I guess it’s safe to assume that most of us have played with Lego at some stage in life, right? I used to spend hours sitting around building little racing cars that I would then put through some reasonably brutal crash testing (tip: Stickle Brick cars fare better when it comes to wall collisions) so I’m always partial to a little bit of fun with the coloured bricks, hence my love of Lego Star Wars. Having been rehashed across so many different platforms that my head can’t quite remember them all, it’s time for Chewie and crew to step aside and make way for Dr. Jones to crack his plastic Lego whip.

Those expecting some kind of massive departure from the classic block-smashing 3D adventure action that entertained us so much last year should put those thoughts to bed right away. Harrison Ford may have swapped his Millennium Falcon for a natty Fedora, but Travellers Tales have wisely decided that wandering around a level consisting of perhaps five or six set areas in which you bash thing, smash things and solve simple puzzles is the right formula. As a result Lego Indy is mostly a success and is an ideal game for younger generations to get their teeth into, but there are a few points that perhaps should have been addressed.

The game comprises the three original Indy films – perhaps for the best, given what I’ve heard about the new one – split into three separate episodes consisting of six levels each. Progressing through these episodes sees you move each film’s story forward via some hilarious slapstick Lego-based humour, with characters falling to pieces when assaulted, Indy accidentally pulling a C3PO model out when asked to hand over the idol at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Arc and the like. It’s a fun, smile-filled slant on what were some pretty wry films in the first place, so it’s not hard to find yourself enjoying things as you plough through.

The general plan for the most part of the game is that you control Dr. Jones and a selection of sidekicks through the eighteen levels, with each containing a section of locations, characters and puzzles from a portion of the relevant film. As an example, the very first level of Raiders sees you journeying through dense jungle, hopping over gaps, swinging from ropes and using your whip to grab items, hooks and buttons before you enter the temple containing the idol Indy is chasing after. Via a lovely little cutscene of the part where Jones switches the idol for a weighted pouch, you are then plunged into the famous running-away-from-giant-boulder scene before you manage to escape via a nearby seaplane having had to hand over the idol to the dastardly Belloq.

The puzzles themselves are certainly more involved in Indy’s adventures than they were in the Star Wars games – particularly in the second and third film episodes. That’s not to say that you’re going to have to piece together vastly complex items in order to progress or have a degree in obscure thinking to solve things of course, but for the most part you feel certainly a little more taxed than you did with the prior games. Usually the puzzles centre around venturing around an area destroying items, opening up paths or using your character-specific abilities to drop ladders, open doors or gain a crucial item. Quite often you will find yourself having to do two or more mini puzzles to gather parts which you can then build into ladders, bits of car or such like which then in turn allow you to exit an area and progress on to the next.

The main theme of the game is one of collecting different characters throughout, most of which have their own unique ability that you can use at certain points of a level to open up paths to secret loot and bonuses. More often than not you’ll find yourself coming across a particular part of a level that requires, say, a book in order to ‘read’ hieroglyphics (basically a Simon Says type puzzle) or a dance to activate a statue, and in a lot of the cases the particular character you need to do the task in hand is not with you as you go through the level the first time on Story Mode. It’s only by delving further into the game and unlocking characters by either unlocking them or by buying them back at Barnett College – your main hub - that you can then return to old levels in Free Play mode, swap to the correct character at the appropriate moment and then open up a previously unreachable area to get to the bonus goodies.

In general this is all good fun, and running about punching, whipping and shooting enemies until they tumble into a broken pile of Lego and yield item-buying Lego studs is amusing enough. There are, however, a couple of issues that run up and slap you in the face, and depressingly they are issues that were present with the Lego Star Wars games and do not seem to have been fixed.

The most annoying of these is that the camera is still as uncooperative as it ever was, leading to all kinds of situations where you’ll fall off a ledge or stumble into a marauding pack of enemies simply because you couldn’t get a decent enough view of what you were doing. Each portion of the level has a camera that is pretty firmly fixed and only prevails upon itself to shuffle an inch or two either way should you wish to scope things out, which is especially annoying if you are trying to find shortcuts or secrets. It gets even more frustrating should you be playing the 2-player drop-in, drop-out co-op mode; having one person wander across to one side of the screen will often see the camera struggling to know what to do and therefore end up with it jammed in some awkward middle ground, which as sod’s law dictates is usually a useless perspective for both players and ends up with more frustrating deaths.

The other niggling issue is that your AI companion is usually rather less than handy in tricky situations, more often than not leaving you to battle enemies alone whilst they stroll about admiring the scenery. They also don’t seem to cotton on to what you are trying to do in certain puzzle-solving situations either; on the first level of Temple of Doom there is a section with a forklift truck where you can nab one of the secret treasure chests by having Willie jump on the platform and have her elevated to a place where she can leap up and grab it. Problem is, every time you try to achieve this Indy will jump on the platform instead and, given that the ladies have more jumping prowess, be unable to reach the bloody thing. In the end I had to sign myself in as a second player and solve the situation by forcing Indy to drive the truck and then jump onto the raising platform as Willie, which was really quite a silly way to have to solve a puzzle.

It’s not a game with a great deal of longevity, either. Progressing through each level and then backtracking through to pick up all the secret treasures and bonuses won’t take more than 15 or so hours, and once that’s all been licked then there’s very little in replay value. The one saving grace that it does have is that it’s an ideal title to play with your kids or young relatives if you wish as the slapstick nature and reasonably basic play methods mean that they can potter around doing whatever they want whilst you undertake the more tricky tasks, so as a family title it is actually pretty decent and obviously will take a bit more time to work through.

With that in mind, it’s with a mostly positive frame of mind that this reviewer looks at Lego Indiana Jones. The puzzles are not particularly taxing but at the same time are quite enjoyable, the silly humour is as present as it was in Lego Star Wars and it looks gloriously chunky and colourful. It might not be packed with the cool characters that its stable mate was afforded, but while it lasts Dr. Jones’ brick-busting adventure is a fun, relatively simple little title to work your way through, even taking into account the camera and AI issues that probably should have been solved by now. Not a true classic by any means, but something worth renting or picking up if you fancy something a little silly and fun for a few evenings.