Indiana Jones® and the Infernal Machine™

Disclaimer:I'm a huge Indy fan(who isn't?)so my final score is not(maybe)as critical as it should be but nevertheless here we go. Let's start with the obvious technical side since the game is pretty old,for the time the graphics were pretty good(although in the end i preferred Grim Fandango to this game back then)and i find them still "charming" now,the soundtrack and the sound effects are awesome of course(the snap of the whip is enought to take you back to the movies) and voice acting pretty good even if Ford is not providing his voice for Indy(in the italian version sold at the time we had the original voice actor from the films!) The gameplay is good enough,i found the puzzles a bit less obtuse than some of the ones in the Tomb Raider series but of course there's still a lot of pushing blocks around that starts to get annoying when done too many times. Indy himself is a little bit stiff in its movements and the shooting/combat stuff is definitely not the strong point of this game but not impossible to overcome(played on intermediate difficulty) Regarding bugs and glitches i had a few crashes and encountered some bugs(quicksave and save often!)and one instance of "stuck indy" that i was able to fix by opening the console with F10 and typing "fixme" but i was able to complete the game without (major) problems.(Win7 64Bit) All in all this is a great Indy game if you're a fan of the franchise.

This is my first review on GOG. I felt compelled to write it because Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is one of my favorite games from my childhood. For years, the game has been tough to run on current operating systems and I've always wanted GOG to release it. That day has finally come... To set the stage, I'm a huge Indiana Jones fan. I was seven when this game came out and remember reading about it in the old LucasArts catalogs, dying to get my hands on it. It was LucasArts' tent pole game of 99. One day, my dad took me to CompUSA and bought it for me. The rest is history. My bias aside, I want to review the game as it's own thing. In my opinion, it's the best Tomb Raider game ever made. I always felt the classic TR games were too cryptic, difficult, and the controls were too touchy. This game solves all those problems. It's the perfect difficulty. Every level is unique and different from the last. Indy has tank controls, but he feels way better to control than Lara ever did. Plus, it has a great story. Hal Barwood came back to write (from Fate of Atlantis fame) and Doug Lee gives a great performance again as Indy. The plot could have easily worked for the 4th film. Infernal Machine also has another element to it. The game is just relaxing to play. It's mostly ambient sounds (though Clint Bajakian's music is great when it plays). I love getting lost in this game for hours, solving puzzles, and thinking about life. If you're at all a fan of Lucas Arts games, classic Tomb Raider games, and/or Indiana Jones, you owe it to yourself to pick this up and support it's release. You won't be disappointed. Hopefully some day we can get another Indiana Jones game. Something in the style of Uncharted, but with Hal Barwood's writing and Doug Lee's voice over.

I completely forgot about this title after all these years. I think I finished it around year 2000. This was the time when Core's Tomb Raider success was about to collapse with Angel of Darkness. Although it made Core to sink, Eidos still sold more than 2,5 million copies. Lucasarts was the master of 2D (and 2,5D in case of Grim Fandango) adventure games genre, hope everybody had a chance to experience this but they coldn't come close to such number. The problem they had was that they were not trying to compete in field of technology. I guess nobody buying game from Lucasarts expected it to have innovative engine (although DarkForces did have it in its time) because the strongest element they had to offer was always story telling. It's like people who gathered around George Lucas in LucasArts somehow secretly understood what was making the original Star Wars saga truly great and were trying to express it in games they made. However the market for adventure games was shrinking, everyone was looking for modern 3D games. Infernal Machine probably was an attempt to do a game that will sell but technically they were not ready - Sith engine was not modern enough. Still in my opinion story telling and level design in Infernal Machine are on very high level - you can "feel the force". To cut things short: Negatives (known and obvious): - controls are pretty clunky - graphics is dated - some bugs Positives: + fun level design (this game puts much more emphasis on adventure aspect then platform in opposite to Tomb Raider for example) + sound effects and music in form on occasional "jingles" (Clint Bajakian's fine work) + Indiana Jones's adventure aura you can definitely feel it - thanks goes to Hal Barwood who also created IJ and Fate of Atlantis and all level designers My favorite levels (random order): * Tian Shan River * Shambala Sanctuary * Palawan Lagoon * Palawan Temple * Olmec Valley * Meroë * King Sol's Mines Man, these spiders are still scary :)

I was in aw when I finally saw this game showing up on the main page, since I had been waiting for it for a long time! I'm very thankful to the GOG team for digitally distributing one of my childhood games with no DRM. Infernal Machine is a well-crafted action-adventure game that will keep you on the screen for a good 20 hrs (depending on whether you know what you're doing or not) with its compelling narrative and rich level design, featuring very good-looking graphics for its time, a variety of environments and puzzles . Unfortunately, despite the game's pros, I'll have to give it just 4 stars because of a cluncky, tank-like control scheme which was heavily criticized back then and does it no favour in present day. Still, if you overlook this factor and get accustomed to controlling a less agile version of 90's Lara Croft, you will realize to be in front of an underestimated gem of the genre branded LucasArts.

I loved this game in the past and I still love it nowadays. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine offers great storyline, excellent game design, clever puzzles, lot of exploration, old-school visuals, stunning environment sounds, lovely background music and mainly... you really feel like Indy when you're playing. Controls are clunky and shooting mechanics could be better, but still it's the best Indiana Jones game so far. Buy it, you will not regret it!