Looking for a comprehensive Indiana Jones: & The Great Circle Review? We’ve got you covered! After 15 Years it’s time to dust off the sable fedora, holster the Bull Whip, and head for an Archaeological mystery with Professor Jones. Here is our Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review.
Developed by Machine Games and Published by Bethesda. Indiana Jones has been a long time returning to the gaming landscape, only not as you expected. From the team that brought us Wolfenstein The New Order, Old Blood, and New Colossus comes an adventure straight from the Big Screen, staring the likeness of Harrison Ford and Voiced by Tory Baker, will you brave the mysteries, and don the Hat and Whip when Adventure Calls?
STORY
Sandwiched Between two of the mainline titles in the Indian Franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, this time sees the Professor and Archaeologist hunting for something that was more or less thrown his way, the Great Circle. While the name of the game is a bit of an enigma when you first start it up, the first time Indy or any other character mentions the term “The Great Circle” is in the Vatican where Indy is tracking down a giant who stole the mummified remains of a cat.
As the adventure continues, I got the sense of an Uncharted vibe about the game, and upon closer inspection, it’s clear that the two share more than just a love for adventure and fortune. Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise centres around the grave-robber and fortune hunter Nathan Drake who is normally one of the smartest guys around in terms of the adventure and the history behind it. Indy is much the same but from a different era only he is a teacher and archaeologist. In hindsight there isn’t much between an archaeologist and fortune hunter, Indy at least does try to leave historical discoveries how he finds them more or less, Drake normally demolishes them.
Getting back to the story of the game, when starting up you are thrown into an adventure where you are not really sure where you will end up or what it is you are actually after, in the aforementioned Uncharted series, throughout all 4 games you are always introduced to the end goal within the first chapter or 2, with The Great Circle you wait what seemed like a lifetime to be told you are hunting for the thing… if the name wasn’t an indication. What I mean is Indy starts out looking for the mummified remains of a cat from an excavation in Siwa from some months prior to the game start, this soon changes with the interference of German troops in the Vatican and the discovery that they are hunting for the Great Circle to advance Hitler’s War machine. Do keep in mind that Indy has had a confrontation with them a year prior (1936) with his search for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, and this was before the initial events of the Second World War.
As the Adventure continues Indy finds himself going from the Vatican in Rome to Giza in Egypt, all the way to the Himalayan Mountains and even to Shanghai, those of you who know the films might have noticed a reversal of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom here. Overall, it’s a really nice take on “A Return to the Roots” but in terms of story the game does as much to put you on the edge of your seat as the films do, it’s hard to say Indy misses a beat considering this is a “Player Controlled Experience” but there are some sequences where things might have worked out better.
Although this is a rather impressive adventure there are 2 main landscapes that jump out at me, the first is the Himalayan Mountains where Indy investigates something out of the ordinary and the second is Shanghai where conflict rages. Both of these are incredible looks into the adventure Indy is following and remarkably made worlds, however, my favorite is the Himalayan Mountains. The reason for this is that it is out of the ordinary and unique. Without giving away the story The environment features a precariously balanced German warship on a ridge where it tilts in the wind. Upon seeing it, the image of the Crashed U-boat in the middle of the jungle from Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Comes to mind, however this one is probably more impressive. While in Shanghai you are traversing a small section of the city by foot before taking to the skies to escape the Japanese assault. You even have the chance to relive that “Sorry Son, They Got Us!” from the Last Crusade, before jumping from your little biplane to a Japanese fighter plane.
One of the most interesting parts of the game comes from the Myths it follows, while it is technically a religious thing and I am not getting into that, the use of the terminology “The Great Circle” has much deeper meaning ranging from Mathematics to Stories, and even Science. The way the story is hidden in plain sight until it is revealed to the player is a fascinating aspect of the game and Machine Games has done more than a superb job of making Indy return to the Gaming landscape. As a note for the story, I can’t wait to play the post-launch content “The Order Of Giants” and find out what happens next for both Indy and the Nephilim, and even replay the game on PS5.
