An Emperor's Tomb Vs. A King's Staff

Having beaten Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings over the weekend, I thought I'd compare it to two games that were similar in concept, if not execution. I decided to start with the other Indiana Jones game I've played, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. So the Indy game I beat versus the one I didn't.

The major difference is Staff of Kings keeps its different types of gameplay more rigidly separated. If Indy has to fight some bad guys, it's going to happen before he starts trying to solve a puzzle. You won't find yourself in the middle of moving statues around, only to start getting kidney punched by goons. Use of firearms only occurs at specific points in the game. Indiana will draw his revolver, dash to some nearby cover, and you'll have to time when he should lean out and shoot the bad guys, or shoot some part of their surroundings. A water tower, or a lamp hanging over their head. Or explosives. Shooting explosives near the bad guys is always a good plan. If you can hit an enemy, one shot will do them in, whereas it took a lot of bullets to kill anyone in Emperor's Tomb. In Emperor's Tomb, you can shoot anytime you want, provided you have ammo for some gun.

Emperor's Tomb had combat that was somewhat annoying in terms of how much punishment all the opponents can withstand, and the whip was mostly an annoyance, or a way to disarm enemies. I'd think being whipped a few times repeatedly would make your standard goon surrender, but apparently it has to happen a lot for them to stop fighting. With Staff of Kings, the opponents aren't nearly as resilient, and the whip is much more useful. My most common technique was to lasso an enemy's throat, haul them over, and knee them in the face. The downside to the combat is the large number of goons that will just stand there and block every punch thrown forever. It's necessary to goad them into attacking, then ducking and counterattacking, but I found it was hard to predict how quickly Indy would react to a button command. Sometimes he ducked too soon, and they didn't start the punch until he stood back up, other times he wouldn't duck at all, and would get caught in a 4-punch combo. It's a different type of frustration.

Also, Staff of Kings has the same annoying tendency with regards to shooting that Darkwatch, of all games, had. When the gun is drawn, there's a targeting reticule on screen. if Indy's leaning out to shoot and not aimed at anything he can affect, it's red. If he's aimed at something he can damage, it's green. But just because it's green doesn't necessarily mean he's actually on target. It turns green if he's close, but he may still be aiming too far left or too high. Which lead to several occasions of me thinking I had a guy dead to rights, only to get shot because I wasn't actually aiming the gun well enough. Granted, Indy in the game is still a better shot than Indy in the movies, but I wasn't shooting from horseback as often as he does.

Emperor's Tomb was the harder game, though that could relate to those technical glitches I had been warned of. With Staff of Kings, if I needed to swing across a chasm, well, all I'd do was hit the appropriate button once I was close enough, and it would happen automatically. At worst, I'd have to tap a few buttons to help him get a better grip on the ledge I swung to. In Emperor's Tomb, they'd tell me where to swing from, but it was up to me to provide the necessary running start, jumping if necessary, and in some cases swinging from one thing to the next. The controls didn't help, but it was definitely harder, requiring better timing.

Emperor's Tomb had a bit more creativity in its boss battles. In one stage, I'm guiding Indy from hanging platforms above an underground lake that's home to a very large crocodile, the next I'm fighting a metal man in the basement of a castle. For Staff of Kings, levels frequently end with chase scenes. Indy's on a streetcar/elephant/motorcycle, and he has to shoot his pursuers. Sometimes I was only concerned with shooting, other times I had to worry about steering whatever I was riding as well. It doesn't challenge the player in different ways.

Considering it's the older game, I think Emperor's Tomb did the better job of capturing Harrison Ford's likeness. Staff of Kings' version lacks some of the scruffiness, and has a hangdog expression more reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart much of the time. Also, the older game's dialogue was more clever, and they were going a bit more creative with the story. Staff of Kings reminds me of the third Terminator movie, where it felt as though they had a checklist of phrases and scenes from the first two movies that were popular, that had to be referenced at some point. Chase scene with motorcycle? Check. Fight scene in a zeppelin? Check. Scrappy and supposedly competent female character who will nonetheless need rescuing? Check. They did the bit where Indy rolls through closing doors, only to reach back for his hat no fewer than three times in a game with only 7 levels.

It's too bad that Emperor's Tomb did end up having some issues with the controls because I think it was the better game overall. It was still an Indiana Jones story (as far as I got through it, anyway) but without having an "Indy's Greatest Hits" feel to it. If that's what I was looking for, I'd play Lego Indy, since that really is his greatest hits (and his not so greatest). Staff of Kings did have a superior level of interactivity with the surroundings during fights, since Indiana could jump up, grab a low-hanging pipe, and kick a guy in the face, or use his whip to topple something on enemies, but otherwise, its combat felt more restricted. Throw a punch to trigger an attack, which I try to duck, so I can counterattack. Failing that, throw objects at them until they're beaten, or use the "whip + knee" combo. In its defense, I will say some of my coworkers love the random items that would be around to use as weapons. Bottles, pool balls, trash can lids, they thought that stuff was hilarious.