Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (1999) - Review

 Kids today don't even know the pain of not having WASD controls (even though I have encountered some PC ports of modern games that try to emulate double joysticks, I assume, by forcing you to play with WASD and IJKL - yes I am looking at you Moonlighter and Katamari Damacy). Every time I try out a game from pre 2005-ish I worry about this. The main issue is the simple fact that it can differ so much from what you are used to. Until creators have agreed on the way to do it, they all throw things at the wall to see what sticks. A lot of the things that are thrown are simply not good. But most of it just takes some getting used to. The controls of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine manages to be both of these things.

Off to a great start

IJatIM, as I am going to shorten it, was released in 1999 to PC - and Nintendo consoles interestingly enough. So back then, you could choose to play this either on N64 or on the computer and I really wish I had an opportunity to try the console version to see if the PC version is just another bad port. 

Just like everyone else I am a big fan of Indiana Jones and unlike everyone else I actually really enjoyed the most recent movie, The Dial of Destiny, which also sort of happens to tie in nicely with this game. After I had seen the movie I sort of felt like I had to experience ALL of the Indiana Jones stuff I had missed out there, especially game wise, knowing there to be loads. I had already played The Fate of Atlantis a bunch of times, but there was so much more to explore. So I bought a whole bunch of them on GoG and pure randomness made me decide on trying this one first. Why not in chronological order? That is just not how my brain works.

If you've seen any N64 game, you know the graphics. They're blocky, but right up my nostalgia alley and definitely nothing that bothers me. In fact, I go back to these old games to experience these kind of graphics. They can be frustrating some times though, as it isn't always entirely clear which objects you can interact with and which not, or where you can move to. The camera angles can be a problem too, and I often felt stuck not knowing what to do next simply because my objective was out of my visible frame, the only way to see them was to free-look around. It's difficult to explain to some one who is only familiar with more modern games why this is even a problem, because we are so used to being able to take in most of what is around us at all times when playing a game. But back then games were designed around fixed visual frames and it annoys me when the creators put things outside of it, unless they're supposed to be hard-to-spot special secrets.

Indy gets around

The plot is familiar if you've seen any of the movies. Indy basically goes about his business when he gets thrust into trying to avert the bad guys getting their hands on some mysterious trinket and taking over the world. In this game that trinket is the Infernal Machine, a device so similar to the Antikythera Machine in the Dial of Destiny that for a while I thought they had genuinely rehashed the idea. In this game he gets joined by Sophia Hapgood, and I loved seeing her again after having visited Atlantis with her in The Fate of Atlantis. I always wondered how she and Marion would get along, though Sophia and Indy seem to be more digging partners than anything else.

In IJatIM you control Indy by using the arrow keys - something that used to make perfect sense until game makers realized that was a horrible place to have your hand if you also wanted to use the mouse. That is not a problem in this game though, the mouse isn't used. You press alt to jump, ctrl to interact/shoot, space to take out your weapon and shift to run (the only one that came intuitively to me).

So far it all seems pretty straight forward, it felt like something I could learn. Though the first fifteen minutes I thought it would be impossible for me to get used to it. The controls are tank in the most tank way possible, and it's not so much the individual buttons but the combination of actions that get frustrating. Indy just doesn't do what you want him to do unless you do it exactly right and it is so slow. Running toward an edge will have Indy drop over it (some times killing him) but just walking towards it he'll stop. You have to move right up to a ledge and press jump for Indy to grab onto it and some times you have to move about a bit to figure out where the sweet spot is. To move down a ladder you have to back up to it. It doesn't help that there is no quick and easy way to spatially orient yourself. There is a way to go into first person, a feature that is some times absolutely necessary to use, but just as everything else it is slow and clunky.

But there are redeeming decisions as well, Indy controls surprisingly well under water and he will auto aim when using guns (though this also works only half well). You can also change the difficulty setting to off set some of the damage the enemies do. But unfortunately it's not enough. In the end there just is a lot of having to redo sections because Indy fell down instead of jumped, or got needlessly hurt because he wouldn't move behind cover fast enough, or turn fast enough, or go up the ladder fast enough. It was a long time since I save scummed as hard as I did in this game. And honestly it just ends up being stressful and feeling unfair in a way that is not fun.

The villains are the Soviet this time around.

There was a particularly horrible section of rafting down a river, trying to avoid rocks that would sink your raft. Wrestling that little boat in the currents felt like wrestling a baboon over a banana. When I had finally gotten through the section I also realized there was in fact a slightly easier way to do that I had overlooked, so that's on me. But the frustration left a sour taste in my mouth and this was just one of many frustrating moments.

It's unfortunate, because with slightly more comfortable and responsive controls I think I would've had some good fun with the game. Indy visits some interesting set pieces and the atmosphere is definitely Indy enough to make you get into the adventure feeling. Indy will spout some one-liners and the occasional cut scene will move things forward at a good pace.

This is the right way to do a game with the Indy franchise, it's just hampered by frustrating controls that end up making you regret exploration and regret trying to look for secrets. There are secret areas on every level where Indy can plunder collect treasure which he can use to buy useful items between stages. Things like antidotes, first aid kits and bullets that are absolutely necessary to get through a stage. 

The game ran fine and I didn't have any weird bugs or glitches playing it, until I did. Trying to boot it up one time it suddenly decided to crash my screen, leaving it black and unresponsive. I had to connect a second monitor to get myself out of that pickle and at that point I decided the game actually wasn't worth the stress. The stress of trying to get Indy to move where I want him to, the stress of doing the exact same thing but getting completely different result, the stress of very slowly inching your way through hazard only to realize it was the wrong way and all wasted time. 

I only got about a third through the game before I gave up - a good game completely reduced by the very clunky controls.