Mechanics, Graphics, & Technical things
Mechanically the game plays like a standard FPS, the power of the game comes from the distinctive Lack of Firearms during a lot of the game (This was a personal choice). Where Indy will and can use guns, he instead favors his Whip and fists for handling situations. This isn’t to say he doesn’t have a Revolver or wouldn’t use a gun, it is more of a case like Kiryu from the Yakuza Series, anyone who knows Indy knows he uses a Whip and his fists, utilizing a gun not much of the time. Kiryu won’t kill, and Indy feels the same, at least in my mind. Sure there are sequences where he does kill, in the Last Crusade he shoots one round and kills 3 guys for example, or in The Temple of Doom there is a whip guy and Indy shoots him. While you might feel underpowered or vulnerable without some long-range ballistics option, Machine Games has made it really leveled to make you feel like you are always in control of situations, after all you can only shoot a gun if you have the bullets a whip will work without!
The power of this “Controlled Situation” likely comes from putting “Terror-Billy” from Wolfenstein in scenarios where any normal person would inevitably die, however, with Indy it’s a lot harder, being that he has close-range combat and a Whip. The fact of combat situations best shows this, I ran into a restricted area and got so many enemies after me, I was sure I was going to die but the system is pretty smart. While I was underpowered to take on an army of guards the game made it easy to deal with 20 – 30 enemies with no trouble and without the need of the Whip. It also helps that there were only 2 guys who rushed me when I was backed into a corner, so instead of dealing with them all at the same time, you can divide attention between 2. Using only counterattacks you can slowly chip away at any number of enemies after you, making it the perfect way to deal with combat, simply block an attack and then pick the RT or LT to counter the attack. If it came from the Right counter Left and from the Left counter Right, it’s that simple.
Adding to this one of the nice features of the combat is seeing the enemies take visual damage, this means that every hit you deal to them you will see some damage on their face. While this is only a small detail and it also shows the fatigue the enemy has sustained during the combat, it is nice to know Indy’s hits have some power behind them.
On the note of combat, the Whip can be used to disarm enemies making it easier to take them using their own weapons. However, I didn’t see a use for this past getting the achievement since combat is so fluidly handled. The only exception to this is heavy attacks which couldn’t be blocked, if this changes with a skill book it is unclear as I didn’t find one at the time of writing, which would help with this. On the note of disarming, gun-wielding enemies are somewhat harder to tackle head-on, disarming them or utilizing a stealthy approach is advised but not always necessary. On the note of utilising the Whip in combat, there is something which I would have liked to see, which would have been to utilize the Whip to pull objects like weapons to Indy. While they have physics and can be moved by walking into them or whipping near them, Indy can’t pull then to him directly with the Whip.
While we have touched on a few of the vast mechanical systems within the game there are so many more, like puzzles, lockboxes, combination locks, and even investigations. While they are interesting I would like to draw attention back to how the game works for now. We have stated it is an FPS, a First-Person Shooter, but there are sequences of player interaction where the game shifts to a TPS, a Third-Person Shooter. These sequences are when Indy is, for lack of a better word, performing Parkour maneuvers. Things like a step-up climb aren’t included but jumping up to reach a ledge, swinging using the Whip, or Whip climbing sees the game shift to a Third-Person perspective, where Indy uses Aim Offsets to look at locations where the camera is pointing.
In addition to this when you look down you also have a full 3rd person body waiting for you, as opposed to older COD games where you are just some freaky floating thing.
One of the ways that you can get around areas without being recognized as Doctor Henry “Indiana” Jones is to utilize disguises. This simple and yet powerful mechanic is pretty well implemented making the game more of a tactical and stealth-orientated adventure where combat takes a backseat to the more covert and almost spy-like systems of deception. Personally, this felt like playing Hitman at times where you had to keep a mind on what was going on and how best to approach situations, some enemies would see through any deception and others would let you walk through without a problem. This also is added to by certain areas being locked off to different disguises. That being said Indy’s Traditional wear, his Leather Jacket and Hat is always a perfect match.
One final thing to touch On mechanically is the fast travel system. This is an interesting and clever implementation to navigate the rather big maps you play in a short time, the only downside to it is you need to have visited the area first. They are portrayed by signposts which direct people around, only for Indy it can literally fast-travel him to a different location within the world. This is coupled with the locational travel system, letting the player return to a previous location such as the Vatican, or Boston.
Graphically, the game is incredible and at times doesn’t feel like you are playing a game, instead, it feels like you are in an Indiana Jones movie. That being said on my Series S this can be a little bit of a letdown. the main reason is when you get up close to something the Textual density and topological flow of assets tends to break down. This, presumably would be better on the Series X as the hardware is somewhat better, and although it is not available yet, presumably stunning on the PS5.
