Well reminisce no more, because every fond experience you’ve ever had with Indiana Jones has been captured perfectly with Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb. A non movie-based game, The Emperor’s Tomb takes you on a completely new adventure with Junior, although you’ll visit some locales that feel strikingly similar to the movies given their "neighboring" locations (Ceylon, Istanbul and Hong Kong, among others).

The story is pure Indiana Jones, with our professorial hero in search of several artifacts that will, when combined, lead him to the holiest of holy treasures. And no, not the grail. This time around, the treasure du jour is the Heart of the Dragon, an unblemished black pearl that will bring power and respect to the Chinese people. And yes, the Nazis are after it too.

Even without the Indiana Jones-esque storyline, The Emperor’s Tomb is a fantastic game, with strong adventure and platforming elements, gargantuan environments and hand-to-hand combat based on The Collective’s Buffy engine. A few minor graphical and sound issues keep the game from being a flawless performance, but on the whole, The Emperor’s Tomb shines like the treasures our storied hero consistently seeks.

As a third-person adventure title, the controls are kept relatively simple so as to keep players immersed in the action rather than an eight-button sequence. There are two buttons for attack, one for jump and one to execute actions like opening doors and pulling levers. Attacks are easy to carry out, but most intriguing is the fact that they’re even there; The Emperor’s Tomb is the first Indiana Jones title to focus on brawling, and let me tell you, the hand-to-hand combat is there in spades.

Early in the game, the focus on combat is relatively absent, with enemies being both sparse and relatively easy to defeat. It’s in these early stages, in fact, that you’ll really think the game is little more than a (quite able) platformer in which you can swing from your trusty bullwhip. Yet as you progress, it becomes quite apparent that hand-to-hand combat is a crucial part of the gameplay. Not only does the number of enemies increase, but the AI gets progressively more challenging, and you’ll need to master the hand-to-hand moves in order to make your way to the Heart of the Dragon.

The fact that there are so many formal weapons, from machine guns and lugers to grenades and a bullwhip, plus improvised weapons such as table legs and shovels, will prompt you to forget about brawling altogether. But hand-to-hand combat is truly where the action lies, for multiple reasons. For starters, the variety of moves at your disposal is quite impressive, despite the use of only two attack buttons, and when enemies block, the only way to break their defenses is to spice up the battle with overhead smashes, uppercuts, jabs, grabs and swipes.

Secondly, if you’re only using a weapon, you’ll find out soon enough that if an enemy knocks you down, you’ll almost always drop your weapon, to which the AI will respond by picking it up and using it against you. Believe me, revolver versus fist isn’t a pretty matchup. At least, not when you’re on the receiving end. And yes, the enemy AI really is that smart, especially in the later levels. Clearly, it pays off to balance your attacks; a sheathed weapon stays with you until the end.

As much as The Emperor’s Tomb focuses on brawling, the gameplay is also comprised of puzzles, traps and navigation challenges. Although the paths in each level are relatively linear, the steps you’ll have to take to reach your goal are quite varied. The challenges involve everything from pulling levers to figuring out how to reach those levers to solving riddles that will open up new paths to treasure. This provides for a nice gameplay balance, and each style is paced in such a way that you’ll seldom find yourself tiring of a given level. It’s not every game where you can say that the puzzles and challenges never get old, but The Emperor’s Tomb is one of those rare cases. Each one just feels as though it’s been pulled from a movie script.

Perhaps the most effective throwback to the movies, though, is the dynamic use of the bullwhip. Sure, it’s a weapon, but it’s also a swinging apparatus, a means to disarm your enemies, a tool by which you can drag enemies closer and a fine fashion accessory. When Indy is near a divide over which he can’t jump safely, an icon appears in the top right corner of the HUD indicating that you can use your whip to swing across. This icon also pops up when you can hit a switch or fill your canteen (water increases your energy, and fountains are scattered in strategic places). Generally speaking, this prompting seems a bit pedantic; I’d just as soon look around the environment and figure out the situation myself. If you need prompts in video games, though, you’ll appreciate this feature.

As the early stages of the game will make you think The Emperor’s Tomb is just a platformer, so too will the early stages make you think the game uses a flat-textured and monochromatic palette. Not so, adventure fans. Since you start in the jungles of Ceylon, it makes sense that the primary color is green and that the main texture is, well, palm fronds. Break into the mosque-lined streets of Istanbul and the pagoda-filled city of Hong Kong, though, and it’s a whole different world.

