I'm simultaneously looking forward to this one and dreading it, because I only ever really played it once decades ago, probably with a walkthrough, so it'll be nice to play it basically as new, but also I remember it being incredibly difficult so I may get stuck a lot!
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Got a little way in then had to stop because I'm stuck! The opening is fantastic, feels just like an Indy movie drawing you in with a bit of action that will lead into the main plot. There's a real sense of spectacle too - it immediately runs Indy through a whole series of rooms, gets him into a fight, sends him to New York for a light puzzle then opens up three more worldwide locations. The naturalistic graphics are a little less attractive than Monkey Island 2's, but nice enough. The music is fine and the voice-acting is bearable though it's low-fidelity and sometimes has line readings that don't work with the context. (Indy also sounds a little like Alan Alda!) The puzzles are mostly fine if a little prosaic and sometimes silly (mayonnaise on a totem pole to slide it into position for climbing, and chewing gum from under a desk to put on your shoes so you can climb up a coal chute). The one I'm stuck on right now is one of those frustrating adventure game puzzles where in real life it would take five minutes to sort out and indeed you can often see a bunch of objects in the background or even in your inventory that should do the job just fine. I've got to knock a book out of a hole in the ceiling - there are any number of spears kicking about and I've got a bloody whip, but Indy won't play ball. I threw a piece of coal at it but it "broke into a hundred useless pieces" and now I can't pick up another piece, so I'm slightly worried I've hit a bug, but probably not. I'll come back later and if I can't immediately figure it out I'll resort to a walkthrough or maybe Universal Hint System if that's still around.
Anyway, overall it successfully captures the Indy feel of jetsetting and tombraiding, it's well-presented and fun. I'm eager to break it open - it still feels like I'm chipping away at the edges right now...
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I used UHS to get past the book thing. Turns out it was an elaborate red herring - the only one of the three cat statues I hadn't tried picking up was the one I should have! I probably would have got there with enough clicking, and to be fair to the game, it did tell me that these were the collection I was looking for and that particular cat was odd. For some reason I thought it was just a glitch (Sophia and Indy occasionally say each other's lines so I'm not wholly confident in the dialogue system) - perhaps if they had just added a couple more words, like "hmm, this one looks odd" or whatever, I would have instantly picked it up. Ah well, that got me a lot further. I don't think the game is ever going to open up in the same way that Monkey 2 does, rather it's going to take me to a couple of new locations at a time, leaving the old ones behind, which does actually feel more like an Indy movie and again the willingness to fly through a bunch of locations, all bustling with NPCs does give it that (comparatively) AAA high production value feel, the video game equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster. There have been some more slightly silly puzzles, but also lots of cool Indy stuff to do like fly a hot air balloon around the desert to track down an X on a map, then use surveyor equipment to follow clues from an ancient mural to discover a dig site. Sometimes you're struggling with the interaction mechanics rather than the puzzle, but it's all very Raiders, and it's really exciting as you get closer and closer to discovering Atlantis. I'm now in an underground labyrinth (thankfully it's not too annoying of a maze once you map it out - no limited overhead view, thank fuck).
The game gives you a choice early on whether you want to pick the Fists, Team or Wits. I'm not going to pick Fists, obv, and normally I'd pick Wits as that feels like it would give me the purest adventure game goodness, but this time I've chosen Team as I've seen a lot of people say they prefer it, it feels more Indy in a way, and hopefully it will mean fewer abstruse puzzles! I doubt I'll go back and replay with Wits, but I'll at least take a look into the differences and see if I'm tempted.
I'm currently stuck again, so I'm going to take a break. I'm in the labyrinth, I've got it all mapped out and I've managed to get two orichalcum beads. As I understand it, these should be used to power stuff like Atlantean devices, statues etc, or modern day equipment - I can't see either down here so I have no idea what to do next! My only worry is that I've somehow missed a room, or a hotspot in a room...
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Ugh, okay, I needed to talk to Sophia in a different room than the ones I was trying it in. I then got stuck on the map room, where you have to align three stone discs to match the slightly randomised clues in Plato's text. Most walkthroughs pretty much skip over this because of the randomisation, and just say 'follow the clues' which is not helpful at all! I finally solved it, but without really understanding how, so out of curiosity I sought out a guide that breaks it all down and the whole set-up is pretty flawed. The clue about "contrary minds" bit isn't relevant until the final gate (which this is not - not sure how I'm supposed to know that). Also, the clue "darkest night" is used to either refer to a position on the sunstone OR on the moonstone, plus the moonstone has waxing and waning moons which actually never get used but some of the moon clues are so vague that any of the moon settings could apply. Some of the combinations of clues would have made it really easy, but I got some shitty ones, unfortunately.
I then got stuck on a submarine piloting puzzle because I didn't realise you can only use the rudder when you're traveling in one of the directions. Indy just says "it's locked", but I just solved a puzzle where I had to unlock it with a key so again I was worried it was a bug, and a few extra words (or a working knowledge of how to operate submarines, I guess) could have cleared it up.
I think there's a reason the cartoonish Lucasarts games are the better ones - it's easier to make solid puzzles without resorting to fiddly crap like the points where I've been stuck here.
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This game has become utterly obnoxious. Unclear or unfair puzzles made worse by huge amounts of padding that forces you to spend a good minute or so getting from room to room, and that's if you don't have to spend time dodging or fighting guards. I'm giving up for today, but I think I'll probably just walkthrough the rest of it when I come back, especially if it's all empty underground stone rooms from now on. If it weren't part of the Lucasarts golden era I'd probably have bailed by now.
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Got through it, heavily using a walkthrough. Mostly more pixel hunting and another maze (this time a case of choosing what door to go through completely at random) and a dialogue puzzle where you die unless you patiently choose the refusal option over and over. There were some nice destruction and death animations, but by the end this game really squandered any goodwill it had built up.
Rating: Red.
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