Why I Love - Indy and the Emperor's Tomb
- Michael Skolnick
- Apr 25
- 12 min read
A Lesser Known Adventure Gem
By 2003, the developer and publisher LucasArts were already operating at the top of their game. They revolutionized the adventure game genre with titles like the Monkey Island series, Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. They also had Dark Forces, a classic of the old school first person shooter genre, and X-Wing which revolutionized and made flight sim games mainstream. Just like ILM did for special effects, George Lucas' video game division was making revolutionary strides in the medium, with hit after hit. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine was the first fully 3D action-adventure game for the character that released in 1999 to fairly good reviews, although it was very clearly a Tomb Raider rip off, riding off the success of that game from only a few years earlier.
When this game came out, the character of Indiana Jones was in a little bit of a cultural slump. The Last Crusade had come out a decade ago already, and it would still not be until years later where he would return in 2008's Crystal Skull. Also that year, the Star Wars prequel trilogy was beginning with The Phantom Menace, and this would dominate the cultural focus for years to come. So it was that doctor Jones would find himself living on predominantly through gaming while between official films.
Following off of Infernal Machine, it was announced a few years that his next adventure would be developed by The Collective. This developer was pretty much only known for a Buffy The Vampire Slayer tie in game for the Xbox that was actually built on their in-house "Slayer Engine" which they would use for Indy next. So it was that in 2003, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb released for the Xbox, PS2, and PC.
Once again, it released to pretty good reviews. It was praised as a fun action game, and the world collectively moved. Considering that LucasArts was still at its peak and would release Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic a few short months later, this is totally understandable. In my opinion though, this game is an absolute hidden gem. I have to disclose that my friends and I played this game a ton as a kid and so I have a lot of personal connection to it, but it doesn't affect my stance on the game itself.
The Emperor's Tomb begins in 1935, with Indy searching the jungles of Ceylon for an artifact called the Idol of Kouru Watu. If you pay attention to the year, you'll notice that it's actually set before Temple of Doom, making it an earlier adventure before any of the movies take place, which is going to come up again later. After fighting your way through an army of ivory hunters, you finally get your hands on the idol, before a Nazi named Von Beck tries to take it from you. Indy feeds him to the largest crocodile of all time, and then makes his escape.
Back at school, as Indy is examining his prize, we get the Indiana Jones exposition dump moment similar to the agents talking about the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders. We meet a Chinese officer named Marshall Kai and his assistant Mei-Ying who tell Indy about an artifact called the heart of the dragon that's supposedly buried within the tomb of the first emperor of China. It can grant some form of power, and they want him to find it first so it doesn't fall into evil hands. Mei-Ying breaks open his idol to reveal that it contains the first of three parts of another artifact called the mirror of dreams, which he needs in order to navigate the tomb and reach the emperor's crypt.
Armed with this knowledge, they ship him off to Prague where the Nazis are supposedly searching for one of the other pieces of the mirror. Other than this cutscene, the game is fairly light on the story. Some of it is a little weird, and obviously Indy randomly finding a piece of the mirror is crazy circumstantial, but it does get the job done in setting up what feels like it could be a classic Indy adventure. It works, it sets things up, and frees you up for the gameplay while still giving a contextual backdrop for what you're doing.
The Prague castle up next is one of my favorite chapters in the whole game. The atmosphere on display is great. You get dropped outside this massive gothic building at night, fighting your way through the Gestapo as you work closer and closer. Eventually you get inside the trap-laden halls and navigate your way through a courtyard, a library, and a clock puzzle that connects some of the levels with this strange, death statue thing that comes out of the fire? I don't know. Eventually you find the next piece and do battle with this weird mutant, mechanical thing called the Homunculus. Maybe it was a Nazi experiment or something, but yeah, I really don't know.
The game is what I would describe as an action, platforming, beat-em-up kind of game, kind of like a proto-Uncharted but with much less shooting. The bread and butter here is absolutely the hand to hand combat. I hate to say this because it's such an overused phrasing, but it really does make you feel like Indiana Jones. On PC, left click controls one fist and right click controls the other. This lets you do all sorts of combos, grabs, and throws. You can also pick up items in the world to use as weapons, but so can the enemies. The best is that there are tons of destructible props lying around, and so you'll get into situations where you'll throw a Nazi into a table, breaking it, and then when he gets up he'll grab a detached table leg and try to beat you with it.
The whip also lets you pull weapons out of enemy hands, grab them by the neck to reel them in for a punch, and a few other cool moves. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from last year is fantastic, but the whip is legitimately used here in a better way. You also find yourself doing a lot of platforming which is fun, and the whip plays in here as well when you find yourself swinging across chasms. Indy's movement is a little janky and imprecise which makes some of the tighter jumps difficult, and the camera can also prove to be frustrating in these parts.
Indy comes equipped with a few other tools like a canteen that you drink for health and can refill, sometimes a machete to hack through vines, and an assortment of guns that feel amazing to fire at a bad guy even though they take a comical amount of damage before going down. It isn't an immersive sim by any means, but it's full of small details like this which add so much to the gameplay. My favorite is that Indy's hat can be dynamically knocked off his head in combat and you have to pick it back up yourself otherwise you'll be going through the rest of the level without it.
So anyway, Von Beck somehow survived his attack from earlier and he ambushes Indy. He wakes up in Istanbul where he learns that Mei-Ying has been following him. She sets him free and tells him that the Nazis are excavating the lost city of Belisarius to find the final piece of the mirror of dreams. Once again you find yourself fighting through a new location, as you climb down into their excavation site and puzzle through the vast ruins. After a few levels collecting underwater coins with some of the most annoying swimming controls, it culminates in a battle with an actual Kraken that leaves behind the final mirror shard. Mei-Ying reveals that Kai is actually the leader of one of the most dangerous Chinese triads and she's an undercover agent trying to stop him. This explains why the Nazis knew exactly where to look for the mirror pieces since they were in league together the whole time, and next you set off to Hong Kong to meet one of her contacts.
Upon reaching Hong Kong, you'll realize the contact is actually Wu-Han, the character Indy knows from the opening of Temple of Doom. It's not entirely necessary, but is a cool little connection to the films. Kai's goons ambush Indy which leads to a great fight set piece that really showcases the combat in action. Mei-Ying gets kidnapped, forcing you in pursuit with an on-rails rickshaw chase. Unfortunately they're too late, but Wu-Han has a boat that tracks them to the next location, Peng Lai Island.
Here is another classic Indy location. You breach a Nazi U-boat facility and eventually don a Nazi uniform to sneak further into the base in order to reach the gondola at the top that will take you to Kai's secret mountain fortress. You get an awesome action moment where you are fighting across the top of the moving gondola, taking down airplanes and leaping across to other carts in the skies while the score blares in the background.
Speaking of which, I swear this game has one of the most underrated and un-talked about scores ever. It's composed by Clint Bajakian with a full backing orchestra and band. There are a couple computerized, almost midi styled tracks in there that stand out next to the big pieces, but it's seriously incredible stuff. I would link it, but there was never any kind of release for it, not physically, digitally, streaming, or anything, which is an absolute crime. I even think it has one of the best arrangements of the Raiders March. You can pull some mp3s from the game files but it's not complete. I'm still holding out hope some day it will, but it's so niche I doubt it.
The sound effects are also top notch, which heavily contributes to why the combat feels so satisfying. I love the grunts and breathing sounds everyone makes as well, but sometimes it's so over the top it becomes comical. You'd think Indy just ran a marathon after throwing a couple jabs. Regardless though, the sound and the music just come together in such a way that feels incredibly authentic and adds so much extra oomph to the experience.
After riding the gondola car the rest of the way, you emerge in an over the top Chinese fortress, which you fight your way up further and further each level. This chapter is short lived though, as you end up fighting Kai's twin henchmen in order to rescue Mei-Ying before a trap door opens up, sending you down the world's longest drop into a mountain catacomb that Indy probably shouldn't have survived. Unfortunately though it mirrors the drop in quality the game is about to have for these final chapters.
This is where things go a little too far off the rails in my opinion. After dropping into this tomb, you begin fighting actual spirits and possessed bodies, and then you solve a puzzle to get a magical boomerang that you can throw around to fight these demons. The level design is still really cool and the gameplay is still fun, but it just gets a little too weird. And if that doesn't sound weird enough, then at the end of the chapter you fight an actual demon possessed version of Mei-Ying. After the deed is done, the two retrieve the mirror of dreams and finally head off to the actual Emperor's Tomb.
This final section starts off pretty cool as you descend down and use the mirror to navigate a slew of hidden traps and trials that feels like something out of the movies. But then the spirits come back and you fight through the level until you get separated from Mei-Ying. Indy finds himself in a weird corridor when he hears the voice of Von Beck again, who emerges in a giant tank, drill thing, leading to a cool platforming chase scene. The camera is fixed to the vehicle which gives a cool perspective, although it can be hard to land some of the jumps. I didn't mention before, but this is a very old school game with no level checkpoints, so if you die you have to start a level from the beginning.
At the end of the path, Von Beck finally meets his demise, and if we were off the rails already, then we're free falling now, because Indy ends up walking through a portal into the Netherworld, where he fights through an army of Teracotta warriors in some messed up version of the Great Wall of China. At the end of this section, Indy finally arrives at the crypt of the First Emperor. He grabs the heart of the dragon, which is in his mouth for some reason. This wakes him up from his nap with newfound magical powers and a summoned dragon, which serves as the final boss. It's easy enough to defeat, before then cutting back to the club in Hong Kong. The group reminisces about the adventure when Wu-Han mentions a meeting with Lao Che, ending with a direct tie in to the story from Temple of Doom. And with that, Emperor's Tomb is complete.
The first thought I have is that you're telling me in Temple of Doom, which is set in the same year, Indy is going to go back to being a skeptic when he just recently fought demons and dragons in the Netherworld with a magical boomerang? I know it's not meant to be taken as the most important continuity, but it does seem funny considering how much they wanted to tie in to that film. Indiana Jones has always dipped into the supernatural, but every time it's grounded in theme and tone. In Raiders, there's a dark irony to seeing the power of god defeat the Nazis after trying to harness that power for themselves. Yes, even the time travel in Dial of Destiny, whether you think it was too far or not, fits in with the themes of time, age, and chasing the past.
What happens here at the end feels like pure fan fiction. I guess it makes enough sense for what you're chasing after, but they just start throwing dragons and monsters around in the last quarter of the game like it's no big deal. But at the same time, this does come off like a cheesy B-movie and so I kind of love it for that. It most definitely is the dip off point in the game, but it's so goofy that it remains entirely entertaining. Because at the very least, the gameplay holds through, even though fighting the spirits can get pretty annoying.
As far as the other 3/4 of the game is concerned, all the locations you hop between are just so awesome. There's so much variety: you get the jungles, spooky castles, Nazi bases, Chinese fortresses, and it gets strung along with great set pieces and moments. Hearing the Raiders march play while you're fist fighting Nazis in the halls of an old facility just feels right. The combat has that perfect slapstick feel where even you yourself can get kicked off ladders and thrown into furniture in the same way you can do to them.
It never strays too far from it's formula of combat, puzzles, and platforming, and the game doesn't overstay it's welcome. I think it's just long enough for that loop to be enjoyable and wraps up before getting repetitive. There's also hidden artifacts around the levels that give you that feeling of exploration and discovery if you choose to seek them out.
Some of Indy's written dialogue is a bit weird and doesn't come off like the same guy during cutscenes, but man does he sling out some good one liners during gameplay. There are some that my friends and I still quote to each other till this day. It's also a damn good looking game for the time it came out. It is absolutely a product of its time, especially some of the level's skyboxes that have that old jpeg look as well as some low res textures. The environments themselves are really pretty though, they're super detailed and atmospheric, and the animations look great in motion. Indy's model isn't the greatest of all time but it's close enough to Harrison Ford to still look correct.
There are a ton of great Indiana Jones games. Fate of Atlantis is still an all time classic adventure game and has what I think is the story closest to being a true lost Indy film of the 80s. Great Circle from last year is the culmination of everything and is probably the quintessential Indiana Jones game now, but Emperor's Tomb might still secretly be my favorite. It might not have been the game of year when it came out, but I do think it got passed over a bit due to the sheer number of amazing titles releasing at that time. You had GTA: Vice City, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, and even the classic MMO Star Wars: Galaxies. So I'm not surprised this one kind of came and went.
If you're interested in trying it for yourself, it's available on GOG and Steam. I can't speak for the GOG port but Steam works pretty decent out of the box with a few tweaks. You know how it is with these older titles. It is also available upscaled through Xbox backwards compatibility. If you're looking for a fun adventure game with a great combat system that you could probably finish in a weekend, I highly recommend it. Seriously, if you know of another game with a similar hand to hand system that scratches this itch, let me know.
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