The publisher writes on its official Twitter account today that it’s readying a patch for LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues that will add online co-op play to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions. That brings it up to speed with LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

LucasArts addresses one of our concerns with the game—a lack of user-created level sharing online—saying “you’ll be able to join others as they build and play their levels.” Maybe not the sharing you had in mind, but it’s better than the current implementation.

We’re happy to see that LucasArts agrees with us that offline-only co-op belongs in a museum.

I get that this is a family title, and blood or gore would be inappropriate, gratuitous or otherwise. But seriously, the wrathful spirit makes the Nazis line-dance? Really? They got permission for cartoon violence in the rating, can’t it just, I dunno, blast them into several pieces? Maybe a ginormous Lego spirit who comically stomps them flat? Do something funnier than this? Wow. Some payoff.

Lego Indiana Jones 2 [CBS News.com via VG247]

While working on the recent Special Edition of the game, Lucasarts’ Adam Bormann says he had to go back into the code for the original Monkey Island. And while in there, poking around for puzzle AI, he found a ton of content left in the game by its developers, including Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.

Seems every time the original developers made a change to a puzzle or a piece of dialogue, they simply left the old stuff in the code. So Lucasarts have yanked it all out and posted it. Some of it’s all-new content, others added lines to existing chit-chats, but for fans of the series it’s all good reading.

Secret of Monkey Island – The Deleted & Extended Scenes [Lucasarts]

I kid. That guy to the left is “Enemy Mechanic,” aka the Von Kaiser/Bald Bull hybrid who duked it out with Indy under the flying wing in Raiders of the Lost Ark. According to Video Games Blogger, the rest of the characters are:

1. Cairo Digger
2. Crystal Skull
3. Enemy Mechanic (pictured)
4. Indiana Jones
5. Lao Che
6. Major Arnold Toht
7. Marion Ravenwood
8. Mola Ram
9. Mutt
10. Native
11. Professor Henry Jones Senior
12. Rene Belloq
13. Short Round
14. Spalko
15. Willie Scott

I’m not sure why the Crystal Skull is listed as a playable character if in fact it’s just an “object” in the game. “Native” is self explanatory, and Lao Che was the gangster from the opening sequence in Shanghai from “Temple of Doom.”

LEGO Indiana Jones 2 Characters List [Video Games Blogger]

Then again, it’s rated E10+, so maybe we should just let Marion’s fist do all the talking. Snark aside, LucasArts’ use of the game’s cinematics and the film’s footage makes for a very, very charming trailer here.

Microsoft?

But the final answer is yes. Yes, Elite Squadron can handle all 16 players leaping from space combat to ground battles and back again almost at once. Yes, it can get hectic and confusing. And yes, you will totally love it.

What Is It?
Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron is the latest in the cross-platform Battlefront series. This instalment on PSP and Nintendo DS keeps level with the series’ theme of dropping players into “everyman” Star Wars characters with some special chances to play as “hero/villain” characters in certain levels.

What We Saw
I played six multiplayer Conquest Mode matches with an assortment of other games journalists and QA testers who totally owned our collective face. The worlds we saw are: Tatooine, some Clone Wars planet I didn’t recognise, Hoth, Kashyyyk, Dantooine and Mustafar. Conquest matches, for those of you unfamiliar with the series, involve capturing command points and destroying enemy spacecraft in a certain amount of time.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is out November 3.

What Needs Improvement?
Hey! I Didn’t Want To Go Planetside! If you’re flying a spacecraft, the game sometimes takes liberties with your locations. For example, you can hop in an X-Wing on the ground and try to jet up to space by flying skyward and pressing up on the D-pad — but the game doesn’t think you should be up there quite yet and so it either doesn’t send you right away, or it doesn’t send you at all. This same thing happens in the space-side of levels as well, which gets really annoying if you’re flying close to the planet while trying to shoot somebody and the game decides to send you planetside even though you didn’t press the D-pad.

Tough To Change Targets: You can lock on to enemies both in space and on the ground — but I was having a heck of a time figuring out how to change targets if I didn’t want keep shooting at something. This really became a problem if I happened to be targeting a turret on a Star Destroyer because my ship would automatically angle toward it even as I tried to jet away from the ship so I wouldn’t crash directly into it.

My Kingdom For A Melee Button! It seemed like you’d automatically melee-attack somebody when pressing the shoot button if they got close enough, however it didn’t happen all the time. I know there are some weapons that are automatically melee-only (e.g. lightsabers) — but if everybody has the potential to melee with their guns, I’d really like a separate button for it. I’m a huge fan of the pistol-whip.

What Should Stay The Same?
Space Combat: Loved it. Loved it so much, I actually started to avoid going planetside.

Escape Pods: A big part of the battle phase is destroying the enemy’s command ship that’s hovering above the planet. You accomplish this by bringing down the enemy shields (with the ion cannon that’s planetside) and then boarding the craft with your ship (easier said than done). Once inside the ship, combat changes to the ground format where you’re running around as a trooper, a droid or a special character. You’ve got to get to the reactor core station inside the ship and wreck it, whereupon it triggers a timed explosion. You’ve got about two minutes tops to either fight your way back to the ship you boarded with (assuming it wasn’t shot up) — but the best option is to grab an escape pod which sends you right back down to the planet.