Looking at the characters, they not only resemble the characters they are meant to be, Indy looking like Harrison Ford for example, but they sound like the characters from the feature films. At the start, we touched on the look and sound of Doctor Jones, but Indy isn’t the only one who fits their live-action counterpart. There is also Marcus who is seen at the beginning of the game in the break-in.
Although the main cast looks right there are also hundreds of characters throughout the game who play an incredibly important role in how the game feels from random citizens to guards, to the people at the Vatican, they all look like you could walk up and ask for information. That being said there are some glitches with the characters, the biggest one that was a weird one was when the eyes of a character are closed you can still see their eyes through their eyelids. Now we all know the trick of placing a bucket on the head of a character and then looting them for all they are worth from Starfield and Skyrim, however, this trick doesn’t seem to work in Indy sadly and given the fact that they can probably still see you when they have their eyes closed I wouldn’t put money on the safety of the bucket trick.
Moving onto the world, there were times when I could just sink into the adventure of The Great Circle but was always pulled back by some silly error, which we will address in the conclusion. The world which has been built is full of life, is changing, and feels like a pre-war world. While the game is set in 1937 and you travel all over, Boston, the Vatican, and Shanghai to name a few, there is always that nagging sense in the back of your mind that there is war on the horizon, the most prominent red flag is the guards at the Vatican armed with Mosin Nagant Rifles. A bigger one is the Battlegrounds of Shanghai, which shows the horror of what will unfold in the coming years for Indy.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, the game is far better than I had anticipated. Where I was really skeptical about a First-Person Indiana Jones game since I personally feel it could only work as a Third-Person, what Machine Games has managed to achieve with The Great Circle is nothing short of a Masterpiece. This might be high praise but honestly after Wolfenstein, I was looking for something to blow me away with how spectacular it was. Growing up with the Indiana Jones movies this seemed to hold promise but coming from the team that made the expertly crafted parallel World War 2 shooter games which are based on Science Fiction and Scientific developments didn’t fill me with confidence.
Aesthetically I really enjoyed the way they made the game so in sync with the films, from looks to animation, Audio to Gameplay, and even the cover art following the original lines of the film’s promotional posters, every aspect of the game is fantastic. One of the best surprises was the Traveling between locations in the story, from Boston to the Vatican for example. It has the Indiana theme playing and the mode of transport ghosted behind a map with a line drawing the path.
Another part of this that was really nice is the main menu. When you drop the game to end your gaming session and return to it later the main menu changes to your last checkpoint, showing you where you left off On that save before you load into the game. Personally this was an incredibly nice feature that can be missed since there are so many checkpoints in the game you might only see one or two.
With everything there are flaws and unfortunately Indy has some of them. Now I spent a good few hours and even days looking for some obvious problems in each environment before being forced to press on and learn more about the game. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the lack of obviously available problems within the game. Where we have seen lots of problems in games from Geometry clipping, to overlapping meshes, and even textual fighting, Indy has a remarkable lack of these and you really have to look and hunt around for them to become obvious.
One of the glaringly obvious errors can be seen when you pick up a guard who you knock out near a wall, see where I’m going with this? If you happen to have a guard who is knocked out near a wall, when you come to move them they will clip through the wall. While this isn’t bad it does break the illusion of the game. Machine Games have made it so that weapons won’t clip through the world when you walk up to a wall, which is something that I was pleased with. This means that when you approach a wall Indy will pull the weapon away from the wall making it so clipping isn’t an issue.
As stated there is a distinct lack of errors in the world however we have found some. Mostly located in the Vatican, where there is a high density of industrial space (There are probably more elsewhere in the game but I personally liked this environment’s peacefulness and ended up staying here for a good while) there are small errors which are easy to catch the attention of passing players. Things like clipping meshes, and misalignment of world objects. While these aren’t bad by any stretch of the imagination they are obvious when you see them.
While this isn’t exactly a problem per se it is something that caught my attention and made me more cautious about progressing after a certain point. Once you have the Camera from the Vatican shop you will be able to take photos, this is an interesting system as it grants Achiology Points as well as getting to explore parts of the world in a way you might miss. The bad side of this is that it pops an absolutely tiny indicator on the HUD to let you know that there is a photo opportunity. While this isn’t a bad thing I found that I needed to go over areas a few times to be able to find everything I was looking for and it made clearing parts of the game feel more like a backbreaking chore rather than a fun side activity.
