Indiana Jones® and the Emperor's Tomb™

When I bought it years ago, I expected a bland and generic puzzle adventure game. Instead, I got a brilliant action game with good controls (for its time), shooting and very solid combat. Each level could be completed in several different ways, just like in today's games. If you compared it to todays titles, it would be "Uncharted" + "Batman: Arkham". PS. I still have the original box with Indy's journal attached. Nice packaging was the reason I bought it.

A rather frustrating, more action than adventure game. Personally, I expected the latter to be prevalent. I remember the movies were more about adventures and thrills in ancient tombs than shooting enemies. The game design is the cause for most of the frustration. Clunky camera which collides with walls, especially in tight platforming areas. You will often die while jumping through chasms because you didn't jump right of the edge of the said abyss. In one level where you are running from a boss, the rope will sometimes interact with the ceiling, sometimes not, resulting in your death. Sometimes you will escape from the boss in a particular point in the level, only to being caught by him in another run, dying again. Since you cannot save, you have to repeat the levels from the beginning. Although the levels are small, you can still spend a huge amount of time replaying them over and over. Time consuming and frustrating. There are levels which you can not complete until you kill everybody. I didn't like Indy going Rambo style. Turning off AI allowed me to play more peacefully, although I couldn't continue in said levels because the enemies didn't show up. This can be solved by using cheats, but when I fell off into abyss, I had to restart levels from main menu, which costed a lot of time. The main menu is animated and you can not skip the animations. I ended with downloading some saves where the game was completed and just skipped two levels which I was too lazy and frustrated to finish myself. The graphics looks good and after a bit of tweaking, you can run the game in 2560x1440. Regarding quality, it sits somewhere between first Gothic and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. There is a not much of a story. I wish there were more storytelling cut-scenes where we could get to know the characters better. In fact, I think the game relies on you knowing who IJ is. I like Indy, but I hardly enjoyed this game.

The Infernal Machine was a master class in level design. Its levels were fun because they were challenging. They were challenging because they were puzzles. This game's levels are challenging too, but they're challenging because the controls and mechanics are awful. When you beat a level, you don't get the satisfaction of having figured something out for yourself. You just get the satisfaction of not having to restart for the 30th time. There's a difference.

... what is he even talking about - this isn't following any movie! Right, but if as a child I ever wondered how a movie would be turned into a game - this would be it. While most people consider Infernal Machine the objectively better game, and I can see why, Emperor's Tomb has a lot more focus on a cinematic adventurous feel, packed with action - alongside some smaller puzzles. Controls were never the best, making some passages needlessly dangerous for the wrong reason. Coupled with the autosave only after a level makes this understandably frustrating. The levels are normally never too long (with one exception) and the game (again, with one exception) also doesn't pull cheap shots that often. So I suppose, depending on how you approach it, the game can vary from difficult to challenging most of the time. Presentation was great back then, now of course it has aged a lot. But it is still nice to look and listen to if you consider it has been almost 20 years by now. Technically, widescreen seems to be problematic. If you google around you can look into that and other stuff like controller support, as always. I would also recommend to just look up a bit of gameplay to get a feel for the gameplay - and if it is something you'd enjoy. So, if more action-oriented, or just more Indy, sounds good to you - give it a try! At best, you will like it a lot. At worst, well... you've experienced the last Indiana Jones game worth talking about...?

I really love this game. I bought it back then and played it to the end despite some obviously flaws it has; first and foremost its really frustrating that there are too few save points so that you have to play a level over and over again; also the movement and camera controls are a bit clunky and the swimming parts are especially bad to control. Despite those flaws the game is just amazing: it is probably the only Indiana Jones video game that really has the look and feel of a true Indiana Jones movie. The level design is great, the fighting is in its comicesque exaggerations fun to watch every round a new and the music, sound and voice acting is superb; even the graphics have quite firmyl stood the test of time. Give it a try if you havent checked it out yet (if you have, you will obviously have already bought it anew): A really well done action-adventure.