If there was any film franchise best suited to being a video game it would be Indiana Jones. Since Raiders of the Lost Ark’s release in 1981, which introduced dashing archaeologist Dr. Indiana Jones for the very first time, the franchise has evoked a deliciously retro sense of adventure throughout the series.

Jones is the perfect protagonist for a video game, who can travel the globe in search of adventure. And yet none have really struck a chord with gamers, with perhaps the exception of the charming LEGO versions. But then perhaps it has just been that none thus far have done the hero or franchise justice.

This title then, developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda, hopes to re-write the history books.

It’s 1937, and Indiana Jones finds himself in Rome, in the Vatican, following up on a clue. However, the Vatican is overrun by Mussolini’s Blackshirts, making poking around that little more difficult.

It’s there that he meets Gina, a reporter, who is chasing a personal story, as her sister has gone missing. It seems that their paths were destined to cross, with their objectives overlapping, seeing them work together, travelling the globe to resolve their joint mysteries.

But it won’t be easy, with not only the Blackshirts in their way, but also Nazis swarming wherever they go.

It s certainly a story that you can see fitting snugly into the Jones canon, with plenty of jet setting and facing his main nemesis of Nazis.

It also delivers on the adventure front, with the locales suitably exotic, with its mix of solving puzzles and action sequences.

And even though they don’t have Ford’s involvement, you would never know, with voice gaming maverick Troy Baker, who brings Jones to life seamlessly.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that there are issues. The biggest, and most obvious, is that it’s one of those games that feels very much a PC game. You’ve all played them on a console, where the game just feels like a PC square being wedged into a console circle. It’s still playable, but it’s not a great console experience.

For example, there’s no mini-map on screen, which would be useful. Instead you have to go into the menu, and open up the map there, which gets really frustrating very quickly, as Indy follows a vague pointer in the distance.

The interface is generally clunky too, unnecessarily so, especially when you consider that our protagonist is an action hero. But the ‘action’ is also contentious.

Now we have no qualms about shooting Nazis; they are the archetypal baddie and deserve everything they get. But the enemy AI in the is game is woefully bad; Indy can equip guns, but there really is no point, when bashing an enemy over the head with a broom handle is more effective than shooting them in the head, which we don’t believe is how it works in real life. Seriously, you can shoot then several times in the head ant they just stay standing, being the definition of bullet sponges.

In truth it’s a game where we would rather not use guns, as its not terribly Indy to do so, but with his trusty whip implemented so very poorly, being as potent as a poke in the belly, your options are thin on the ground. And even though you’re encouraged to sneak around, there is no ability to take enemies out from behind in stealth mode, which the game is crying out for.

Thankfully the puzzle sections are a little better thought out, even if they do rely on tired tropes of pulling levers and turning objects much of the time. One or two of them are head scratchers, but not in a good way.

What the game does well is creating an atmosphere. The environments that Indy finds himself feel very authentic, as does the relationship that grows between himself and Gina, which certainly has a cinematic spark between them.

It feels like a first, solid step in the right direction for an Indiana Jones game, but there is certainly room for improvement.

You can’t help but come away from it thinking that the IP deserved better than this, and the same can be said for gamers.