One of my strangest childhood memories involves square dancing in elementary school gym class. If the image of fifty or so nine-year-olds awkwardly fumbling their way through the most tedious exercise in choreographed conformity on the planet isn’t surreal enough for the David Lynch devotees among you, if you need a deeper hit on the Blue Velvet bong of phantasmagorical mindfuckery, consider that I grew up not in the crispiest golden-fried regions of the artery-choking Neil Young-hating deep South, but in Suffolk County, Long Island. New York, that is. Proof that God has a sense of humor.
While allemanding and promenading around what was, for most of us, our first intentional physical contact with the contemporary opposite sex, I arrived at two heretofore unrealized conclusions; girls smell nice, and square dancing is for knobs. For some reason, even my overly impressionable developing brain didn’t willingly submit to the notion of being ordered around the gym like some vacuous prepubescent paperboy prototype in an Ira Levin novel gone wrong, a fact which further indicts the entire concept of the do-si-do hivemind; at the time I considered Gilligan’s Island the apogee of mankind’s cultural accomplishment, so earning my discriminative ire was no small feat.
Fast forward thirty years. As I played LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, I had flashbacks of a magnitude that could form the basis for an Oliver Stone film.
The needling question that I encountered while thumbing my way through Indy’s first three sojourns into buckling swashes and violating sacred burial spaces of downtrodden indigenous peoples across the globe (for the indigenous are universally downtrodden, you know), was simply “does this game suck or doesn’t it?” Often it’s difficult to separate the measure of a game from the weight of its franchise, and in this case it’s doubly tough, with Indy tipping the scales in one direction and LEGO adding its thick-crayoned Duplo thumb behind him to help out. While their combined weight is formidable, it’s not enough to save this self-congratulatory yawn fest.
LEGO Star Wars was cute and perhaps even a little original back in 2005, and sold fairly well across most platforms, so naturally LucasArts is going to pound the LEGO game franchise into the ground (like that animated Clone Wars bullshit that just won’t go away) and reproduce the entire Lucas oeuvre; LEGO THX-1138, LEGO American Graffiti, and LEGO Willow are sure to deliver all the whimsical LEGO buffoonery that made LEGO Star Wars fun for about an hour and a half while maintaining a level of complexity that rendered the original game accessible to anyone with four functioning brain cells and all gastropods.
Like many gimmicky concepts that pass for innovative experiences these days, the basic LEGO video game seeks to exploit a minor change in presentation and employ the power of illusion to Doug-Henning that shit into a convincing simulacrum of originality. Nothing about this game survives the hypothetical removal of its Indiana Jones franchise, from its insipid buddy-based mission design to its maddening control mechanics and its infatuation with puzzle-based level objectives, it’s a by-the-numbers Mondrian of mediocrity from start to finish.
No time for love, Dr. Jones
The half-assed fusion of combat and puzzle solving lost me almost immediately, especially when the game so steadfastly and obtusely refuses to understand my instructions; no, I don’t want Indy to stand with his back pressed against that iron post while Nazis mow him down, just….shit. Move, would you? Throw the banana to the monkey, dammit! No, pick it up. Here, I’ll get the…oh, never mind. Pick up those studs and let’s get the hell out of here.
Stud collection has returned as a means by which players can purchase unlockable characters, but Traveller’s Tales should have plucked a petal from their Prince Caspian design daisy and included upgradeable health, as well, or in fact any in-game impetus for collecting other than superficial cosmetic additions. LEGO Indy gives the illusion of great replayability because of areas that can only be reached with certain unlockable characters, but there’s little reason to actually pursue these achievements unless compulsive completion with no regard for tangible value particularly excites you. It’s like climbing a mountain to see a painting of a sunset.
While certain games easily overcome their media roots by offering great gameplay independent of the franchise, LEGO Indiana Jones turns this principle on its head and sneezes on its cojones. Knights of the Old Republic would have been a great game even without its Star Wars pedigree, and the same can be said to a much lesser degree of the afore-reviewed Kung Fu Panda; each provides compelling reasons for accomplishing tasks other than the tired old authoritative standby of “because I said so,” a design concept that in all but the rarest cases results in a rich, satisfying experience. Where LEGO Indy walks smack into its own propeller is with the cocksure assumption that nauseatingly cute cut scenes and a self-referential sense of humor coupled with established franchises equals a winning formula, but nothing trumps gameplay. It’s the single non-negotiable component in all of gamedom.
Being prodded from one area to the next by puzzle after tedious puzzle interspersed with formulaic combat segments designed by narcoleptic koalas, LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures should please only the most ardent fanatics of gratuitous item gathering and anyone of the installed LEGO/Indiana Jones fanbase.
The square dancing that was so unceremoniously foisted upon us in gym thirty years ago taught me one more invaluable lesson; it demonstrated at an early age that carrying out the arbitrary instructions of strangers, with no individual input other than how well you follow orders, is less fun than watching a wake of buzzards circle a puppy farm.
And even if you’re good at it, it’s still square dancing.
