Indiana Jones And The Staff Of Kings

The fact that this was originally meant to be a next gen title should have set the alarm bells ringing straight away. But being a loyal fan who grew up with Indy in the 80's, I thought I would give this a go anyway.
Let's face it. The PS2 has had it's day. I bought one at launch, watched the games blossom into spectacular wonders like God of War, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Final Fantasy X and now sadly we have to see it fall prey to poor PSP conversions like Indiana Jones and the Staff Of Kings.
There used to be a day when PSP games were converted from higher quality PS2 titles, but no more. And while dumbed down graphics and simplified gameplay may wash on the PSP, they most certainly do not on a large lounge TV screen. The detailing is simply pitiful. At times it looks as if you are playing a smoothed out PS1 title. The textures are blocky, lighting bland and the less said about the character models the better. Now I know graphics aren't everything, but honest to god PS2 launch titles looked better than this over seven years ago.
As for the gameplay. You will probably notice that all the marketing for this game is for the superior Wii version. It seems that Nintendo can chuck out any old rubbish on a disc and some how make it fun and inspired with the motion sensing Wii remote. This game is no different. As you will notice, the reviews for the Wii version sing praises to the high heavens, with 'inspired controls and decent graphics'. It doesn't even sound like they are describing the same game. PS2 owners have to put up with tedious button bashing in overly long battle sequences.
The last Indy game (The Emperor's Tomb) played like a slightly inferior Tomb Raider, but I loved it anyway and still play it today. It had everything, adventure,humour, suspense, and gun and fist fights a plenty. And never have I spent so much time in a game looking for Indy's hat which he had lost in an earlier fist fight. It didn't matter to the game, but it did to me. THE HAT IS INDY! This plays like a collection of mini games all cobbled together. One minute you are exploring Tomb Raider style, the next the camera zooms out for a coin-op style fist fight, and the next you are frantically button bashing to control events in a cut scene. The worst gameplay though, has to be the gun battles. Instead of just being able to whip out your gun and plug the baddies at will, the game controls this automatically and suddenly it feels like you are playing some early 90's side scrolling arcade shoot'em up. Even the ammo is infinate. This varied approach to the gameplay is obviously for the benefit of the Wii remote. And while this may be fun on the Wii, it only adds to making the game feel more disjointed and uneven than it already is.
The major concern I have with this game though, is with the sheer amount of bugs in it (and not the creepy crawly kind).The game managed to crash four times during the opening training level, in a fight against one bad guy. The game is teaching you to fight, and keeps pausing the action mid punch to teach you different combos. If however you happen to press the wrong button instead of the one displayed, the game will not respond to further button presses or indeed anything else. This occured 3 more times after reseting the system. This occurs no more than 3 minutes into the game, and it is shocking to think that a flaw like this could not be picked up during play testing, if any was ever carried out.
Overall then, avoid. Maybe give it a go on the Wii if you own one. But maybe it's time Indy laid down his whip and remain in the past as a much loved memory. This sudden Indy revival seems to have come a little too late, and could result in taking a classic hero down with it.

This game is marginably playable but like a great deal of PS2 releases now not meeting the full potential of the machine because greater effort goes into the next generation games. It's ok, the story isn't bad but having played it once I doubt I'll revisit it.