The first Indiana Jones Lego game, which spanned the three classic Indiana Jones movies, was not without its faults, despite its beloved source material and fun-as-ever block-smashing action. While the humor and whimsy showed through in the cut-scenes, the playable characters’ powers were not varied enough, and the few distinctions between the different characters (shovel guy, sword guy, gun guy, high-jump girl, and so on) were not particularly satisfying from a combat perspective. It was still good, mind you, but just not as good as it could have been.
Lego Indiana Jones 2, however, manages to fix all this, and improve on it in ways that I never knew I wanted from a licensed Lego game. The game not only revisits the original movies, it also covers the recent Indy flick, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And though the sheer variety of character types has not dramatically changed, some have been tweaked and Traveller’s Tales has added new fight animations to each character. Characters can do rolling punches, or kicks, or tosses depending on who they are, what weapon they’re using, and what enemy they’re fighting. Willie Scott’s power in the last game, which was to break glass with her high-pitched scream, has been replaced with a grenade-like perfume bottle toss, with the side effect of putting enemies in the splash zone under a charmed status. It makes combat that much more interesting, even though most of the time you’re still just repeatedly pressing the same button.

