Contents:
The Intro
Title: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
Release year: 1989
Developed by: Lucasfilm Games LLC
Genre: Point-and-click adventure
Platform replayed on: PC
Classic, point-and-click adventure game. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that statement applying to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure. Underneath the surface though, is a deceptively difficult puzzler of an adventure game.
This game was very likely my first point-and-click adventure game, played around the time it came out. I didn’t get to play many classic point-and-clicks in those days. The Police Quest and King’s Quest series by Sierra come to mind, as does Sam & Max Hit the Road a couple of years later.
I didn’t own this game, but remember hiring it out. I remember there were a couple of physical stores at the time you could visit and hire out PC games, as well as a postal service operator. Those were great memories, visiting those shops, or waiting impatiently for the next package to be delivered to your door.
I was glad to have these available, as we didn’t own a Nintendo or SEGA console (those were hired from the video store on special occasions). We had an IBM Personal Computer, and having game libraries available was like being the clichéd kid in a candy store.
I also think that this game, as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game (click the link for my blog on that one), were my first encounters with the Indiana Jones franchise. I’m pretty sure I would have played these games before I ever saw the films. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game was one of the earliest PC games we actually owned, and whatever my father brought home, I played!
It’s also a case of history repeating, as my own son’s first exposure to the franchise has been in video game format as well. This time, with Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures.
The Game
As stated, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure is a point-and-click adventure game. For those unfamiliar, this term refers to the use of a mouse or keyboard to manipulate a character and an interface of commands. In this game, Indiana Jones is (unsurprisingly) the character, and you can see from the image below the types of commands you can give to him.
Along the journey, you also manage an inventory of items you pick up.
From here, in order to advance the story, you need to work out what to do next. You are generally confined to a location or a small number of locations. You need to either know where to go, who to speak to and how, or which items to use at which time and place.
An early game example sees Indy needing to go to his office (where to go), to speak with his upset students (using the right words), to allow access to his storage room where he must rummage through junk to find his father’s Grail Diary (using the right items).
There are a couple of mechanics not always seen in other point-and-clicks: mazes, and fighting.
There are a few sections where you must navigate Indy through a location from a top-down perspective. Indy has limited visibility, so these sections need to be mapped out as you go.
There are certain times where Indy has the option to fight his way out of trouble. It can also be forced upon you if you don’t say the right thing, or don’t have the right item. Fighting is usually the last resort option, as your health doesn’t regenerate in each location. This means that fighting will get more and more difficult until it becomes impossible to win. The fighting interface itself is simple. You use the number pad to punch high, medium, or low. You can also move forward or back, and waiting between punches builds up the power of your next shot.
There is only one fight you absolutely can’t avoid in this game, so in all other situations you can avoid it by saying the right things (bluffing) or offering the right item.
Right, simple game mechanics. How hard could this be? Let’s find out…
The Replay
I’ll give you the answer to that question I just asked straight away: this game is hard. I’m pretty sure I never finished it as a kid in the 90s. I remember getting to Castle Brunwald, and the airport, but I’m not sure I ever made it to the Grail Temple.
For starters, this game features what are called unwinnable states. This is a term used in point-and-click adventure games where you can get to a point in the game where it is impossible to progress further because you missed doing something earlier. It could be an item not picked up, or an action not taken at an earlier location. In this game, death is also a possibility. An obvious example is if Indy ever loses a fight, it’s game over.
Of course, having played this before, I knew this going back in. For a player new to the point-and-click genre, this is a hard lesson to learn. I would say the general experience is that the first time it happens to you, you learn your lesson. From there, you either become very thorough when searching areas (read: paranoid you’re going to miss something) and obsessively save your game, or you give up and never touch the game again.
Let’s go back to the beginning though. Restarting this game felt very familiar, especially the early locations. I’m guessing that’s because I spent so much time trying to figure them out. There are five locations/sections in this game. Certain scenes from the film are omitted, like the Venice water chase and desert battle. There’s also very little character interaction, so most of the game it’s just Indy (Sallah, Indy’s friend, isn’t included at all).
