A filler and little more...
The original Lego Indy was an excellent game, which captured the feeling of the films and added an element of humour to gaming that you don't tend to see in many games today. Although a linear game, during each level you were able to recall where you were in each movie and similarly recall each character as you encountered them.
However, in Lego Indy 2, Travellers Tales have completely changed the structure of what we have been used to in the past. The game is broken down into hubs, with smaller sub games branching off each hub. For the first three Indy films, each hub map encompasses all the scenes from the movie in question. Consequently, you end up walking through the snow filled caps of Raiders right into the sequential desert scene in a matter of seconds. This rapid transition feels rushed and didn't really work for me. Then there are the sub games. A proportion of them are key scenes from the movies that weren't included in the first game. An example would be the car chase scene from the beginning of 'Temple of Doom'. These work well. However, a large proportion of the others are Pac Mania-esque mazey affairs that have little or nothing to do with the film in question. There really seems no point in these, and I can't help but think they ran out of ideas and included them as space fillers.
Also, at the time of going to press, I have found no way of toggling through characters at the push of a button like you could in Lego Star Wars and the original Lego Indy game. For the subgames you need specific character traits (like a character with a spear accompanied by a character with explosives). When you walk into a sub game, there appears to be no way to choose which character you can use, and you are left with two random characters that may or may not be helpful. Perhaps I am wrong, but I found this after completing both Raiders and Temple in story mode. If anyone can correct me, please do.
This is not to say everything about the game is bad. The central character of Indy is alot more versatile than before, and you can use the whip alot more efficiently than in the first game. Also, contrary to what everyone else seems to think, I found the vehicles alot easier to control than in the first game, and TT have included planes. This makes navigating the huge hub maps alot easier when walking from one side an other just to find the right character for a sub game aimlessly wandering around on their own.
I cannot help but think they should have kept to the original formula, and made a level from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as DLC.
Not a disaster by any means, but a huge dissapointment after the excellent original.