While aesthetics aren’t the only part of a game we also have audio, and there is a slight glitch which relates to the AI. While running around guards will hear you and investigate if you are in a restricted area, however, I had it in one part where I was running and there were walls and locked doors between us and guards still wanted to investigate. While this might be a simple fix, I am pretty sure that even someone with expert hearing can’t hear you moving through a thick brick wall and door. This brings us to the next part we find an issue with, which is the AI Sense. AI Sense is what the AI will use to basically detect things, be that a player, an NPC, or a dead body. Whether this was down to the Series S or a glitch it’s unclear but a lot of the time I found that the patrolling guards didn’t detect unconscious allies even when they walked over their bodies, heartless they may be, brainless they certainly are. Although this regards the animation of Indy, it is something that can tie into the locomotion systems of AI-controlled characters. While I was using the Whip to swing between points I noticed that the animation blending between the Swinging Loop and the Mantling Loop was a little mismatched, by this I mean it is very forced if you perform this action in a confined area. It is almost like the Mantle isn’t needed and a straight landing animation is needed but the game doesn’t know what to do to get the player from point A to point B. Going back to the AI, this happened when AI was transitioning from one surface type to another, in my instance, it was in the Dig Site in the Vatican.
From a personal standpoint point I am amazed by the amount of life which Machine Games has put into the game, filling it with not just humanoid characters but animals as well. Both friendly and hostile animals are in the game, while hostile animals seem to only be dogs and combat with them is somewhat troublesome, (you don’t seem to be able to knock them out) they are another animal variation in the game. The ones that I would like to draw attention to are the Toucan at the very beginning and the cats that are scattered throughout the game-populated areas like the Vatican. While normally they wouldn’t catch my attention being a simple detail in a world that is so packed, the cats are interesting details to the world. Mostly you find them up high on roofs or construction zones so places not many people would venture to.
On a final note for aesthetics, there is so much in the game which can go unnoticed from the flickering flames to water caution or footprints on surfaces. There is even dust that gets kicked up as Indy moves around and the lighting effect from dark areas into the light of the sun or floodlights is blinding. But above all these the one thing I felt that would go unnoticed most of all is the physics system. This is because it has 2 parts, item physics and then demolition physics. We have mentioned the item’s physics but there are also demolition physics which apply to mostly wooden assets in the game. If you throw someone against a chair or table check out the cool breaking objects.
Before we close off there is one more thing that should be said about the combat, which is it’s not always about fighting someone Indy’s height, or build. While this is referring to something story-related, and although I don’t like writing about things that will spoil the game there was a single event that made me worry about being able to continue. This combat encounter is against the Nephilim Locus, now the Nephilim are, in this terminology, Giants or people who are taller than average, and until the end of the game, I felt this guy was coming back again and again to take pieces out of me. To put it into perspective fighting this guy let me know what it would be like to fight Jaws from the Ian Fleming stories about British Agent 007. He can really take a beating and still keep coming back.
In addition to this, there is a set of skills called Lucky Hat which will let Indy return to combat if he is knocked out. While this is extremely useful and even more important very Indiana, it is not always usable. This is due to the prior mentioned disguise system, if you are in disguise you won’t have your hat to save you and you will need to be more careful not to undertake more than you can handle, whether this changes for the different levels of the skill book I can’t comment.
As a final word for the game, I really enjoyed it and hope the DLC is equally enjoyable. The last time I can recall an Indy Video game which was appealing was in the Mid to late 2000s – 2010 which as we know didn’t happen. The game was based on the Euphoria System where combat could be different for each impact and personally back then it seemed so appealing, around the time there were other games that were in the works that didn’t happen, Rockstar’s The Agent, Lucus Arts Star Wars 1313, and Highlander (Let’s not get picky I know this Indiana Jones game that I am referring to could be Staff of Kings But let’s say it’s not, since the Euphoria demo looked nicer than the finished Staff of Kings from an animation standpoint). Now that we are finally seeing an Indiana Game that, shall we say rocked the boat, I would hope that we might see some of these titles resurface and maybe give some insight into wonderous stories which have yet to be told.
So to close off, Where will Adventure take you? Will you join us on the journy to find The Great Circle?
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