Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review

A game that surprises at every turn and exceeds all expectations...

Indy hasn't had the strongest presence in videogames. Obviously there were a few games bearing his name, but by and large tomb raiding the uncharted areas of forgotten civilisations has remained the domain of a handful of other titles. 

And through these games, a distinctive idea of what 'adventurous archaeology' should look like. The first Tomb Raider was equal parts puzzle-platformer and action game, but over time, as Uncharted's Nathan Drake took hold, videogames obviously inspired by Indiana Jones focused more on action setpieces and less on figuring things out.

The thing is, they weren't exactly wrong to do this. Players wanted action setpieces, and it was obvious to anyone paying any attention that Naughty Dog were masters of the craft. Subtle level design cues encouraged players to sprint, full pace, across narrow planks, rooftops, down canals and across airports without ever feeling like they would go the wrong way, making them feel exactly like Indiana Jones in that setting. Always in trouble, always happy to run, and never making a wrong turn, Uncharted gave us the JJ Abrams take on Indiana Jones.

It captured the mood of the time. Indiana Jones was a Spielberg blockbuster and the Uncharted games were pure popcorn action. Tomb Raider felt the pulse of the moment and rebooted the same year Uncharted 3 came out, but as both games attempted to reduce the art of ancient treasure hunting to explosive action sets, neither could compete with other games that took the "Indiana Jones runs away from something" idea to its ultimate version. 2013 was the year Temple Run came out, and the reductive format was a giant boulder the other franchises simply couldn't outrun.

So forgive me for having low expectations going into Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

When you think Indiana Jones is going to zig, that's when he zags. When you think he's going zag, that's when he zogs. And the Great Circle zogged the shit out of my expectations.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Genre: Action-Adventure
Developer: MachineGames
Publisher: Bethesda
Release Date: December 9, 2024
Classification: M15+
Author: Joab "Joaby" Gilroy
Date: December 16, 2024

Size Matters

It's been a good few years for games that are far bigger than they immediately seem. Elden Ring, Vampire Survivors, there's something great about playing a title, thinking you know what you're in for and then watching it unfold before you.

IJATGC (I don't want to keep writing The Great Circle like some trypophiliac) doesn't go as far as Elden Ring in unfolding, but it is a lot bigger than you think. The Vatican level, for example, starts out fairly contained before letting you wander all around a fascist-occupied variant of the holy city. And it keeps getting bigger, even as the entire game takes painstaking steps to maintain a staggering attention to detail.

"It's like we're in 2007 again — Unreal Engine is out here chugging it up, while id Tech looks and runs gloriously..."

The Sistine Chapel is lovingly rendered, Michelangelo's frescoes on full digital display in the game. Versions of Raphael's Four Rooms can be found as well, although I'm not sure if the geography is quite on point. I'm not a Vatican expert, after all, which is why I couldn't tell you whether the other turtles have any art on display.

But it's a testament to the id Tech 7 engine that all of this detail can be shown across all of this space while still maintaining a fairly solid 60 frames per second. Bear in mind I have a good PC — there's a 4080 under the hood — but it's a feat all the same. It's like we're in 2007 again — Unreal Engine is out here chugging it up, while id Tech looks and runs gloriously.

So it looks great, but how's it play?

Have a Butcher's

If you ever played The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, you should know what you're in for. Of course, if you haven't played a 20-year-old movie tie-in game based on a fantastic but not super commercially successful franchise, that's fair. Imagine a first-person brawler with light RPG elements, light immersive sim elements and light-to-strong puzzle elements. In the Riddick game, you played Riddick —i n Indiana Jones you're never gonna believe who you play.

It's a fantastic blend of the aforementioned game styles, although it does suffer from a bit of 'master of none'itis.

The combat is a lot of fun but once you know how to do it, it becomes rote pretty quickly. Indy's got hands, and you can wallop the hell out of the fascists you come across in the game, but most fights come down to waiting for an opponent to attack, pressing the parry button with its very generous timing window, and then counter-attacking. Stamina management is simple as long as you don't button-mash, and while the larger enemies can ignore your attacks and punch through them, the smallest amount of attention paid will keep Indy fighting till the final bell.

"Grabbing a hammer off a nearby table and then going Old Boy on a bunch of Nazis is about as good as it gets..."

So it can get a little boring — although there are plenty of 'weapons' littered around that Indy can use, and these are great at changing the combat up. Grabbing a hammer off a nearby table and then going Old Boy on a bunch of Nazis is about as good as it gets.

