A lack of sensitivity adds to the frustration. Indy can throw a good variety of jabs, hooks, and uppercut punches, but it's a toss-up which one the controls will register, if any. So since precision doesn't work, it's best to flail about with the remote and nunchuk, paying attention only to the tougher thugs that have to be dodged before you can counterpunch. This is just as annoying as it sounds, although it sure provides lots of entertainment to spectators. Most battles are also pretty gimmicky. Indy typically creeps into a room packed with goons, then pulls off some movie-magic attacks to whittle them down to more reasonable numbers before wading into the fisticuffs. If you keep a close eye on the backgrounds, you'll find loads of places to dump exploding barrels onto enemies and pull down roofs with your trusty whip. Some of these trick sequences are awfully demanding, though. The icon telling you what to do or which button to press can flash on and off the screen very fast and can often be confusing, so Indy can quickly wind up dead when you're caught by surprise.
Combine these needless deaths with a poor checkpoint save system and say hello to a lot of unnecessary frustration. Even though the levels are strictly linear, of the sort that should lend themselves well to checkpoint save spots at regular intervals, developer A2M Games has placed them in weird spots. Many times you'll have to repeat a bunch of basic movements, like scaling walls, before you can even get back to the big showdown that has been killing you over and over again. You also can't skip cutscenes or tutorials. So if you get killed early on, you might have to sit through a lengthy tutorial sequence again. Later on, you're frequently stuck repeating the entirety of lengthy, multipart battles due to some nasty little surprise at the end. One shootout in Chinatown, for instance, drags on through a good half-dozen gun battles where you chase the bad guy by shooting various objects over his head. As if that scrap weren't tedious and repetitive enough, when you finally reach the end you have to suddenly save a kidnapping victim from being electrocuted...and of course you have to do so with some finicky remote wrangling. The surprise and the lack of good instructions on what you're supposed to be doing to save the damsel and yourself from being grilled like a hotdog on Independence Day make for an irritating coda to an already annoying action sequence.
Punching out and even whipping bad guys gets old very fast thanks to far too much use of the Wii's motion controls.
Staff of Kings isn't a game that's able to mask any of its shortcomings with pleasing visuals. All of the background scenery is fuzzy, blurry, or some optometrist's nightmare combo of both. Animations are so clunky that Indy lumbers around like a tank and can easily get stuck in alleyways. The only frills of note here are the co-op mode already mentioned and the presence of the fantastic 1992 PC adventure Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on the game disc as an unlockable bonus.
It has been a rough couple of years for Indiana Jones. The Staff of Kings arrived with a lot of promise, but in the end it's just another crime against this once-great movie and game icon.
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Where to buy
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (Wii):
$18.99 - $19.82
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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$19.82 | Yes |
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$18.99 | Yes |
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