Part II
LucasArts' Secret History: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: First review
The worst, most tedious and potentially frustrating (and messy) moment in the game comes at the end of Castle Brunwald. Everyone remember that bit (especially those of you with broken toes) where Indy and his Dad are tied to that chair and edge over to the fireplace to escape? That is re-enacted here, but badly. In short, you have to edge across the room to the fireplace and nudge a statue, which drops its axe and slices the ropes between the chairs. Sounds simple? Not on your life. There are two real staggeringly bad annoyances here.
The first annoyance is having to get across the room. You can only budge over one little bit each time, and to compound that irritation, you can't just use the default 'Walk To', oh no. You have to use 'Push' or 'Pull' on the chairs. Every. Single. Nudge. It takes absolutely forever (the room is quite big and the Joneses start on the opposite side to the fireplace) and is very very tedious.
When you get where you need to go, there's the escape. It's pretty obvious to figure out, it's just making that axe drop in the pixel perfect position needed to free the Jones boys that's the problem. Now, the idea is that in your first run-through in the Castle you should have pushed the suit of armour so that the axe fell, leaving a nice line in the carpet you can line up against later. I mean, duh. Obviously my developer mind-reading skills were a bit rusty the first time, because I didn't do this and got poor Indy horribly splattered time and time again.
After you've Escaped From Castle Wolfenstein Brunwald, the game becomes a lot more varied – and with several slightly different paths to take, the last time LucasArts would attempt that with the exception of Fate of Atlantis – and those paths would be far less subtle.
A personal favourite is the Berlin/Adolf Hitler scene. For starters, that and the big Zeppelin scene can be totally avoided! That's basically half the game skipped if you hand over the 'fake' Grail Diary instead of the real one! Of course it's much less fun that way, and there's plenty of other alternate routes to take. Getting back to Berlin (yes, I know that's the opposite of Indy's goal), the meeting with Adolf Hitler can go several ways. How many games allow you to punch the leader of the Third Reich? That doesn't get you very far, but it's fun! Anyway, you can either follow the film blindly and have the Fuhrer sign the Grail Diary (bor-ing, doesn't help at all), if you've found a copy of 'Mein Kampf' you can have him sign that (makes a nice bribe at a roadblock), or best of all he can sign a Road Pass which means you will never be bothered by roadblocks again!
These alternate pathways continue to the Airport (buy/steal a ticket), the Runway (board/steal a plane if you've learnt how to fly one) and the Zeppelin (fight or flight), with more ingenious solutions getting you more Indy Quotient points. This is the first and only time Indy Quotient has been used to inspire more imaginative solutions to puzzles, with Fate of Atlantis just being about finishing the game with all paths and Infernal Machine being about finding treasure (arr). It's also the last time LucasArts would make a conscious effort to have various puzzle solutions all through an adventure game, so Last Crusade show definitely be commended for that. That always was the great thing about the Indy adventures – they had far more replay value than any other LucasArts adventure.
Anyway, the Zeppelin is then followed by the biplane scene, the only action scene in the game – thankfully. It is atrocious. You really are just randomly waving your mouse cursor around. Then you crash, and have to get out of Germany. So they ditched the Tank Battle and Speedboat Chase for that? After the crash there are a few more checkpoints (you may notice I'm nipping along now as this review's turned into a point-by-point summary of the game which I didn't intend), then it's the Three
Trials Tests of Faith and the Grail recovery.
Hooray! Finally! LucasFilm Games' delight in torturing game pirates (that's Guybrush and anyone who duplicates their games and so doesn't have manuals for copy protection) shows up, meaning if you've not got a genuine game here with manual and Grail Diary then you're in for a lot of re-loading at the ending. The Breath of God requires a precise spot to be clicked to escape certain decapitation, which is only illustrated in the ex-game Diary. Then there's the Grail itself. Sadly enough, Donovan's fun death doesn't feature. Instead, if you pick the wrong Grail you can see the death happen to Indy instead… in close-up! And you can only find the right Grail with the help of – you guessed it – the printed Grail Diary. This feature's really neat and makes you feel like you're truly seeking out the answers in history (nowadays of course, we have GameFAQs). Of course if you don't own the game or have lost your Diary, you're screwed.
After you take the Holy Grail (suck on that, Dan Brown), there is a choice of several endings, which of course I won't spoil here. I'll spoil them on the Trivia page instead.
One of the last points I want to make with this game is how strangely LucasArts-like it feels. By that I mean it has the traditional LucasArts humour of Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion etc, rather than Indiana Jones. Moments of shock in Last Crusade the film turn into moments of hilarity in the game. For example, a bloody bouncing head passes Indy inside the temple, and Indy says "Yep, this is the place." Even ridiculous moments in the film get taken to their extremes, such as Elsa's Roman Numeral blindness in the library, when they're in every damn room! While this all makes Last Crusade the funniest Indy game, it definitely isn't the Indiest Indy game.
The general unfairness of Castle Brunwald and the shortness of the game (it's the briefest LucasArts adventure by a long shot), combined with the prejudice most gamers have towards film tie-in games, usually cause most people to overlook this game. However, if you can put up with that unfairness you'll find a surprisingly enjoyable adventure, a curious gem in the LucasArts Adventure trove – if a slightly unpolished one. The puzzles are inventive and often have several varied solutions, the story and humour will appeal to both Indy fans and LucasArts Adventure fans (although they really should be one and the same), and the new Verb commands and standard of graphics raised the adventure game to the standard perfected in a certain game just around the corner involving monkeys and islands.
She might not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. Oh, wait, that's Han Solo. Close enough