With Harrison Ford looking more and more geriatric as the days go by, we’re relieved to see that Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is nearing release. As belated sequels go, it’s probably our most anticipated movie event since The Phantom Menace. Indy IV, though, will not be laced with the same disappointment as that Jar Jar Binksladen shambles. It’ll be a perfect film. It’ll even be arousing.

Anyway, we’ve now wasted a paragraph without really discussing Lego Indiana Jones. The reason behind this, dear reader, is that we presume you’re aware of the exact nature of this game: this is Lego Star Wars, only with additional peril and a good many more Nazis. You collect, you follow one route, and the puzzles are simplistic. It’s accessible gaming built on a competent, basic framework that appeals to a massive audience. For a publisher, this is a dream product. For us, though, who are a little more hardcore than John Everyman? Not so much.

Still, we loved the Indiana Jones trilogy, and the idea of seeing that iconography repurposed as a semiironic, child-friendly adventure has some kind of allure. Lego adaptations really should cease after this, lest we end up with Lego Taxi Driver, Lego Elbows or Lego Bin Laden, but Indiana Jones is appropriate fodder for your basic platform adventure. The movies evoke that feeling of being along for an exciting, quick-paced joyride, and the side-scrolling nature of Lego Indiana Jones should live up to that.

There are so many moments that we can’t wait to see in Lego form: the seminal boulder dash from Raiders Of The Lost Ark, the big bridge fight in Temple Of Doom, or even Indy meeting Hitler in The Last Crusade – it all sounds tip-top, in principle. Lego Indiana Jones will be imbued with the same jokey, passionate design as Traveller’s Tales’ Star Wars homage, but the different style of film may make for a better type of game.

We’re more taken with the idea of platforming in Lego Indy, rather than mindlessly shooting Nazis left, right and centre. Indy’s whip gives the developers a bigger scope to get creative with the exploration. Indiana Jones is an archaeologist, after all, but this is hardly Tony Robinson and his bearded Time Team cohorts; whether it’s swinging from branches or across cliffs, we hope it’s a little more complex than the patronising grapple hook from Lego Star Wars.

Then again, any opportunity to complicate Lego Indiana Jones will probably be rejected by Traveller’s Tales. The press release goes out of its way to hammer home the family-friendly tone, so this is likely to be an entirely similar experience to Lego Star Wars. This would be fine, but we were a little bored of the formula by The Complete Saga at the end of last year. We’re ready for an evolution, but everything, from the HUD to the collectables, is identical to Lego Star Wars. How frustrating is that? Couldn’t they have altered the format just a little bit, without alienating the public?

This gives us the feeling that Lego Indiana Jones will be overly commercial, and not concerned with giving more seasoned gamers a decent challenge. The crossover is an excellent match, once again, but there might not be enough meat to keep us hanging on until the end. Although it’s comforting to know that some licensed games aren’t a complete bag of dog turd, it looks as though Lego games will become contextually more average with each instalment.

Still, it is Indiana Jones. By the time it comes out, we’ll be so hyped up about the new film that we’ll be wearing fedora hats and embarking on adventures of our own choosing. In that regard, Lego Indiana Jones may be relevant enough to see it through. Where else is it possible to see a melting Nazi, these days?