Of course, we're used to this sort of thing by now. In every media avenue, "Me too!" is a rallying cry to profits, and if we didn't buy 'em, they wouldn't make 'em. We have only ourselves to blame. There's no denying that people would love to play a game with the Indy universe and Tomb Raider mechanics, though. When LucasArts first announced IJATIM, everyone cried, "Ace!" Previews were lavish and slavishly pleasant; the typical sentiment was that Dr Jones was to reclaim his niche from the upstart Derby tart.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine isn't quite a carbon copy of Tomb Raider. It's more of a Turin Shroud-like imprint, which looks ace and impresses the tourists, but turns out to be a bit on the dodgy side. You see, Indy is not the graceful, well animated yet rugged charge you might expect. Almost everyone has bemoaned Lara's inflexible, mechanical nature at some point - usually while descending from high point to low point, en route to 'crunch' - but she's a lithe wee kitten when compared with LucasArt's clumsy champion.

Essentially, he performs the very same moves as Ms Croft, in not entirely dissimilar environments. So why, then, is he such a woefully awkward character to control? Some of his animation sequences - like grabbing a ladder and beginning a climb, or crouching - are overly, almost uncomfortably protracted. While leaping a huge gap, however, he freezes in a standing rictus, gliding across the intervening space. The art boys got their priorities mixed, it would seem.