Indiana Jones and the Great Circle by developer MachineGames and publisher Bethesda Softworks—Microsoft Xbox Series X Review written by Nick with a purchased copy.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
From the minds behind the Wolfenstein games, we have Indiana Jones and the Great Circle helping to bring a younger, spryer version of Indiana Jones than the last couple of movies provided us. It’s an interesting blend of genres that is sees our intrepid archaeologist embarking on an all-new adventure. The results are certainly better than not, though I couldn’t help but at times feel like the various excellent parts failed to come together to create a completely satisfying whole.
Right out of the games, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle comes out swinging as the adventure is set after Raiders of the Lost Ark. We know this, because the game starts off teaching us the basics while walking us through a rather fantastic recreation of that movie’s introduction. We see Indy working his way through the jungle, dealing with treacherous guides, using his whip to swing over openings in the ground, thwarting ancient traps and relieving the famous scene where he unsuccessfully tries to swap a bag of sand for an ancient artifact.
It’s a great way to start the game off, because it gives Indiana Jones and the Great Circle a chance to show off its fantastic presentation. It has to be said that aside from a handful of semi-janky moments in animation, the majority of the visuals here were fantastic. I grew up on Raiders of the Last Ark. As a kid, it was one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen it more times than I could hope to count, and have watched The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade numerous times as well. The development team deserves credit for nailing the look of not just the familiar characters (in particular Indiana Jones), but the environments you traverse as well. The quality of the presentation also extends to the music score and the voice acting throughout. Of particular note is the always reliable Troy Baker, whose efforts at replicating Harrison Ford’s iconic Indiana Jones were often eerily spot-on. Many of the character’s mannerisms and personality traits come through beautifully when the combination of visuals and voice acting.
I am hard-pressed to think of a video game that made such a good impression on me out of the gates. The first few hours in, I found myself thinking that in many ways, this Indiana Jones adventure was truer to the franchise than the last two movies that came out.
Things start off simply enough as we move on from the Raiders of the Lost Ark flashback to a night spent between Iny and his friend Dr. Marcus Brody sharing a drink as the latter dozes off before Indy realizes there’s a break-in at the museum. This encounter leads him down the kind of rabbit hole that feels like an authentic jumping off point for one of Indy’s globetrotting adventures that begin at the Vatican but soon take us to other distant vistas. From there, Indy discovers yet another Nazi plot (apparently the devs at MachineGames are in a comfort spot here given their history of making games where one shoots hordes of Nazis) with religious undertones throughout.
There’s a lot of heart and humor to be had in both the story itself, but also Indy’s myriad interactions with people and his many quick-hitting quips during his combat and explorations. While the game is largely presented in a first-person perspective - at least during combat and non-platforming exploration. There are ample cutscenes where you get to see Indiana Jones interacting with people and his environment, but when it comes to travel and combat, things settle into a more familiar perspective for fans of Wolfenstein or Fallout. However, I quickly learned that this was not an action-based shooter, but more of an exploration and puzzle adventure that leans into stealth over action.
That is where my personal enjoyment took a bit of a hit, even though it’s a completely reasonable design choice. When combat does take place, it feels a bit clumsy. There’s a lean into melee combat, with your fists or Indy’s trusty bullwhip always readily available, but also melee weapons that break after a few hits or guns that are sometimes of questionable accuracy and incredibly limited ammunition. In the earlier stages of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle combat is relatively easy. Enemies are all melee-based, many don’t use weapons, and there’s a lot of natural choke points for combat like doorways that keep the odds from spiraling too far out of control.
However, as you get further into Indy’s adventures, enemy swarms seem to be more common, with wider environments that see you surrounded and beaten up on from a variety of angles. Their weaponry also gets an upgrade, especially in the firearms department. Many times these soldiers are perched at an elevated location, meaning they get free shots at you when the chaos breaks out. This is where I mean you need to be more invested in stealth. Bogging things down even more, you have a stamina bar that gets depleted when running and climbing, but also when fighting. Throw too many punches in rapid succession, and you’re next swing is going to be lame and slow and you need to turtle up as you wait for your stamina to recover The whip can be fun as it can disarm an opponent, or even sweep their legs out, but it also requires stamina which also doesn’t fair well when you’re in the middle of a gang of thugs beating on you. It’s more of a deliberate weapon for 1-on-1 fights.
It makes sense within the framework of the story and character. Indiana Jones is a brilliant archaeologist who can hold his own in a bar fight, but we’re not talking about Master Chief here. That left me feeling at least a little at odds with the game however, and it did diminish my enjoyment the deeper I got. I had to call this out since it did take a decent amount of the shine off of the experience for me as stealth’s not my favorite approach in games most of the time, and it made combat more of a chore than not. Maybe that’s intentional as the team perhaps wanted people to focus on the story and puzzle elements, and these areas really do shine.
The bullwhip is not just a combat tool, but an aid in exploration. There’s an element of verticality here not found in the Fallout series, and the whip plays a major part in this. You can run and jump and sometimes climb things in the environment - though the game would have benefited at times from making these intractable parts of the element a bit more clear. There’s no indications for example, if you’re standing outside of a large building with walls all around it that the only way to progress is to climb an ordinary bit of pipe hanging down near one corner of the building that in no way stood out from anything else nearby. Thankfully these moments were the exception and not the rule. The whip is fun for latching onto overhead beams to climb walls or swing over chasms. It also gets leveraged in puzzles as a way to pull things that are too high up or in some other way out of Indy’s reach.
Puzzles were seldom all that hard, but they were interesting, and I thought generally well-implemented. Most of them felt like the kinds of mental challenges Indy would have been figuring out in the movies, generally baked into the environment in organic ways. There’s a camera you unlock early on as well, and often times taking pictures will prompt Indy to say something that can range from humorous to interesting to outright helpful depending on the context of the moment.
Objectively Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a really
good game. The presentation is fantastic, the environments and puzzles are
interwoven well and the story and characters genuinely feel like they belong in
the Indiana Jones universe. My primary quibble however, is that I personally
just did not enjoy the combat and stealth elements very much. They are a
completely reasonable design choice, but one that did impact my overall
experience. Fans looking for a high octane action game will likely be left
disappointed, though those who have an affection for stealth and exploration as
well as the Indiana Jones IP will likely enjoy their time with this game.
Score: 7 / 10
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