Product Reviews

You'd think that the Indiana Jones films would be prime fodder for computer games. Yet while the Star Wars and Lord of The Rings films have spawned a mass of computerised offspring, poor old Indy has only cropped up on a computer once or twice in recent years (and never, until now, on the Mac).

But the celluloid hero has finally arrived for Mac users in the form of Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb. However, it's a little disappointing to see that this adventure is actually fairly unadventurous. It tends to follow the formula established by the Tomb Raider games rather than reclaiming the genre for itself. Even so, it's a fairly entertaining romp that should particularly appeal to younger players.

The plot is pretty lightweight. You're out to locate an ancient artefact known as the Heart of the Dragon and, in typical Indiana Jones fashion, this involves globe-trotting trips to locations such as Hong Kong, Prague and Istanbul before finally tracking down the Heart of the Dragon in the tomb of an ancient Chinese emperor. Along the way there are puzzles to solve, traps to dodge, caverns to swing across and the usual assortment of bad guys to beat up.

We've had installation problems with a number of OS X games recently, so were pleased to see that The Emperor's

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Tomb installed itself and started up without a hiccup. The minimum requirement is a G4 Mac with an 800MHz processor, which is a little on the high side. However, it ran perfectly well on our 800MHz Power Mac G4, so you might be able to get away with something a little slower if you don't mind dropping down the graphics setting a bit.

The only real problem is that the control system takes some getting used to. In most games, the Forward button will move you in the direction you're facing. Here, though, both the viewpoint and movement controls seem to work independently, so you can find yourself looking in one direction while accidentally moving in another. On more than one occasion we found ourselves punching empty air during a fight because we were facing completely the wrong way.

This is frustrating at first, but the pace starts to pick up as you gradually get used to the controls. The combat system works well, allowing you to use guns and knives and, of course, the famous Indy bullwhip. The whip doubles up as both a weapon and a tool that you can use for climbing and swinging. This feature, along with the authentic Indiana Jones soundtrack, helps to capture the atmosphere of the films.

As you'd expect, there are various puzzles to solve and traps to avoid, but for some reason the game often makes things easier by flashing a little icon on screen to help you out. Sometimes it will indicate that you need to use the whip to swing over to a ledge, or wield your machete to cut through dense vegetation.

This rather simplistic approach means that The Emperor's Tomb isn't particularly deep or challenging. As a result, it will probably appeal more to younger players who just want a game they can occasionally dip into for half an hour. Fortunately, there's a demo at www.macgamefiles.com that you can try before paying for the full game.