Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Review

The new order is Raiders of The Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, The Great Circle, Temple of Doom, Dial of Destiny and finally, The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull. MachineGames have carefully crafted one of the best Indiana Jones entries of all time featuring nearly four hours of cinema quality cutscenes, on par with Spielbergs masterpieces.

The Great Circle transcends the gaming medium and instead finds itself shoulder to shoulder with the giants of the silver screen, which makes playing Indiana Jones and The Great Circle in cinematic mode is a necessity. Not only does Indiana Jones and The Great Circle find itself nestled among the greatest in the franchise, but it’s easily our game of the year. There are a few minor imperfection, but nothing that affects the experience in any meaningful way.

QUINTESSENTIAL INDIANA JONES

After a Raiders of The Lost Ark inspired tutorial, you awake in the middle of the night at your desk in Marshall College. After hearing some ruckus, locating the trouble and failing valiantly, you awaken to discover a priceless artifact has been stolen. After searching through the wreckage, you find a clue that takes you to the Vatican. From there, you go down a rabbit hole, which ultimately leads you to the Nazi’s and their determination for world dominance revolving around The Great Circle.

The way that The Great Circle emulates everything iconic about the franchise is astounding. The look of the game has an 1980’s film aesthetic, the score could fool anyone into thinking it was done by John Williams, and the performance from Troy Baker is incredible. There were less than a handful of times, when it wasn’t done to perfection and that was when Indiana had to raise his voice.

The story arc is engaging from beginning to end, even if you venture off the main path, the main antagonist is extremely easy to hate, there are loads of laugh out loud moments and the cutscenes are a masterclass in execution. They are visually stunning, extremely well acted with great performances and facial capture. These aren’t just good for a game, they are on par with cinema. I have never been more excited for cutscenes in a game as I would sit back and become immersed.

GLOBETROTTING

Indiana Jones finds himself globetrotting and spending his time between open area sections and tombs, which results in a near perfect balance between exploration, combat, puzzle solving, and large story beats.

Exploration is at the heart of The Great Circle, where you will constantly have a carrot dangling at the end of the stick in the form of clue to pursue. On the journey to solve a clue, you will uncover plenty of extra mysteries to solve in the form of side quests. You could probably rush through The Great Circle in around 10-12 hours, but not only are the environments a pleasure to explore, but the side quests are engaging and blur the lines with the main story. The Great Circle is a game you want to savour.

When you solve puzzles and take pictures of priceless artifacts, you gain xp, which can be put towards upgrading your skills, provided you have found the book first. It’s little details like reading books to learn skills that fit the theme as harmoniously as they do.

The good news is that if you don’t have enough experince to read the books, you keep them until you do. Finding books and having enough experience to learn them provide plenty of incentive to venture of the beaten path as these skills aren’t essential, but will drastically aid you in your adventure.

Deciding how you want to approach The Great Circle, will determine, which books you want to read. It’s hard to believe, but after sinking nearly 20 hours into the latest from MachineGames, I didn’t fire a single bullet, as it never felt on brand for Indy. As a result, I focused on reading books about health, stamina, whip and fisticuffs.

I focused on these skills because when you are searching for clues and solving mysteries in disguises, you will often find yourself behind Nazi lines. Solving mysteries in the open area sections will be approachable from multiple angles, sometimes you can stealth you way, but often times, best laid plans go awry. When things go off the rails, you will need to fight your way out with extremely satisfying combat that sounds iconic. With the right upgrades, you can whip enemies to stun and disarm them and with enough upgrades in boxing, there is no need for weapons. You will still need to parry and dodge for success, but non lethal felt like the most authentic path while playing as Indiana.

To aid you in your PG-13 quest, the environment is also filled with a slew of items to pick up and use from a fly swatter, or staple melee items like bottles and pipes. Doubling down on what you can find, MachineGames rewards you for experimenting as many items come with their own achievement like the guitar that has one called “The Right Note”, just one more way that you are incentivized to explore and experiment.

On a technical level, the game seamlessly transitions between first and third person, so you constantly see the face of Indiana, in case you needed a reminder. The directional and Spatial Audio was not only great for immersion, but also for stealth as you could hear what room enemies were in. Loading times were very fast, checkpoints were perfect and finally, The Great Circle also features a set piece that felt unlike anything I’ve ever seen or experienced before. Like all Indiana Jones adventures, true enjoyment requires a slight amount of disbelief.

IMPERFECTIONS

You know you are playing a phenomenal game when the imperfections don’t hinder the experince. Any shortcomings are easy to look past because of all of the excellence surrounding them.

The Great Circle might begin a little slowly, but it becomes apparent that you are in a reimagination of the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. An iconic scene that myself and likely millions of others have acted out at one point during our lives. The slow pace allows you to become immersed by the sounds of the jungle, and become reestablished with Dr Henry Jones.

Once, you get past the tutorial, there are minor grips. Occasionally enemies clip through the environment when you are trying to hide their body. There are sometimes civilians that act somewhat oblivious to a guy cracking a whip and swinging across a room. The AI wasn’t dumb, but it was just tuned down a little less curious than I would have preferred even on the higher difficulties. Finally, there is a lack of stealth indicator. The screen goes dark around the edges when you crouch down, but that doesn’t mean you are out of sight or in darkness. Having a small icon on the screen when you are concealed would have been a nice touch.

I appreciated the options for puzzle and game difficulty, but I always want to know from the developers, what the intended and best experience option is.

INDIANA JONES AND THE GAME OF THE YEAR

Plain and simple: Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is the best game I played in 2024. I would even go as far as to call it a system seller. If I didn’t own an Xbox, I would buy an one just to play this game and I would urge others to do the same.

MachineGames have displayed tremendous growth as a studio to not only recreate such an iconic series nearly perfectly, but to have also done it in a game where I didn’t fire a gun is astounding. The pairing of the Indiana Jones IP and MachineGames is a fantastic match. Somehow, The Great Circle feels 100% Indiana Jones and 100% MachineGames simultaneously without either sacrificing identity. My new hope is that MachineGames will continue to carry the torch for the series, now that it appears the films are finally done.

I had figured that 2024 would be a year that I didn’t give a game a 10, but The Great Circle is a quintessential Indiana Jones experience and when everything is firing on all cylinders, it’s hard not to get swept up in the magic and feel like a kid again.

10