The architecture of each locale’s structures is spot-on with what you’d expect from the real-world locations, and the textures on each look appropriately earthen, manufactured or, in the case of Prague, war-torn. Even more impressive than the textures is the sheer size of the cities. The levels in this game are huge, and I’m talking Assault on the Control Room huge (from Halo). The Emperor’s Tomb features 10 levels, each of which has varied architecture, enemies, vehicles and weapons, and those levels are further divided into half a dozen or more sub-sections with varying objectives. The first level alone, Ceylon, takes a good two hours to pass, and from there the levels get longer, more intricate and more populated with some AI-oozing enemies. The fact that the graphical quality of the environments is consistent throughout these huge expanses is a testament to a great engine and some great programming.

On the flip side, the game suffers from some pretty nasty clipping issues, particularly when you’re battling enemies in corners and/or tumbling near walls. The camera can also have some problems when more than one enemy is nearby. The problem isn’t the camera’s intuitive nature; in fact, the camera pans in and out to try and capture the most cinematic scene. Surprisingly, its biggest problem is its inability to keep up with the game’s most fast-paced action.

Although you can manually adjust the camera with the right thumbstick, the logistics of actually doing so while in the middle of a fistfight will generally inspire you to stick with the default view. Likewise, you can pull on the left trigger to auto-center the camera, but the same button causes you to activate a first-person mode, which not only paralyzes you but also can be downright distracting when all you want to do is fix the camera.

A further distraction is the occasional slowdown - if not a full-blown pause - when the game needs to read from the disk and/or process all that’s going on. Given all the gameplay and graphical elements that occur at once, not to mention the dynamic music, it’s understandable that the game needs time to take a breather. It’d just be nice if that breather took place during the load times between levels.

Like the environments, the characters in The Emperor’s Tomb are all fantastically modeled and varied. Perhaps the characters’ most pleasing element, aside from Indiana Jones actually using the likeness of Harrison Ford, is the quality of each character’s animations. In any brawler, it’s important that the characters actually look like they’re in a fistfight. The Emperor’s Tomb accomplishes just that, and its fantastic aren’t limited to battle, but also extend to movements such as shimmying along walls, climbing ladders and vines and bullwhipping enemies.

The Emperor’s Tomb is a LucasArts game, so you can expect both a great soundtrack and nice use of Dolby Digital effects. I’m also a sucker for dynamic music that changes based upon the situation, and suffice it to say, this game doesn’t disappoint. Where the game really shines, though, is the voice acting. Although Harrison Ford didn’t pony up to do the voice work for The Emperor’s Tomb, the actor who portrays the adventurer does a spot-on impersonation of Indiana Jones, which really helps immerse you in the experience. The dialogue is also lip-synched to the character’s facial animations, which helps lend some authenticity to the overall presentation of the voice work.

If there’s one complaint with the sound, it’s that it occasionally stutters (or stops to reset entirely) on random occasions. Though not a complete detractor from the game, you can’t help but notice when it happens, and it invariably yanks you from the experience to remind you that yes, you Dr. Jones wannabe, this is just a video game.

Despite the movie sidekicks of Sallah, Short Round and Sean Connery, Indiana Jones is (for the most part) a solo artist in this game. It should come as no surprise, then, that The Emperor’s Tomb doesn’t have any multiplayer options. Naturally, this is a bit of a damper for replayability, but honestly, given the length of the game and its pure enjoyment factor, you’re likely to pop this one in your machine for quite some time. And of course, there’s the simple fact that this is the only time Indiana Jones will appear on your console or PC until 2005, when the movie (and perhaps the DVDs of the originals?) will be released.

The replayability is also enhanced by the presence of 30 bonus artifacts in the game, none of which is required to complete the title, but all of which are hidden in secret areas to keep you exploring each level. Other than a sense of pride, finding all 30 artifacts won’t give you anything special, but for those "gotta find it" gamers, it’s just enough to boost the game’s replayability.

This was one of my most-wanted games of Q1 2003, and it most certainly didn’t disappoint. The size of the levels, the variety in gameplay and the high production value of the whole package just scream "winner!" The game isn’t without a few blemishes, most notably the occasional camera issues and the sometimes-touchy framerate and sound, but even Indiana Jones had a scar on his chin.

The third-person adventure elements in The Emperor’s Tomb are a sheer joy to play, and the approachable controls and entertaining story will probably entice even non-Indiana Jones fans. It’s nice to see Indy make an appearance at the next-gen party, and boy, does he make a splash in The Emperor’s Tomb.