Despite the lack of advancement over the Tomb Raider contol scheme, Indy is a big step forward (unlike TR 2,3, and now 4). Unfortunately, it didn't deliver what many of us were expecting. InfMach has physical puzzles much better (and more numerous) than I had ever assumed it would. But in fact there are too many! Instead of an endless parade of this style, Indy3D needs more character driven stuff like in Fate. And there are too few Fate syle puzles: for instance, in the Olmec temple where you must line up the 8 gears that spin around a statue to open the four different doors. When I first came upon it I first thought, 'Oh good, finally a puzzle that relies upon the pictures upon the gears. It must be that they only go in a certain way'. It turned out this was not the case, instead any 2 of the 8 gears would suffice. Character driven puzzles are severly lacking (like chasing the Doctor, or getting Sophia to help you in the Palawan temple). In fact, characters are far underused in general. The nubian boy? All of 3 shorts scenes. Turner shows up in level two only to be next seen in level 15. The communists are also problamatic becuase of their predictability: Indy spends much effort getting the relic, then the commies show-up. The mine-cart level is a good exception to this, but this level shows some logistic problems. The other mine cart is shown to be going around the track if you look at the track switching board, but in reality they only pop-up in scripted instances. This is understandable given the limits of scripting and AI. LEC should have attempted many more such sequences. I'm sounding terribly negative. What do you think is a problem?

I don't see any problems at all. Other than rare bugs that I have read about people experiencing and VERY minor clipping problems, it all fits together very nicely.

All the puzzles are very logical and the added map hints feature keeps the adventure flowing very smoothly.

I don't think more character involvement would have helped the game out much at all. Think of all the characters in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Some only appeared in one or two scenes but were undoubtably major characters.

Jamison

------------------
"Ahhhh, medicinal herbs."

I agree that there should have been more character involvement and communication. That was one of the best things in Fate of Atlantis.

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Drew
Slicing monkeys are fun!

It's a game guys, not a movie. I don't understand this need to have charactor development in a game. I don't want to care about the charactors, I don't need to know where they came from, what is making them do the things they are doing. I just want to know how to work the charactor I'm controlling and how to kill that guy before he kills me.

At least that's my opinion.
-Damian


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Fear is the path to the darkside.

Damian,

I agree. With books and movies it is important to develop characters because the user is just sitting there staring at the screen or words. With a game, it is much more interactive. I have seen many cool games ruined because the developers forgot they were making a game and not writing the next Pulitzer Prize winner.

Jamison

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"Ahhhh, medicinal herbs."

I can't imagine what games of which you're thinking, Jamison (though I did read about a very clumsy German adventure game based on Die Goetterdaemerung). Perhaps you refer to the over-copious Duke Nukem--sheesh, what pretentious garbage that was! Haven't you played previous LEC adventures? What about the Dig. I found the "artsy" aspects of it quite thrilling. What a welcome change. But that's not what I prescribe for an Indy game. An Indy adventure merely needs to touch on the foolish lust for great power, and so on, just like all of the movies and Fate of Atlantis. Here Volodnokov dissapears at the end. So much for villians. Just like in TPM: a little too much of a "phantom menace" for the good of the film. Over all, by having multiple artifacts, Infernal Machine under dramatizes the quest for each individual machine part. Interjecting levels 2 through 14 with more character appearances would help allieviate this. Come on, how many appearances in that huge stretch of the game were there? All of six at my count, and all very brief: Turner, Shambalan woman, Sophia, Nubian boy, chasing Volodnikov, and a personalityless monkey.

The worst of this though is that LEC doesn't have any other adventure games on the slate. Perhaps Obi-wan will have more adventure.

[This message has been edited by MrNeutron (edited November 26, 1999).]

All I know is, if I have to do one more @#$%ing cog puzzle my head's going to explode. Next game I want LEC to draw the line between tedious and fun. Don't get me wrong I LOVE INDY! I don't like tedious things, except making stop motion films (that's tedious too)

-Dr. Henry Jones Sr.
"Our situation has not improved."

Character, schmaracter. Just so long as I don't have to use the raft more than once per puzzle (if not per level). I don't think my lungs could take it.

--Blair
"We named the [i]dog[/] Indiana."

Characterization adds to the story line. If you play an RPG game and you dont know who your characters are or what they're doing.. It's boring. The same applies to an action/adventure.

Thanks for your agreement, Jake and Drew, but can't anyone speak to this AT LENGTH? Sorry, just frustrated that this doesn't seem to garner much response.

I'll give it a try =)

Game designers make the games to be so enjoyable that you'll want to get up extra early just to find out what might happen next. Part of accomplishing that is to make the characters seem alive and unique. Instead of just monotone voices and simple phrases like "Hello. My name is Indiana. How are you today?" the designers make sure to add important conversations between characters and to have skilled actors if voice is needed. By doing this the characters can slowly become more real and will in some ways relate to the character. It also builds up on the storyline. If someone made a game based on Armageddon where you're a man or woman trying to find your family before everything goes to hell, (Pardon the pun)and you never see urgency in your character then it'd get very boring. By adding certain conflicts or trials within a game that a character has to overcome he'll seem stronger and more real to the player. Otherwise you're playing a game just to kill things. Doom can be purchased at any local software store.

Jake

I think LEC should hace included some sort of Multiple choice talking system. It gives you the chance to develope your own charakter.....
Imagine the part where Indy has to hand the parts to either the commies or the CIA, wouldn't it be nice to see what happend if you gave the parts to volodnic? Or what if you had the chance to deside wheter you would play Indy or Sophia on certain levels (sounds crazy but why not)? Or maybe play both in some sort of swap-charakter system like in FATE OF ATLANTIS? And yozu guys are right, where's Jones Senior?
Overall the game is a damn good peace of work, but there are things that could be improved.