As for gunplay, Indy's shooting makes Bronny James look NBA calibre, so you probably won't care to wield a gun until 2/3rds of the way into the game when the risk/reward balance evens out. It's still fun to draw down on some brutish enemy every now and then, but because the game has a soft stealth system, gunfire is usually an immediate alarm bell.

The stealth itself is another great example of how the game toys with the idea without really going in on it. As long as you crouch and break line of sight of enemies, you generally won't be discovered, and most combatants don't realise you shouldn't be somewhere until your knuckles are inches from their noses. This is one area where I think Indy nails it — by relaxing the discovery, the game maintains a pace that can sometimes be lost in titles where the stealth is more restrictive and punishing. Even if you do get caught, as long as nobody sounds the alarm you generally only have to deal with a couple of enemies.

There are also disguises scattered about the levels that make traversing forbidden areas easier. Nobody bats an eye at a priest walking about the Vatican, right? That said, when you wear the Wehrmacht uniform it can be easy to get sidetracked.

Light Work

The RPG elements aren't all that complex, but again it's mostly to the benefit of IJATGC's pacing. You talk to NPCs around the levels and they give you quests. Those quests often result in a 'adventure points' reward, an XP system you spend on books you find around the game. Some books increase your inventory, others your fighting ability, others still your vital statistics. By doing every quest I came across I had more than enough to purchase every book I wanted, which made me question whether the system was necessary. Couldn't I have simply acquired the book skills with the book itself? Couldn't the books themselves have simply been rewards for quest completion? It's a minor quibble, but it does slow the game down some, forcing me to go into a separate menu to decide which books I want to buy—as I said, I always had enough points to get everything, so it was functionally just a punishment, not a reward.

It doesn't help that the UI/UX is… it's probably the weakest part of the game. I never played on controller, but on keyboard and mouse it's a clusterfuck of odd and inconsistent button choices. A great deal of time was spent re-entering the menu when I'd accidentally closed it, because sometimes Q is change pages, and sometimes J is open a menu, or go deeper into a menu… if they'd managed to fold Z into the mix reliably I'd think they were trying to win at Scrabble.

"Forget the main path puzzles, mind you. They're too simple to be of much interest..."

Ironically these issues raise their head the most in IJATGC's best element — the puzzles.

Oh my God are the puzzles in this game fantastic. Indiana Jones is a treasure hunter, and treasure hunting is puzzle solving. Forget the main path puzzles, mind you. They're too simple to be of much interest — some basic mirror-puzzles stolen straight from the first 15 minutes of The Talos Principle, crippled further by someone actively saying out loud the solution every 10 seconds. Even as the game wears on they never get better, even if the developers do seem to have more confidence in the player's ability.

I can forgive this, even if it annoys the shit out of me. These are the puzzles for the people who are playing IJATGC like it's Temple Run, sprinting from one corridor to the next barely aware of their surroundings. It is, if anything, smart to cater to these people. They are the majority. We live in a world filled to the brim with morons, chock-a-block full of mean-spirited dullards who are probably playing the game as pacifists because they don't think punching nazis is appropriate. You know, proper cun—sorry, I got distracted.

Riddle Me This

Anyway, the main path puzzles are what they are. But there is treasure hidden around the Great Circle levels. Real puzzles that require lateral thinking and investigation. And it lifts the entire IJATGC experience immensely. All that talk about my love of the game's fast pace goes out the window when I find a locked safe or a cryptic note on a bench. Whatever I am doing is dropped, and I come to a screeching halt as I am overcome with the need to solve the riddle before me.

What I love is that you don't need all the information to solve the puzzles. If you only need two of the six clues to open a safe, you can get in. Obviously it means you could look up solutions online, but there's something so Indiana Jones about piecing together information on your own. Like finding the X in the Library in The Last Crusade, when it dawns on you it feels amazing.

"Any complaints I have barely matter compared to what surrounds them. The Great Circle gets Indiana Jones in a way that I never would have expected..."

That said, The Great Circle does have a bit of a problem with showing you puzzles that you simply cannot yet solve. It took me far longer than I'm proud of to realise I couldn't get into a room in the Vatican without having played the main missions. It's crazy to me that IJATGC happily has someone say "Maybe we could shine that light on the mirrors" 40 times a minute in the locked room with lights and mirrors, but Indy couldn't gruffly say "Hopefully I can get some help opening that door later" or something.

