I was late to the Indiana Jones party. By the time I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, I was already familiar with the franchise’s tropes by watching and playing through other material that borrowed elements from it. As such, I wasn’t impressed by Spielberg’s adventure films and the eponymous protagonist, although I did learn to appreciate the filmmaking craft behind them. Going into The Great Circle, I expected it to take elements from the Uncharted games but with Indy at its center, which would’ve been uninspiring. Fortunately, I was wrong.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is more than just an imitation of the triple-A, story-driven games we’ve played over the years. MachineGames has crafted one of its finest action-adventure games yet, and it looks just as slick as it plays. Suddenly, I’m a fan of Indiana Jones.
I didn’t expect The Great Circle to have shades of immersive sim, but here we are. Every level in the game’s expansive hub worlds gives you plenty of opportunities to weigh your options and tactics for tackling them. You can use a gun, but you’ll want to play it stealthily because it’s much more satisfying to creep up on a Nazi with a frying pan and unlock an achievement for incapacitating them with it. Indy’s whip is more than just a primitive grappling hook. Use it to disarm enemies, solve puzzles, and yank fascists toward you to grab and throw them off vertigo-inducing heights.
While most players can beat the game’s story in around fifteen hours, I spent almost ten of them just exploring its first major level, the Vatican. It wasn’t just because its digital recreation is painfully realistic, but MachineGames has crammed it with enough content to sustain all those hours. Side-quests flow naturally into the main story, often giving you bonus rewards that help you progress through the game more efficiently. You’re not just learning about Indy, but also his companions through these quests, and each one is just an excuse to engage with the genius level design.
I was able to set my own pace for action and exploration, two things from the movies that I never gelled with completely. I love Spielberg’s direction, but the pacing of his cuts and the impact of Indy’s punches in the films feel…somewhat outdated. We’re much more acclimated to a faster pace in our media, and The Great Circle puts you in the driver’s seat to determine how chaotic things will get. If I want to get in fist-fights with an entire camp of Nazis, I can do that. If I want to tackle two to three enemies as a set before moving on with the level, I’ve got that choice.
Throwing punches in first-person almost always feels off in video games. That was my first reaction when watching the game’s marketing material, but fortunately, it all comes together swiftly in the final game. The impact of the punches and swerves is right there, and coupled with the stamina bar for every action you take, you’ll find its combat more calculative than you’d expect.
Every time I veered off the main path to explore the level, I was rewarded handsomely. You gain experience points for finding secret artifacts and completing side-quests. Those skill points can be spent on upgrading your combat and survival skills, but you also need to find bespoke books of knowledge to activate them. It’s a feedback loop that forces you to explore enough before moving on, but it never felt tiring. In fact, you can revisit already explored maps any time you want, so you don’t have to regret skipping over a hub to get to the next story beat.
Another thing that impresses me a lot more is its commitment to recreating the atmosphere and mise-en-scène of the feature films. You can feel Spielberg’s eye for blocking making its way here, a testament to MachineGames’ passion for the franchise. Indy’s mannerisms and the game camera’s reaction to them are spot-on, helped greatly by Troy Baker’s convincing performance. Performances across the board are great, with Emmerich Voss (Marios Gavrilis) cementing himself as one of the great Nazi villains of recent media. Gina Lombardi (Alessandra Mastronardi) also makes for a wonderful female lead, whose wit and determination are a perfect match for Indy while having enough conviction to stand on her own.
This doesn’t mean the game doesn’t have issues, but most of those are technical. Its PC version was unstable during the review period, forcing me to wait for its official release. Following that, the first patch smoothened out its rough edges. The result? An immaculate first-person adventure with advanced ray tracing running around 100fps with all the bells and whistles. This game runs like a dream when using optimized settings without tanking your computer.
Sure, certain button inputs while using a controller can sometimes take a while to respond, and the character animations during cutscenes jarringly render at half the frame rate, but those are minor blips.
Ultimately, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is exactly, and actually even better than, the kind of single-player narratively driven action game I’ve wanted from Xbox Game Studios. The fact that it’s not a clone of PlayStation’s well-known formula is a welcome sight, and even then it’s coming to PlayStation for everyone to enjoy. No one who has an adventurous spirit should skip this one.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is available on PC and Xbox Series X|S. It will be released on PS5 in Spring 2025.
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