Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
One of the big reasons Infernal Machine stands out from the crowd of third-person action-adventures is the storyline by Hal Barwood, whose previous credits include the great graphic adventure Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Set in 1947, Infernal Machine replaces those nasty Nazis Indy thwarted so often in the past with Russian scientists, spurred on by the escalating Cold War to find the ultimate weapon - and just like the Nazis, the Commies are focusing their search on the myths of ancient history. This time it's the Tower of Babel, which head Russkie Dr. Gennadi Voloonikov theorizes was actually a machine capable of unleashing the power of Marduk, a Babylonian god who resides in another dimension called the "Aetherium" (and which some Biblical scholars identify as none other than Satan himself). As Indy, you've got to find the four missing parts needed to make the machine work - and eventually square off against Marduk himself.
Though some of the character graphics and animations are only middling to fair (Voloonikov looks particularly cartoonish), you'll probably spend so much time admiring the terrain and scenery graphics that you won't care in the least bit. Whether you're moving through expansive external environments or jumping and climbing inside awe-inspiring temples, the 3D visuals here are almost movie-like in their quality.
In a move designed to appeal to gamers more than to fans of the Indy flicks, LucasArts has supplemented our hero's pistol and whip (which Indy can use to haul himself up to normally unreachable locations) with an arsenal of more powerful weapons: You'll get to use a rifle, machine gun, hand grenades, and even a bazooka. Despite the beefed-up weaponry, however, combat isn't the Infernal Machine's strong suit. Even with an auto-aiming feature, Indy's sluggish turning movements make it tough to kill soldiers and critters. Fortunately, LucasArts didn't try to hang Indy's fedora on run-and-gun action. The heart and soul of Infernal Machine revolves around pulling off a variety of acrobatic maneuvers and solving some decidedly difficult puzzles, many of which involve pulling levers and pushing buttons to activate machinery.
About the only weak points of Infernal Machine have nothing to do with gameplay, but instead with mundane tasks like configuring keyboard assignments and loading saved games: the keyboard configuration is a needlessly clunky affair that runs entirely separate from the game proper, and unless you opted for the full install (890MB - the only other option is a meager 56MB install), you can expect some pretty serious waits as data loads from the CD-ROM. There are also a couple of bugs, including a particularly nasty one that can keep you from leaving a level even after you've completed it. Hopefully LucasArts will release a patch to take care of these problems.
Longtime gamers who were hoping for a more traditional graphic adventure might be disappointed that LucasArts went the action-adventure route with Infernal Machine, but in a year that's seen plenty of high-quality action-adventures, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine stands up near the head of the class.