By the way, why can't you whip creatures to kill them/scare them of?
Or can you? didn't work when I tried.


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<<<Fottrigger>>>
"What is this? Sounds like steppin' on popcorn!"

*Nods his head in agreement..blank look on face* LoL.. I haven't even played the game past the 1st level at my house.. Stupidbug. But yeah, the multiple choice talking and different paths you could take because of it made Fate and Last Crusade fun. !Idea! Let's all flood the lucasarts forum demanding Henry Jones be added in future games. =P Or..not.

Simple posted this in his own post. I agree
with him almost totally (I mentioned that level nine gear puzzle myself, elsewhere and above). I post his comments here to extent the life of my pet project thread:

Simple: "This is a fun action game, with very few really challenging puzzels. I mean Indy doesnt get any better than Indy. But if you compare this game to fate of atlantis, it doesn't even hold its own. Its good and all, but wheres the challenging puzzels. Most of the puzzels are jump from point A to point B and shoot the bad guys. Its fun, but totally not what I was expecting, a few puzzels though have been challenging. Level four was the hardest challenge probably, but I havent seen anything thats really difficult. Take for example the dig site on fate of atlantis. That must have taken me, oh, probably about 4 days to beat it. Now, I get to lvl 9 on infernal machine and I see those 4 spinning things around the statue. And im pumped, Im like this is going to be awesome, move them around try to line up the pictures correctly, and you know 4 or 5 hours later I'll get it, but no. Its move the blocks so they line up as 3 and bada bing. Easy as pie, that level wasn't even hard! I like the vehicles though, I must say, though, i was impressed with the jeep. The game is fun on the action side, but now its getting old, it feels like, how fast can I whip out my side arm and shoot that damn spider before he bites me. Or run around the commies till my gun auto aims on them and spray them with bullets. Anyone whose ever played fate of atlantis knows that this is not a "true" Indiana jones game, its Lucas Arts playing to the tune of most audiences and most audiences like Tomb Raider. Just my two cents.
Remember: I still like the game, but it falls short of my expectations."

the main difference between indy 4 (which is still my all time no.2 behind indy 3) and indy 5 is that indy 4 is a graphic adventure while indy 5 is an action adventure. that difference makes comparing those two games seem like comparing apples and bananas. true, they are both indiana jones, but they have a totally different approach to the indy theme.
while i spent days trying to find the right talk/beat/bribe combination in LC (that motorcycle-through-germany stuff), i have now spent 3 days trying to find a place to put my @*&%ing 3 animal statues in level 9.
And i have been staring at my monitor in awe when i first saw some of the locations. this feeling is something that simply can't be accomplished by a 2D adventure. the immersion factor is much bigger with indy5 than it is with indy4.
both have their qualities, but IMO it doesn't fit to compare them.
and IMHO the 3d action TR like stuff should have been done a lot earlier. now it seems like TR has set the path and the all-time-legend lags behind that huge-busted mimicry.
sad, that.

--ck

More music.

Indy is an action hero.. Not a puzzle solver. Heh. I'm not getting into this again.

Aww hell... Why not.

posted November 27, 1999 12:57 AM
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Of course this a true Indiana game. Indiana Jones is not a brain surgeon. He's an adventurer. As Lucasarts put it they couldn't bear to have Indy stand around trying to figure out how to use the wax lips on the Rhino. Did you see Indiana in any of the movies struggling with how to set up the gear systems on some machine? No. He was a treasure hunter. A runner and a shooter. If you like total puzzle games.. Sam n' Max.. The Dig.. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.. Or Fate of Atlantis is for you. But for a REAL taste of what it would be like to be Indiana Jones then it's the infernal machine. No doubts. Indiana was never supposed to be able to go solving puzzles all his life. How many times did you actually use the whip in Fate of Atlanis? about 3 times. However more characterization would be needed (As noted in earlier posts). Besides that.. Indy3d is what Indiana is supposed to be.

~Jake
"Look what you did, Junior!"

more music, better control, better puzzles,
better graphics engine, more character interaction, cinematics...blah blah

i cant believe how people can think this game
is sooo "indy". its not. the graphics engine
is terrible. its worse than the first tomb raider as is the
control. these graphics are 3or4 years old!
indiana jones movies are rich with eye candy
so what happened here?

where are the cinematics in this game? didnt
ilm pioneer the cg? show it off yo

where is the music? have you heard TR4? all
those little creepy ambient noises. its great.
this game is like listening to the walls.

yes, character development thank you. this is
a game based on 2 (im not counting that second movie)
of the most fun to watch stories i can think of.
and a good story has good character development.
indiana jones is an action hero yes, but more
than that he's an adventurer.
a game action hero is someone like dukenukem or
the doom marine.

and what is all this "i sense danger"?? whos playing
the game? me or him? let ME figure out if there
is danger. dont tell me what i dont want to know. its like a spoiler!
last 3 games lucas arts has put out have been
poor quality. this one, pod racer, and tpm.
nothing is original, nothing is new. and like
i said before, there is no excuse for this kind
of quality with such prestigious names (star wars
included)

...oh, starwars is coming out next week.. i'm so excited.
gonna see it again though ive seen it too many
times already http://www.indyjones.net/forums/biggrin.gif)




[This message has been edited by -cswat- (edited November 27, 1999).]

And something valuable didnt get taken away from him.Remember in the beginning of the movies?



[This message has been edited by JR2000Z (edited November 27, 1999).]

the puzzles and game werent hard some were just time consuming..but I liked the game alot..the only gripe I have is the sometimes sloppy control..for instance when your at a ladder and he doesnt grab it on the first try instead he jumps straight up..I thought the story and game was great otherwise..

I miss Monkey Island!

any news on upcoming releases?