With so many multi-million dollar software projects in stores these days, it's easy to lose track of the real purpose of a game: to entertain. LucasArts has remembered this credo and combined the graphics, sound, and gameplay of yesterday to create Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures, a title that won't turn any heads but will keep quite a few bored business people entertained for hours on end for less than half the price of most games on the market.
Indy's Adventures is basically an overhead adventure game in the vein of Nintendo's original Legend of Zelda. You take control of the incorrigible Dr. Jones and wander through screen after screen of jungle landscapes, in search of the objects you need to complete your quest. Along the way, you encounter typical Indiana Jones enemies—natives, Nazis, and local banditos—that you'll need to avoid (or lay waste to) while trying to sort out the game's brainteasers. Puzzles are logical, but very, very, linear, requiring you to get one object, which you use to remove an obstacle, which gets you to the next object and so on… Even though the game consists of almost limitless adventure threads, the format is very basic: pick up object X and give it to person Y. Once you've found the last item in the game, you'll need to defeat whichever crime kingpin the randomizer has come up with for you in order to receive your final score, delivered in the form of a player IQ (not suitable for Mensa entry).
Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures isn't great—in fact, its low quality graphics, sound, and control keep me from even calling it good, but it is a nice way to waste a few hours while you're stuck on a plane with a laptop. If you were a big fan of the early eighties Nintendo adventure games, check this one out. If, however, you're a fan of high production values or novel video gaming, you'll probably want to leave this one on the shelf.