It’s What Multiplayer Was Meant To Be: If you’ve ever gotten together a bunch of gamers to take a crack at any multiplayer mode, you know when things are going well. People enjoy themselves and really get into the rivalries. When a big event happens—like a command ship exploding—there’s a cry from the victim team and a cheer from the aggressor team. When somebody morphs into a Jedi at a random point in battle (depending on how well you’re doing), there are squawks of disbelief to see a lightsaber on the field. And when the match ends, there’s a collective groan because it felt like it ended too soon.

Final Thoughts
I’m buying it. I really hope my PSP-owning friends do, too, so I can gun them down in space.

As Sofi, players are unleashed into a storybook-like, side-scrolling dream-scape evocative of the worlds created by Tim Burton.

Despite Sofi being the main character, players don’t actually control her; instead, they protect her by placing objects in her path, ensuring she safely makes it from one end of a level to the other. As Sofi self-propels along, she’s faced with pitfalls, traps and creatures that can send her back to the beginning of the level. Players place items such as staircases, blocks and trampoline-shoes to help her overcome obstacles and reach her destination. The objects appear randomly in a Tetris-like fashion, testing gamers reflexes as well as their brains, as they race to find the right piece and place it in front of Sofi, lest she land face first in a spiky pit.

Anyone who spies even a single screenshot of this easy-on-the-eyes offering will be hard pressed to escape its visual charms. However, once in Sofi’s world, players might find the actual gameplay to be more a nightmare than a dream.

Loved
Storybook Come to Life: Each one of Lucidity’s 40+ levels is a visual treat. Oozing charming atmosphere, they should appeal to anyone who digs the colourful—and often creepy—worlds created by Tim Burton and the like. In fact, it’s impossible to watch Sofi skip through her imaginary world and not recall Henry Selick’s recent cinematic re-imagining of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. From the lighter palette that begins the game, to the more foreboding tones colouring the later levels, it’s always easy to appreciate the developer’s visually-driven storytelling style.

Cool Concept: Rather than create a Super Mario Bros. ripoff in this pretty world, LucasArts’ unique approach puts a fresh coat of paint on platformers. The idea of not actually controlling the character, but rather her fate, by placing objects in her path is packed with potential. And the actual items used to guide Sofi further speak to the creative passion behind the project; whether you’re shooting Sofi with a slingshot or simply placing a make-shift bridge in her path, it’s super satisfying to see her not step towards danger because you’ve altered her path.

Hated
Frustration Trumps Fun: Despite a fantastic idea and appealing visuals, Lucidity (and ultimately Sofi) stumbles hard due to unforgivably poor execution. Beyond the first dozen or so levels, the game becomes an exercise in frustration, as you scramble to keep up with Sofi and find the right pieces to ensure her safe passage. There’s too much going on-obstacles, traps, enemies-in the later levels, making it nearly impossible to complete them, never mind take the scenic route to chase collectible fireflies which add life and open bonus levels. Additionally, the slippery controls don’t accurately “snap” objects into place, so, as Sofi marches towards a poisonous frog, you’re left to wonder if your staircase is maybe a little too far left or right. Of course, you soon get your answer when the menacing amphibian sends little Sofi packing to the level’s starting point. Which speaks to the next infuriating factor: How about some damn mid-mission checkpoints?! Sadly, by the time you successfully get Sofi from point A to B, you’ll be more relieved than satisfied.

Touchy controls, loose level design, and a lack of useful items when you need them, make Lucidity, despite its potential and beautifully engaging presentation, far more frustrating than fun. I went into this promising title with brimming enthusiasm, but by the end, too many laps on the trial-and-error treadmill had broken my spirit.

Lucidity was developed by LucasArts and published by LucasArts for XBLA and PC on October 7th. Retails for 800 Microsoft points, or $US10. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed Xbox 360 version of the game on normal difficulty.

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The opening moments of this trailer for Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues portray a dance party concept I find much more intriguing than the actual game.

The Lego series lost me after the first Star Wars game was released. Batman was interesting and nostalgic, but not that much fun to play. I own the first Lego Indiana Jones game but haven’t been able to force myself to play for more than an hour. I guess the charm of the concept just came and went too quickly for me. Seeing classic scenes recreated in Lego form is novel, but when the core gameplay is more or less the same, it just isn’t enough for me.

Now, if they did a Lego Indiana Jones Dance Party game…

Tight timeframes ended up in a rushed development cycle, in turn resulting in a game that had huge chunks missing from the final, playable product. Chunks that coders later found out were included on the disc, albeit in a rough, unfinished form.

So some modders took it upon themselves to yank out that code, polish it up, drop it into the final game and give us all the version of KOTOR 2 that developers Obsidian originally intended.

Last week, the team at Deadly Stream announced that their work was done, and that if you own a copy of KOTOR 2, you can download a playable version of the restored content.

I haven’t done so myself because, well, I banished all memory of KOTOR 2 some time ago. Anyone that does have a copy lying around, grab a copy from the link below, let us know how it all goes.

TSL_Restored_Content_mod ver1.4 “READY” [Deadly Stream, via Eurogamer]