When I first played this game four years ago, I had my parents buy it as a gift, since I could choose two. To my dismay, it wasn’t all that I’d hoped it to be.

However, I’ll examine both the strengths and weakness without regard to the popularity of the franchise or to my own deep disappointment.

Now that its really cheap, cost should not be a factor. I hope my critical analysis will help you decide whether or not the game is a waste of space.

Released in 2009, Indiana Jones: Staff of Kings provides true movie experience as you fight with both your hands and whip in a race against time to find the historically lost staff.

Without further ado, let’s jump in!

Graphics: 7 / 10

A strength of the game, the graphics are well made. With impressive detail and complexity, the large level layouts do not detract from quality. However, the background of several levels get boring as the same graphics are used throughout.

Particularly impressive, narrative scenes use quality graphics. They’re some of the most detailed images I’ve seen played on the DS.

While there is impressive 3D detail in the scenery and backgrounds, very few items are interactive. This detracts from gameplay as you will spend minutes walking through sections of the game with little but interactable sticks and fighting enemies along the way.

One downside to the graphics is the down-facing viewpoint. While the graphics are impressive, you don’t get to see all of it. Optimally, it would be adjustable or slightly tilted to see into the distance.

Without seeing the bigger picture of the layout, you can feel like you’re wandering aimlessly along the tracks.

The 3D characters look small, but their animation sequences and model detail look decent.

Also, the top Nintendo screen in several levels should have been better; It should be a minimap for all levels to overcome the restricted viewpoint.

While the graphics are impressive, minor problems do lower the score to 7 / 10.

Sound / Music: 7 / 10

I did enjoy the music tracks. With a few recognizable from the movies, they did not go wrong. On the other hand, many of the songs were merely general, low-pitched songs. As an Indiana Jones game, the low percussion-based pieces sounded passive in otherwise aggressive levels. In one particular level, when you’re searching for a Mayan key, a great deal of the gameplay revolves around fighting and moving, but the peaceful music detracts from that atmosphere.

The sound effects play much louder than the music, but they are not too frequent. However, they lack variation, which can be annoying when facing several enemies at once. On the whole, they were adequate.

Optimally, the sound effects would have played softer and the music would create an exciting atmosphere.

Because the tracks and sound effects were decent, the score remains 7 / 10.

Addictiveness: 5 / 10

While the game remained fun throughout the tougher parts, the lack of gameplay prevented the game from being addictive. The game can be completed in one sitting, but  the few tedious levels will likely put your DS aside and come back later.

Playing through the game once gets tiring at parts where little interaction and a lot of movement is needed. With a poor viewpoint, you brute force different paths, often ending at a dead end. With many areas with small width, you keep moving back and forth until you find the right way.

With these types of levels, the game has little replay value, since there is little left to do. You may try fighting each enemy, but at several points, your only realistic option is to run.

If you get this game, you’ll get tired of it within a week. If you don’t complete in within that span, you’ve gotten stuck on tedious levels and are bored, anyway. If you want to get more value out of the game, you should spend only a few minutes on it per day,

With a short story and lack of depth, the game does not have replay value because many levels are too tedious to play more than once. Since the addictiveness suffers heavily, it only scores a 5 / 10.

Story: 6 / 10

You play as Indiana Jones, an archaeologist, as he races against time to find the staff of Moses. The antagonist, Magnus Voller, works with Nazis to try to find the staff for himself. Since it’s not based on a movie, the story is innovative. However, there is only adequate depth and it remains short. Because of this drawback, the story didn’t live up to its potential. On the other hand, narrative scenes offer true advancement of the small story, while gameplay can remain tediously hard on small, inconsequential portions.

With a decent story with true problems, the category only rates 6 / 10.

Depth: 5 / 10

With puzzles and a decent story, the game has depth but not much.

Within levels, you’ll find little depth as most of the objects are not interactive and simply placed for background. This makes one playthrough of them enough to get boring.

On the other hand, puzzles such as the cipher challenge are interactive. It requires thinking and action. While they’re short and timed, they do provide an adequate distraction from gameplay.

While I enjoyed the immersive nature, I disliked the use of the microphone for blowing; I find it disgusting. However, that’s a personal preference that also shows the extent to which the puzzle is immersive.

Although it’s the only true meter of progress, the fortune and progress bar felt lacking and only visually depicted a number, which I found meaningless. I did not feel any need to concern myself with it when playing through a level.

With little true depth to levels, the game only scores a 3 / 10.

Difficulty: 8 / 10

When you first start playing, the enemies are a joke. They don’t require much effort at all and some don’t even fight back. By the time you’re reaching the final levels, they pose a great challenge.

Some of the challenge comes from the touch screen itself, which you use to attack. Often slight misclicks will still miss the enemy, which becomes annoying after several consecutive misses. Also, the game refuses to recognize fighting moves against an enemy for the first few seconds after they recover, often giving them a free hit as you keep clicking to no avail.

With a short-sighted viewpoint, enemies can quickly enter the scene from off-camera areas of the level and shoot at you without warning, which is an annoying way to lose health or die.

On the other hand, it’s easy to run past enemies, so you can bypass most of the gameplay on several fighting-centered levels.

I did find several levels tedious to work through, because they had several dead ends and several enemies surrounding whenever I fought. Often, misclicks while near a ledge can lead to an automatic death, which loses good progress.

With difficulty arising from both control issues and enemies of the game, this category rates 8 / 10.

Overall: 6.3 / 10

Graphics : 7 *  25% = 1.75

Sound / Music : 7 *  20% = 1.4

Addictiveness : 5 * 25% = 1.25

Story : 6 * 10% = 0.6

Depth : 5 * 10% = 0.5

Difficulty : 8 * 10% = 0.8

Sum = Overall Score = 6.3 / 10

This mathematical comparison of important categories leads to a respectable overall score of 6.3 / 10.

While the game did not have any blatant, deal-breaking weaknesses, it did not reflect true effort by the designers to create impressive gameplay. Instead, it rode on the success of the series to make sales and the overall score reflects the unimpressive nature of the game. While I found it a nice playthrough, I would not recommend buying it under normal circumstances.  

However, you may want to buy it if you:

1. want a game that’s not too lengthy, so you can get satisfaction from finishing more quickly

2. are a fan of the series and want to collect this game (in which case I’d recommend the Lego version as well); It does provide a true Indiana Jones experience (not fulfilling, but excitement intensive)

3. love stylus-intensive gameplay and want to play with the variety of fighting moves

If you fit in one of these, you can definitely keep this on your list. If you’re not, I warn that you’ll find the game a waste of money. I surely did.

If you’ve played it or want to comment, please do!

Thank you for reading!