Indiana Jones is an iconic character that almost everyone reading this review probably remembers fondly from their childhoods. Unfortunately, the last year or so haven’t exactly been kind to Indy. First we get the letdown that is Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on the big screen, and now we’ve got Staff of Kings polluting our televisions. At least on the Wii, Indy now has way more problems going for him than just being named after the family dog.
With that in mind, let’s start off with what the Staff of Kings gets right. First off, the story is actually pretty decent. However, far from feeling completely original, it does manage to borrow elements from the first few Indiana Jones films, and the mishmash winds up being enjoyable. Indy is once again up against a rival archaeologist who is working for, pause for guesses, the Nazis, although they are strangely referred to as just “the Germans” through most of the game. Jones’ quest this time around is to find and acquire the fabled Staff of Moses before it falls into Nazi hands.
Much of what makes the character who he is also remains intact. Although they presumably couldn’t get Harrison Ford to provide voice work, their second option does a respectable job, sometimes making me question whether or not it was actually Ford at times. The character model for Indiana is also fairly accurate for a ported up PS2 game, from his only slightly off facial features down to the patented sweat-darkened area on the back of his shirt. Even the somewhat campy feel of the characters and films is captured with sporadic but well-placed humor. Players can also expect some fan service such as film references being thrown their way throughout the game, like the brief mention of Indy fighting a large man by an airplane.
Getting more into the game itself, the environments are mostly well designed and visually interesting. You’ll find yourself making your way through San Francisco’s city streets, burning buildings, collapsing caverns, creepy jungles, snow-covered mountains, ancient ruins, and even zeppelins during the course of your adventure. Although you’ll spend a good amount of the game in various booby-trapped ruins, they all have a slightly different look as well as unique environmental puzzles to be solved. One may have you avoiding boulders while pushing switches on an ancient Mayan ball court, while another will require pushing frozen statues onto flame vents to melt ice in order to create running water. Most of these puzzles are transparent enough while still remaining entertaining, although some may leave you scratching your head for awhile.
Unfortunately, this is where it gets a little awkward. Just about everything else concerning the gameplay is verging on unbearable. The greatest offender by far is the downright terrible motion controls you are forced to use throughout. That’s right; players can’t customize their controls and are given absolutely no other options. I’ll assume the thought process behind this decision went something like this: “wouldn’t it be great to crack Indy’s whip using the Wii-mote? Let’s just make everything motion controlled then. Brilliant!” The major problem with this is that it winds up being perhaps a worse idea than having Shia Labeouf play Jones’ son, and it works just about equally as well.
Save for a few sequences that involve Indiana gunning down baddies with his trusty revolver by pointing at the screen and pulling the B trigger, the motion controls are unresponsive and verging on broken. Combat is handled entirely using waggles. Players can perform a variety of punches by waggling the Nunchuk and/or the Wii-mote up, down, right, and left with whip attacks also sharing the same motions but with the B trigger depressed. Of course, while the game insists that each motion will perform a specific move, the reality is that nothing registers correctly, if at all, leaving you to flail wildly until everyone else is dead or, more often than not, you are.
There are also supposed to be some areas during combat that can be used to quickly dispatch foes but finding them is like the classic needle in a haystack search. To uncover one of these areas, you’ll need to run around while being unmercifully beaten by enemies, closely monitoring the bottom of the screen for an interaction icon to appear. If you can manage to find the perfect angle and spot required for this to occur, you can then use your whip to, say, pull out a support beam which allows a roof to drop on anyone standing underneath. This idea sounds great in theory, but the execution is dreadful, resulting in plenty of deaths if you attempt to use it.
These frequent deaths are only made more aggravating due to a lax checkpoint system and a plethora of unskipable cinemas. There are many portions of this game where you’ll go through several segments and wind up botching something in a later part to find out you have to do all of it over again. This gets incredibly frustrating, especially when the game randomly springs quick-time events upon you with absolutely no warning after a lengthy segment and you’re forced to slog back through the entire ordeal. Things only get worse when you are also forced to watch the same cinematics every time as well, since you can’t skip through any of them.
However, since misery loves company, you could always try to sucker one to three other players into participating in one of the game’s abysmal multiplayer offerings. The co-op mode draws you in with some fan service, allowing you and a friend to play as Indiana and Henry Jones Sr. Sadly, this mode isn’t very much fun, since it generally boils down to a waggle-fest while trying to steer an out of control boat floating down a raging river or some simplistic ‘stand on two switches to get to two more switches’ type puzzles. There are also some four-player multiplayer modes, but they consist of some of the worst parts of the single-player experience such as controlling a biplane by holding the Wii-mote straight up and tilting it like it was a flight stick.
The simple fact is that Staff of Kings could have been a fun, if not a tad linear, action/adventure game if it weren’t for the atrocious motion controls the Wii version shoehorned into the game. At almost every turn, the unresponsive and poorly implemented waggling destroys any enjoyment that could be derived from this adventure. It’s pretty depressing when the best part of this new Indy game is the unlockable full version of the old PC adventure classic, Fate of Atlantis, but sadly, that happens to be the case here. I would say, if you love Indy and still want to check out this title, then you should probably go for the PS2 version because the good parts of the Wii version should remain largely unchanged, but you won’t have to settle for this version’s broken control scheme.
RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.4 Graphics
Although the game has some nice lighting effects and decent character models, the stiff animations and reused enemies reek of a straight PS2 port job. 1.2 Control
While everyone probably does want to be able to accurately wield Indy’s whip with the Wii-mote, it just isn’t happening in this game. Instead, expect to waggle and flail wildly while the game largely ignores whatever you’re trying to do. 4.4 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
This part of Dr. Jones’ experience is still great, since it includes instantly recognizable music from the films as well as a surprisingly competent and similar sounding stand-in voice actor as Indy. 2.0
Play Value
Thanks to the unlockable Fate of Atlantis, there is at least one game that is still fun to play on the disc. Sadly, the forced reliance on horrid and broken motion controls manages to keep the otherwise somewhat respectable Staff of Kings from being enjoyable in almost any way.
2.0 Overall Rating – Poor
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.
Game Features: