The International House of Mojo

I tried playing the demo of this once but I was playing, or had just beaten emporer's tomb on PC and I couldn't stand it. I think it was the lack of mouse and other control changes.

Can anyone verfiy if the playing experience is worse or better on pc or N64? Obviously the graphics are going to be worse on 64 because it's cartridge based, but what about the controls and any other changes?

Not wanting to play Infernal Machine after Emperor's Tomb is fair enough, though if you stick with it you will find a decent game underneath the dodgy controls.

I haven't played the N64 version, but I nabbed this off Gamespot:

"What doesn't help is that the controls from the PC game have been adapted to the Nintendo 64 controller in a rather clunky and unintuitive way. The A button jumps; the B button initiates actions such as opening doors; the shoulder button crouches; and the C buttons can be assigned to items such as your whip, lighter, and gun - with the top C as a free look. It's a setup that you'll eventually get used to, but it never comes easy. The response that you get from the character is even less suitable for the action you need to pull off in the game. Indy may jump and swing well, but try to get him to climb the step in front of him and you'll likely see him jump straight up a few times before he realizes he can simply shimmy himself forward. The combat is similar to the lock-on system found in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When an enemy comes into view, a moving circle will appear around it, and your character's movement will revolve around it until it's dispatched. It worked well in Ocarina of Time, and it works well here. Fans of the Tomb Raider series will likely prefer the fighting in this game due to its simplicity.

That said, I always prefer playing my action adventures on a TV screen with a gamepad, so you might prefer the N64 version for that reason alone.

This changes the gameplay a little bit, and I noticed that there are some graphical differences (as well as lower resoultion/textures - some graphics are completely different and simplified) but apart from that it should be the same. If you want my opinion, go with the PC version, but as you've already tried that you should probably avoid unless you really need an Indy fix... in which case be a little patient with it and you should evntually find a very nice little game.

Hey, thianks for the reply. I rented the n64 version from my local rental place and it wasn't too bad. The biggest issue I had with it, which isn't mentioned on the article snippet is that, in order to run, you have to press the analog stick all the way down. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, if you have a proprely working analog stick, but if you're using a well worn gamepade then it becomes a major issue. The gamepad I had had been my friends and so I could only run by pointing the analog stick certain directions. I endded up resorting to getting close to ledged, turning around and then run-jumping backwards. I liked to call it "shooting in the dark" and it was hard as hell. On the third level I totally just quit and took the game back.

So, I got ahold of a pc version. The pc version has much better sound, visuals, and even though the controls are difficult to configure at first, if you have an ok gamepad like gravis gamepad pro, it becomes better and more comfortable eventually. There are also neat little extras like the chalk and the difficulty controls and the unlimited raft repair kits on the third level(this might be a difficulty level thing). Even if you're using a gamepad, having the keyboard close by is handy because you can easily switch to a certain weapon or look at a map or sidestep or roll(all functions not in the n64 version).

I think, now that I've got the full version of the pc game and I have no issues with the control differences between infinite machine and emperor's tomb, I think infinite machine might be more fun that emperor's tomb. Then again, you could throw people off of stuff in emperor's tomb...that was always satisfying.

BTW, there is mouse support in infinite machine, but from what I can tell, it's not really usable. I mean, someone might be able to use it but I gave up on it.

Ah, sorry to hear that the N64 version is worse than I though! Oh well, now we know.

And you can turn the mouse on for Infernal Machine, but it isn't really "mouse support" - it just makes everything completely mouse controlled, which is in no way playable. It might be possible to hack it so that it lets you controll the camera with the mouse and the movement with the cursor keys, though - that would be excellent.

It's a shame that this game doesn't seem to work properly under Windows XP. I was never able to finish it as a result :(...

Yeah, that is a shame... LucasArts should whip out a patch. Luckily I completed it back on my old '98 machine (and incidentally I loved the ending. Reminded me of FOA's ending, actually).

How doesn't the game work properly in Windows XP? The only issue I've seen so far is after the level loads, it sometimes crashes or doesn't show the field of view correctly. There is a 1.02 patch that's supposed to fix it, but I still got the error after installing it. Is there some nasty bug I haven't run into yet? Does running with the win95 or win98 compatibility options help? I've just started the 4th level.

Never had any problems on XP myself, but maybe there's an issue with the last few levels... so don't put too much hope on completing it, though I got 3/4 through the game on my XP machine so you should be okay for most of it at least (and it's worth playing even if you can't get to the last level, believe me)

I love this game. Still do, although mostly because of memory. Emperor's Tomb may have the action, but Infernal Machine had the imagination.

I think my favoutire level was the one with the jeep you had to jump over 2 ravines. (It took me days to figure out I needed to take the high road on the 2nd jump and that the car has 2 speeds). Very satisfying to run over the russians at high speed. In fact, I think it was just the fact I was doing anything in the game at high speed that made me joyous...

My favourite level has to be Meroe. I mean, you arrive over that dune in the jeep - and you basically can see the whole f**king level! And if you feel like it, jump in the jeep for a quick game of scorpion-splat (and later, Hyena and Communist-splat)

Yeah, I love that level too... I love being able to get into one of the pyramids by climing up to this hard to reach spot and then this amazing set of underground catacombs opens up and it's amazing to to think that it's the same level - both the jeep desert driving and all the underground tomb stuff. It's a credit to the engine that it could pull off both indoor and outdoor enviornments so well.

Hee it's December 31st 1969... that's so random. It seems that the Millenium bug has hit Mojo a bit late. :~

This means it's technically still the 60's. PEACE!!11

Maybe this date bug is why your Indy review news item and my story about the new Empire At War RTS trailer disappeared from the main page after a couple of minutes yesterday. Or something.

Yeah, there was another little date issue that might have been caused by me. :~ Should be ok now. I hope.

The return of the "woot!". I will finally be able to sleep at night again. Looks like I'll have to shelve my plans for an Internet petition to get it back.

Anyway, the worst thing about that game (other than when you got stuck in terrain), was that you had to holster your weapon to open a damn door. If there was a baddie behind it, by the time it was open and you'd managed to redraw your gun, you'd usually be dead.

The level design and texturing were quite lovely in places though.

Yeah, that sort of thing annoyed me too - see what I said about the game being so slow. It was also stupid having to holster your weapon to pick up new ammo, when really all you should have had to do was walk over it. But despite the cumbersome interface it was still good and had nice atmosphere.

And yeah, woot returns... I couldn't resist ;

Sorry, I haven't had a chance to read this yet, but what I have to say is newsworthy.
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News from Thursday, July 28, 2005

I'm selling these fine leather jackets... seriously.

Over at Cinescape.com, a news article was printed that the original Indy jacket from Last Crusade is going up on the ebay auction block tomorrow, Friday, the 29th. It is expected to fetch 50 g's...

Also, of note, are the original lightsabers used by Andrew Prowse and Mark Hamill in "Empire Strikes Back", and are expected to return 60,000 each.

As we all know, we all have that kind of cash at hand, so be sure to check out these live auctions.

http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0&this_cat=Movies&action=page&type_id=&cat_id=270338&obj_id=49271

You broke the comments. Lame.