are probably the two greatest Indy games focused entirely on action. Other attempts have been less than stellar, like the two action games based off of the games I covered.

EDIT: A mistake that I found in the FoA section, where I talk about the voice acting. I said it was good for 1993, but the release date, as mentioned earlier in the article, was actually 1992.

[Discoalucard]

Seems like the CD-ROM version was released in 1993, so you're all OK.

[kaoru]

I played both just a couple of weeks ago. While I really enjoyed Indy 4, I didn't like 3 all that much. But I'm neither a fan of the movies or grew up with those older types of Adventures, so that might be it.

[Gendo Ikari]

I never thought I would have criticized an article for being overdetailed, to the point of being spoilerific. It gives away practically everything of the plot and situations you encounter throughout the games - if I hadn't played them before reading (I did it in the early '90s actually, and FoA is one of my favourite adventures ever), I would'n have had much fun. Sometimes articles pass over important details but this one went too far in the other direction. I really hope the Chzo Mythos article Sotenga's been planning to do for a long while won't turn this way

On the other end, such amount of detail is appreciated when it comes to the gameplay, or a brief history of Lucas adventures, or the failed Iron Phoenix project..

There where two interesting fangames in development: Fountain of Youth was styled like Fate of Atlantis, while the other (something about King Solomon, I don't remember correctly) was in Last Crusade style. Never heard of them for a long while though - probably abandoned.

[jorpho]

Fountain of Youth isn't dead yet - in theory.
www.barnettcollege.com/index2.htm

[Deleted]

Gendo: I apologize, but it's often my prerogative to give as much excruciating detail on my games as possible. Not everyone likes it, this I realize, but I just don't want any of my writings to come off as hollow. I at least do my best to stay on topic with all of my rantings, even when I'm giving a somewhat thorough tour of each game. I kept most puzzle solutions obscure, at least for FoA. If I was a bit spoilish with LC, I feel it's because the old-school nature of the game makes it somewhat frustrating to solve its puzzles. Plus, almost everyone knows its plot by now whether they've seen the movie or played the game.

I might have been a bit too detailed, but as I said, it's the way I tend to write, for better or worse. If there's anything anyone here thinks I should trim down, do let me know and I will consider altering it.

[Gendo Ikari]

Well, if someone gets stuck with the puzzles but is really interested in the game, he'll bother looking for a guide, there's no need to keep them by hand. The bit about the Graal could have been summed in a small paragraph. Your effort is appreciated and I think I understand how you feel - often, even in private e-mails, I tend to write in a lot of, sometimes not even useful, detail! But at least some surprise should be left to whoever might be interested in playing the game. I remember, in the mid '90s, criticisms aimed at the reviewers of some Italian magazines who, in their reviews of adventure games, gave away too much of them, also with screenshots showing advanced sections or even the ending sequences! From them on, they started to show more attention. Now, this site is anything but "professional" but I think it was a fair criticism. I do not think you risk writing "hollow" reviews

Bad timing about Replacement Docs, the site's temporarily down, duh.

[Discoalucard]

See, one of the main reasons why I started wanting to do adventure game reviews here is because most of the other reviews out there don't spoil enough. There's too much tiptoeing around certain elements, specifically story and puzzle solving, which sometimes makes me come away wondering if I really know what the game was ABOUT. I like examples - I'm big on those, because, especially with adventure games, it's usually the individual moments that add up to a memorable (or hateful) experience. If you're not going to talk about them, then what's the point? Ideally the entire game shouldn't be spoiled, and it does cause for some rough issues (it's impossible to criticize Monkey Island 2 without giving away at least SOME of the ending) but in the long run I think it makes for more interesting commentary.

The idea is that, yes, it might give away parts of the game, but it should also make the reader interested to experience them firsthand. It also allows the reader to have a good idea of the game does well (and not so well) without necessarily having to play it, if they're just interested about it in a historical context.