That's just what Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures delivers: A blocky, jokey, slackly-faithful-to-the-source-material dash through the first three films, played as Indy and eventually up to 59 of his pals in groups of switchable twos or threes. Players range around levels inspired by the earlier movies, from Raiders' Egyptian city of Tanis and Temple of Doom's Shanghai nightclub to the library catacombs in Last Crusade's Venice, bashing Lego-like approximations of naturally occurring objects to spawn collectible Lego studs or unearth hidden treasure.

In addition to wielding Indy's signature whip, each Lego character can swim, climb and shimmy as well as pick up and carry objects and wield chairs, guns, swords and bottles as weapons. Logic puzzles occur more frequently than in prior Lego games (the films are really just riddle-quests, after all) and depend on proper application of each character's special abilities. For example: Marion tosses bananas at monkeys to get special items like keys and levers, Satipo can use a shovel to excavate buried objects, and Marcus Brody can use his umbrella as a slide. Once a chapter's been completed in "story" mode, "free play" opens up, allowing players to revisit a level as any of the game's unlocked characters and explore previously inaccessible areas.

Cute but slightly crippled

Traveller's Tales Lego-fied the first and second set of Star Wars films a couple years ago, peaking with Lego Stars Wars: The Original Trilogy, adored more for its spoofing than for the mediocre smash-em-up gameplay. Lego Indiana Jones feels like a step or two backward by comparison, the humor slightly less snappy, the wit a sliver less accessible, the second-rate gameplay less well concealed by broadly unmemorable source material. The Star Wars films are better known scene for scene, whereas the less parodied Indy films are recalled more for their general pulpy glow. Traveller's Tales hasn't figured out how to work around that, and their attempts to get laughs here depends less on clever irony than rote physical parody. Indy apologists may laugh past these stooge skits, but casual gamers who wouldn't know the difference between a panama and a fedora probably won't.

Otherwise you'd swear you were playing Lego Star Wars with swords and whips instead of lightsabers and grappling hooks. The new character abilities mitigate some of that sameness by increasing the range of actions you can access to solve puzzles, though the puzzles tend to feel less intuitive and occasionally veer toward headache-inducing. One moment you'll be cross-juggling bananas and dynamite with monkeys, the next trying to figure out how to find the key to turn the cog that shifts the platform that raises you up to lay your explosive bundle in place. The thing is, once you've figured out how to solve a puzzle, dropping in the proper widgets and carrying on should be relatively easy.

But it's not, and that's because the biggest hitch in the Lego Star Wars games is back: an inflexible camera that lazily follows Indy and pals around screen, making it impossible to tell exactly where some things end and others begin. Consequently, it's never been easier to step off cliffs or over ledges into blocky oblivion, an issue exacerbated by the lack of visual delineation between gently and more sharply sloping areas. For a game based on three movies packed with running, jumping and swinging stunts, you'll spend insufferable swaths of time probingly tiptoeing around ambiguous platforms, hoping you don't offend the game's fickle sense of "a step too far."

If those issues didn't keep you off Lego Star Wars, though, and you're willing to labor through the creaky humor and a wonky camera for those occasional nuggets of hilarity, you're probably Indy-loyal enough not to care about that stuff anyway.