Lego Indiana Jones DS

Alright, last week I talked about the demo of the Lego Indiana Jones game. I got the game (fiancee bought the game for me) for DS Tuesday when it came out and have since played it for about two hours since then. I definitely love this game.

The gameplay is very similar to Lego Star Wars. Instead of Force powers you get to use Indy's whip :). I can't directly relate this game to Lego Star Wars because I have Star Wars on Xbox 360 and got this on DS. The quality of the game is still just as good, and oh yeah you get to use the whip! The game has a lot of built in replayability like Star Wars does. If you haven't played Lego Star Wars each mission has to be played in story mode first and then can be played in freeplay. When you play in Story Mode the game automatically gives you the characters required to complete the mission, but when you play freeplay you can choose your own characters to play with you. There are certain areas built in that can only be accessed by characters in freeplay and some characters that you need won't be unlocked until you finish other missions later. Another big aspect of the game is the puzzle solving aspect. The puzzles aren't super hard, but they are fun. It's easy to relax while playing just running around smashing everything collecting coins and special items.

The two screens are handled very nicely. The main game goes on in the top screen and miscellaneous options are displayed on the bottom screen. The touch screen is used in a very natural way. For most of the things you use the touch screen for you could use a button to preform the same action. The things you use the touch screen for are when the whip could be used for special reasons (eg swing across gaps, hit special switches, climb, etc), when there are special items like cranks, digging when your character has a shovel, and special weapons. There is also a room that has special touch games that you have to unlock through the different missions. I haven't unlocked many of them, but it doesn't look like it's going to add a whole lot to the game. The microphone is also used in a very interesting way. The microphone is used to blow out torches which usually triggers something to happen, you can also blow on the microphone to activate fans that will elevate you, and do more stuff with blowing into the microphone.

There is a multiplayer option for either hosting the game from one cartridge or by having two cartridges. I haven't tried this out as I don't know anyone else that has a DS, but when I do I'll let you know.

I would definitely recomment this game to anyone. You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to enjoy this game or the star wars games. I am a big fan of the Lego games genre and hope that they continue to make them (Batman should be coming this Summer sometime). I really like the way you just play and play until you finish the level because you don't really die any time, you just lose some coins and reincarnate where you were last. This feature makes the games really fun to play with kids or just to play to relax, becuase you really can't get stressed out playing this.