The intro credit sequence is well done, and features the famous circus train chase. You watch Indy jumping from carriage to carriage as the credits are playing. It’s a fun way to position you to start the game, for those familiar with the film. You can watch this sequence below:
This intro credit sequence is also far more enjoyable than in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game where the circus train chase is a frustrating platforming section.
The game itself also came with a replica of Henry Jones’ Grail Diary. This was also a form of early copy protection, where certain puzzles can only be solved by matching clues found in the game with excerpts in the Grail Diary.
Sometimes you can read the Grail Diary item in-game, which will give you clues as well.
Navigating the first section at and near Barnett College is fairly straightforward, but there’s still an important item you can miss. One that won’t become useful until quite a bit later.
Arriving in Venice is where the game increases in difficulty, both in terms of puzzle solving and item gathering. When I consider one puzzle in the Catacombs section, it feels like there was really no way you could have solved this without failing it first (and ending up in an unwinnable state). Without getting too far into spoiler territory, you need to have obtained a certain item before entering the Catacombs section to solve a puzzle. But not only do you need to have obtained the item, you also need to do something with it before entering the Catacombs. The item is not an obvious pickup for starters, and neither is knowing what you need to do with it in advance of the upcoming puzzle. Only when you encounter the puzzle, you start to think about what you might need and how you might obtain it. This all will sound fairly cryptic, but it’s not an example of puzzle solving I enjoy, and I think it only serves to increase the difficulty and establish this type of fail-retry gameplay method. But I also appreciate that this is part of point-and-click games which feature unwinnable states. And honestly, there’s nothing quite like solving one of these puzzles after being stuck for a while.
If you can get through the Catacombs section, it’s off to Castle Brunwald on the Austro-German border.
The Castle Brunwald section can be summed up in one word: dialogue. You need to navigate Indy around three levels of the castle, in search of Indy’s father who is being held captive by the Nazis. So, Indy walking around a heavily guarded castle is bound to raise suspicions. You can try to fight your way through the many guard encounters, but the better way is to talk your way through. In other words: bluffing.
In practice, this is a frustratingly long trial and error mini-game, which usually sees you having to choose the correct response from three options three times in a row. Fail, and it’s time to get your fists up. As there are a lot of these encounters, it can take a long time to get it right and progress.
Interestingly, this experience led me to draw parallels with a later Indiana Jones game: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992). In this game, also a point-and-click adventure game, you are given the option early on to choose the approach you would like to take. One option is to fight your way through, and another is to use your wits. A third option allows you to take a partner with Indy.
This later game is also a classic, and in my opinion, a much more refined experience. Definitely deserving its own blog…
Back in Castle Brunwald, it’s hard to work out the correct responses every single time. I think there are clues in the questions the guards direct at Indy, but I’m not entirely convinced. Take this example:
The guard had just referred to Indy’s jacket. Was this a hint? I’m not sure.
To get through the castle, you must employ a variety of methods, including bluffing, disguises, and offering items. One of the most memorable scenes, which I’ve never forgotten, is trying to get past Biff. Biff is an absolute giant of a guard, who happens to be blocking Indy’s path to the room his father is being held captive.
I’ll leave it at that with Biff! Except to say that Indy definitely can’t take him down in a fair fight…
If you know the film, some scenes are familiar. Despite Indy managing to bluff his way through an entire castle crawling with Nazis (all the while disguised as a Nazi officer and speaking English with an American accent. Just saying…), he ends up being caught.
Some scenes are familiar, but the game has its own unique take on them. Like this one:
You may or may not come across this scene from the film, depending on a choice you make earlier:
At this point, you end up at an airport, where in the film Indy ends up on the zeppelin to escape Germany. You actually have a choice here, and can bypass the zeppelin section entirely. Now, remember I mentioned earlier how I was reminded of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis? Should you take the zeppelin route, you have the opportunity to play as Indy’s father for a short time. This reminded me of taking the partner option in The Fate of Atlantis, where you can switch characters. For this replay though, I did not take the zeppelin option. Instead, I opted for a biplane just waiting to be stolen.
I liked the option here, but again the execution was not great. Taking the biplane option meant knowing how to turn on the biplane, but even when you know how, it’s still really difficult.
