LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures [PSP]

One of the great things about the LEGO Star Wars titles was how much content there was to earn and unlock, and Traveller's Tales looks to have kept much of this in place here. Each level contains 10 treasure chests for you to find and collect, which then builds a statue or artifact of some sort. Power bricks take the form of parcels this time around. When you find one in a level, you also need to find a nearby mailbox to ship them back home with. These two look to always be within a short distance of each other as changing rooms will remove the parcel from your hands. However, the parcels are big and heavy, so you'll want to clear the area of enemies before hauling it off to the mailbox.

After mailing the parcel, it'll then show up at Barnett College, which acts as the game's overall hub. The college works almost exactly like the cantina did in the Star Wars games, though unfortunately you aren't able to start a "bar fight" with everyone in the area. Still, the design here is great and you'll find plenty of stuff to explore. The mail room has parcels for you to pick up (read: buy), the classroom has a chalkboard for you to enter cheat codes, the library lets you buy characters, and an artifact room lets you look at the pieces you've collected. There's a lot more here to explore than I've mentioned, and the overall presentation is great.

As you'd expect, you can play through any of the three original films in any order that you'd like. You have to play through each film chronologically, of course, but if you want to start with Search for the Holy Grail, you can do so. Each "movie" has six chapters, with some of them stretching into fairly lengthy segments. For instance, in the Temple of Doom, one chapter has you go from the village into Pankot Palace and down into the underground temple, all the while solving puzzles and killing guards.

A few, small liberties have had to be taken with actual film events to keep the co-op option in-tact. For example, at the start of Raiders, Alfred Molina trades Indy the golden idol for the whip, but then drops the whip and runs off leaving Indy to fend for himself. In the game, he sticks with Indy the whole time, including the boulder chase, and winds up defecting in a cutscene at the end, enabling a second player to be there the whole time.

One interesting thing that we haven't seen a lot of yet is how the game handles some of the more grotesque (and by grotesque we mean awesome) scenes from the films. For example, we haven't made it to the face melting sequence at the end of Raiders yet, but things like when Toht grabs the burning medallion and burns its form into his hand is played out comically. So, hopefully faces still melt.

So far, LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is a good deal of fun. It certainly has a different feel than LEGO Star Wars as much of the gameplay is centered more around the adventure elements, at least so far, but fans of the other games will still feel right at home. The game is set to ship on June 3rd.

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