But again, it's a minor quibble. Any complaints I have barely matter compared to what surrounds them. The Great Circle gets Indiana Jones in a way that I never would have expected. Gets him better than the last two movies did, frankly, although IJATGC isn't having to deal with age. Troy Baker nails an Indiana in that sweet spot between the two best movies. It's an impression, but a nearly flawless one that never drags you from the game.

And it's helped by a supporting cast who are firing on all cylinders. The late great Tony Todd gives a terrifying performance as the giant Locus. Alessandra Mastronardi's Gina is a great reminder of what Indy has lost in his crumbling relationship with Marion. And Marios Gavrilis's Voss is one of the best Indy villains ever — manipulative, smart and a fellow archaeologist, he's a worthy match for Henry Jones Junior.

It's all thanks to fantastic writing from a team that very clearly understands Indiana Jones as a character and as a narrative world. Subtle opportunities for characterisation are seized on and executed perfectly. We get insight into Indiana's position on "graverobbing", his relationship with his father, his challenging home life and more.

For an Indiana Jones fan, it doesn't really get better than this. Early in The Great Circle you take a walk around Marshall College, the university where Professor Henry "Indiana" Jones Junior teaches Archaeology. And if you go snooping, if you dig deep enough, you'll find a salacious letter hoping to entice our rakish hero into a bit of after-hours tutelage.

It's a love letter, of course, to the great Indiana Jones, which is fitting, because that's Indiana Jones and the Great Circle through and through.

What’s Boss?

  • Solving puzzles isn't locked up
  • First person brawler, not shooter
  • Nails the Indiana Jones character
  • Looks absolutely gorgeous

Not Boss Enough?

  • Hefty system requirements
  • Areas are gated behind main path progression
  • The UX is undercooked

Taking most of its influence from Raiders and The Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle manages to portray an Indy story (or stories) worthy of every die-hard fans' expectations, but then proceeds to exceed them.

About the Author

Written By Joab "Joaby" Gilroy
Joab Gilroy is a games critic and author from Sydney, Australia. He has won awards as a games and esports journalist. His new book Till The Heavens Burst is available via joabyjojo.com now.
More from this Author

Explore More in Gaming

We played a *little* bit of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, but also had an in-depth chat with Warhorse Studios about the game's depth, choice and consequence, why we couldn't just create a character rather than play as Henry, and much, much more. Click through to get all the 1403 Bohemia goss!

Not only the best Indiana Jones game ever made, but also one of the year's best action-adventure romps, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle just continues to get better the more you play it. Our in-depth review will tell you why...

An out of left-field update is coming to Cyberpunk 2077 in news you never saw coming. And it's happening on the four-year anniversary of the game's initial release date, because CD Projekt RED just does stuff like that!

SPINE is a Wick-inspired shooter-brawler filled with gun fu and cinematic camerawork that is dynamic to the action at hand. It's ambitious and stunning in its presentation, but will it deliver in full, or just remain flash in the pan?

The closer we get to New Year's, the closer we get to this gem making its way into our hands, and the hands of your friend, whom you can now play with in real-time. We spoke with the game's Creative Director, and fellow Aussie, Alex Hutchinson. Have a squiz...

What could a Black Ops game-universe look like? Shared universes are all the pop culture rage right now (though not very new), but does this one, in particular, have the chops to not just stand out, but even dominate? And we're not even adding other Call of Duty titles... this is strictly Black Ops' time to shine. Click through to learn more!

Available now on Steam alongside a massive title update and the first story DLC, Star Wars Outlaws has re-entered orbit as a game to jump back into. And we've got all the reasons why inside...

Halls of Torment is a new roguelike survival game that might not stray far enough from the formula laid out by Vampire Survivors, but it has enough new things to keep you coming back. That is, in addition to the awesome retro Diablo-style visuals that look like they're straight from 1998.

Our definitive Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review. We dissect its three key pillars in Campaign, Zombies and, of course, Multiplayer and how they stack in the grand scheme of things. There's more here than initially meets the eye, too, so strap in and give it a digest of some possessive reader-type form...

After a year of Seasonal updates and overhauls and a brand-new expansion introducing new story, a new class, and new activities, Diablo IV is in a great place. In fact, so much has been improved or refined since the game's initial June 2023 debut, that the game feels like it has grown into what it was always meant to be.

Comment

Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.