You are presented with the dashboard above, and you need to perform the correct startup procedure. Easy once you know how, but, you’re on the clock. Pretty soon a couple of airport staff notice you and get suspicious. You need to quickly manipulate all the controls to get the plane in the air, and it’s tight. It took me several attempts to get right.
Once in the air, you get to take part in a mini-game, flying the biplane and trying to shoot down your chasers.
The more enemy planes you can take down, the fewer checkpoints you will have to navigate by car.
The checkpoints are the similar dialogue mini-game seen in Castle Brunwald. Though there is an easy way to get through and avoid the fights. If you have the right item, that is.
Again, I’d like to come back to the point that it’s likely that as you go through this game for the first time, you’ll fail to do something earlier. This will leave you either putting yourself in an unwinnable situation or making progressing extremely difficult. As such, saving your game at important points is extremely important (whenever you enter a new location, for example). I recall times with point-and-clicks where I’ve not managed my saved games well, and overwritten saved games at earlier points. At some point I then realised that my earliest saved game was not early enough to avoid getting myself into an unwinnable situation. New point-and-click gamers: you have been warned!
Should you manage to escape Nazi Germany, you are taken to the Grail temple for the final dramatic scenes.
Like in the film, there are three tests that Indy must pass to reach the Grail. The execution of these in-game is visually impressive, but challenging. There are clues in the Grail Diary, but not really obvious ones, or even ones that you can logically link to the in-game solution.
One final test, familiar for those familiar with the film, is to choose the correct Grail.
And with that, I’ll not spoil the ending. Only to say, there are some differences from the film.
So overall, what’s the verdict? Let’s find out.
The Verdict
Okay, so I’ve mentioned a few frustrations I had with my replay. As I was going through, I felt disappointed that it wasn’t as I’d remembered it. Had I just accepted that this was one of the greatest classic adventure games?
I struggled with the puzzles where you really had to either fail, or get to a point where you think you’re stuck and reload and try again. I found solving puzzles made logical sense once you had the items you needed, but it wasn’t always obvious where you had to look out for items (items that may not be needed until a lot later on in the game).
I thought the dialogue mini-game in the Castle Brunwald section was a great idea that was just poorly executed. It was great to have the option of either fighting or talking your way through. But fighting all the time isn’t a viable option, and when talking it’s not fun to try to guess the correct response three times in a row. The tedium and repetitiveness just made it frustrating.
But then I took a step back from the game, and tried to look at it as I always try to do with these old game replays. That is, with a sense of what it achieved at the time of its release. I discussed how at times, playing this game reminded me of the later game to come: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. There were ideas that were further developed, such as the option to choose one approach or one pathway over another. It’s common in games these days, across genres from point-and-click, to action-adventure, to roleplaying. But back in the late 80s, I think this was impressive.
I also reminded myself that point-and-click games back then were always hard. As a kid, I never finished them, or at least not without assistance. This was the way they were designed. If every item pickup was logical in advance, these games would be little more than interactive fiction. You need to work out the approach: you need to carefully examine every location, and you need to manage your saved games.
I thought back to my time playing this as a kid, and compared that with my replay now. I’ve now got a wealth of gaming history and experience to draw on now. My expectations are different. I’m more used to playing point-and-clicks that don’t feature unwinnable situations. But as a kid, I didn’t care about the difficulty. I didn’t comprehend unwinnable situations. And I didn’t experience frustration in the way I do now.
Why not, you might ask? Because I was just in awe of playing Indiana Jones on the computer.
I can still vividly remember playing certain parts of this game, certain puzzles, and certain characters. It had an impact.
For a game based on a successful film franchise, the care taken with it shows. It looks stunning, it generally follows the plot of the film making it instantly recognisable, and the game interface is effective and easy to use.
So I guess I’ve come full-circle. I went from remembering this game as a classic, to starting to question this while replaying it, to finally reflecting on it and being comfortable with its place in gaming history as one of the greats.
If you’re a fan of old point-and-clicks, I highly recommend it. If you’re a fan of Indiana Jones, but are new to the genre, I would recommend checking out The Fate of Atlantis first. It’s a more developed game, with an amazing story worthy of a film.
If you’d like to see a bit more gameplay, I recorded my playthrough on YouTube.
Oh, and did you manage to find Sam and Max?
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