Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

With a new movie on the way, the Indiana Jones franchise was ripe for a new game from LucasArts.  What was not expected was that they would take the hugely successful Lego Star Wars apporach to create Lego Indiana Jones.

So far, the demo is playing quite well, and runs rather stable on the Vista test rig that I am using.  I did have one crash when switching from keyboard and mouse controls to a Logitech gamepad, but beyond that the demo has been quite stable.

New character animations seem to be in store for the final product, as the models move a lot more smooth than in the Lego Star Wars games.  The controls are a bit of a problem if you do not have a gamepad on the PC.  The action, melee, whip and jump controls are right in a row starting at the J key.  But the two mouse buttons do nothing.  It is a strange keymap configuration, but it is customizable.  Gamepads are supported well, and allowed me to custom map my Logitech Wireless Rumblepad.  It did take several tries for me to get the Gamepad mapped correctly, as the configuration screen would not take my selections.

The demo takes place in the Lost Temple at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark (or Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark as it is now known).  The humor of the series is there, with little digs at the conventions of the movie, or other movies as you will see later in the demo level.   The level does seem a bit short, which begs the question of whether there are more missions for each film, or is the game becoming a bit too easy.

All in all, the demo is a lot of fun, and it looks like the title is well on its way to becoming another hit for the guys over at LucasArts.  The fun factor is there, jump in/jump out co-op, and a great new look at a venerable favorite movie franchise.  Fixing the configuration screens would go a long way to making this a great game when it comes out.  Look for it June 5th.