The visuals are very polished for its time, but other than that this game is quite boring. Almost every puzzle consists of "now that you've done something, go talk to every character to see if something new to do came up." It gets old pretty fast.
With such a great character and background, it's strange that there are so few Indiana Jones 3D adventure games (I'm not talking point-and-click). Infernal Machine, Emperor's Tomb, and one on Wii that I can't remember. While technically inferior to the others, Infernal Machine is the only one that (a) makes you think (with lots of clever physical puzzles) and (b) treats Indiana Jones' character as something more than a running-jumping guy with a few wisecracks. I think this is what's missing in the later games, and what caused people to lose interest in them. You find Indy in an actual archaeological dig, looking for pottery (guess what, that's what archaeologists normally do!), or negotiating with a street urchin for information - little details that make the story much more interesting. One interesting detail, for example: when attacked by beasts - wolves, pumas and the like - he doesn't shoot them -- he shoots up to scare them! (Compare this to its time Lara Croft, who would get pandas extinct if they stood on the way of some stupid gem!) In terms of gameplay, it'll probably feel a bit old - none of the smoothness of Emperor's Tomb, or its intuitive fighting system - but it's a game that asks you to go slowly and figure things out - plenty of deadly traps if you try going too fast, believe me! It's the kind of game I play when I'm in the mood for a tough nut to crack, rather than exhilarating graphics.
Being a great fan of Dark Forces (a game that did almost everything right in terms of ambience, sound and clever level design, even with the limitations of the time) I couldn't wait for the next-gen Jedi Knight (and I had to, since you needed Windows 95 and basically a new computer to play it!). Back then, Lucasarts could do no wrong. And now you could wield a lightsaber? Well, it was a good effort, but I found JK tedious to the bone. The levels were long but uninspiring. The story was awful (and in really cheesy FMV--ah, the pain!!!). Fighting with the lightsaber in FPS ended up being a pain - doubly, since you basically need it for all the fights against Jedis. The Force powers systems was a good idea, but badly implemented. The force indicator takes forever to charge. You can force-grab the stormtroopers weapons, but then they walk around like idiots instead of trying at least to punch you. The "force-vision" has a really annoying noise. The worst is force-jump: if you upgrade it to the full, you'll take damage when you land! And the weapons somehow looked less interesting than Dark Forces. Overall, a curious case of "more-is-less", that marked in my opinion the beginning of the decline of Lucasarts, from a truly innovative, labor-of-love company to churning one mediocre product after another, with the occasional exception. Still, if you can find them, there were exceptionally good MODs and user-made levels out there, with great stories - much better than the campaign. And with no FMV sequences.
...or the strange title, which makes it sound like it's all about collecting treasures. This is one of the most fun platformers I've played in my life. There are about a dozen moments (usually have to do with a new boss fight) where you go: "I can't believe a game would do this!!! This is SO COOL!!!" It can be challenging at times, there are a few spots where it's not too clear where to go (there's a lot of free roaming, which means you'll have to backtrack too), but it can be solved without hints. (The developer has made an HD version now (Treasure Adventure World). I haven't tried it yet, but I wish he'd done a prequel instead, where you could be the legendary hero getting all the treasures.)
