If you’ve read our review of the game for the Xbox, you’ve got the idea of how this game should work on the PlayStation 2. Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb is a straightforward third-person adventure title played out within various exotic locales from Ceylon to Hong Kong. In the title role of Indy Jones, you’ll slash, swing, climb, jump and shoot your way through level after level of bad guys, traps and treasures.

The early levels of the game serve as training, with very little combat taking place. Through a series of on-screen tips, you’ll learn how to climb, jump and use your equipment, from the health-restoring canteen to the whip and the machete. These tips actually serve to show how overly simplistic the gameplay can be. It’s far too easy to launch jaw-breaking combos for example, as all you have to do is mash the attack button as quickly as possible. Other moves, such as climbing, are performed by just walking up to things and letting the automated gameplay take over. You can use the whip to swing across gaps, which is made obvious by the big blinking whip icon in the right corner of the screen. While the tips are handy for beginners, they make it all too easy to solve most of the puzzles in the game.

The AI as a whole is undeniably poor, with bad guys either never noticing you or being able to spot you from a mile away. And when they do spot you, they immediately close in, more than willing to take a serious pounding from Indy. They’re all too dumb to get out of the range of your attacks, so you’ll just punch, kick and whip your way through the collection of idiots, feeling unchallenged all the way.

While the gameplay is simplistic, that’s not to say it can’t be fun. You can really see some great level design in the game, but the problem is that it’s all ruined by one of the shoddiest graphics engines I’ve seen in years. As you’ll read in the next section, the game is nearly impossible to play for more than an hour or two at a time due to frustration brought on by the graphics engine.

As I’ve just said, Indiana Jones sports one of the worst graphics engines I’ve ever seen on the PS2. First off, there’s the blurriness, which will have you rubbing your eyes in disbelief. It’s so bad, I actually switched out video connector cables and tried another television, to no avail! There are times when the game gets so blurry, you’ll swear someone rubbed your screen down with Vaseline.

Assuming you manage to tolerate the blurriness, you’ll next have to deal with the lack of depth. I’m not sure how they did it, but the artists managed to make a 3D world look completely flat, void of any depth-inducing shadows. This hampers gameplay as you’ll find it difficult to jump between areas (you can’t tell when one starts and one ends) or when you should stop climbing up a wall.

If you can tolerate the blurriness and the lack of depth, you’ll be faced with the lack of texturing and detail. The jungle environments are lifeless, with green pixels splashed on brownish walls being the developer’s best attempt at a texture you’ll see in the entire game. The character models are all atrocious, with Indy looking like something they carved out of wood with a butter knife, then scanned into the game. Your opponents are likewise chunky in design, with barely discernable facial details and a robotic movement style.

Lastly there’s the camera, which should be considered criminal in most civilized nations. It spins about wildly when you’re on the move, trying to be cinematic but generally just trashing any shred of enjoyment you might be getting from your adventures. It also moves too quickly and is so herky-jerky you’ll frequently fall of ledges or miss the simplest of jumps. The worst instance of the camera is the underwater sequences, when it can’t decide what angle to track you from. Once you fall in the water, the camera zips to a view from underneath you, and if you twist or turn in any way, it will move around like a housefly hyped up on a case of Jolt Cola.

It’s sad to see a game get so thoroughly ruined by the graphics, but that’s exactly what’s happened with Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb. The graphics aren’t just bad, they actually make the game difficult to play, and the camera will kill any chance of you wanting to finish the game.

Voice acting for Indy was done by someone who manages to sound just like Harrison Ford, which is a real bonus. The bad guys are remarkably well-acted, which helps keep them from being just another set of irritating NPCs, as you find in so many other games.

The game sounds are generally good, with the whip and weapons sounding pretty realistic. Footsteps, bottles breaking, machinery and the collection of miscellaneous game sounds are done well, though they aren’t as crisp as they could be.

The soundtrack is a real high point for Indiana Jones as it borrows heavily from the films. This means you’ll hear the recognizable Indy Jones theme, along with some great tunes that match the tempo of the in-game action.

Due to the weak AI, simplistic gameplay and horrendous graphical issues, I doubt anyone would find any replay value in Indiana Jones, much less take the time to complete it. I’d be impressed if any non-reviewer managed to play it for more than four or five hours before flinging it out the window or returning it to the store.

On the Xbox, this game was pretty good, scoring above average both with us and with gamers. However, the PS2 version is so riddled with bugs and so lacking in polish, I can’t recommend it to anyone, even the staunchest of adventurers. In the end, Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb for the PS2 is nothing more than a controller-thrower disguised as an adventure game. If you make it through this game without shutting it off in disgust at least once, I applaud you.