Indiana Jones and The Great Circle Review

Going into Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I had my expectations. I honestly thought the game would simply be a first-person Tomb Raider game, and while I was keen for that, the genre is kind of dry right now. To my disbelief, the game was so much more than tomb-plundering and explosions. Instead, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle captures that essence of watching the movie series while at the same time successfully creating a rather fun video game out of it.

I won’t deny it, the opening portion of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle had me in stitches. MachineGames magically recreated the full intro to Raiders of the Lost Ark in the video game form. We’re talking about all the bad acting, poor costume design, and cheesy dialogue too. While that could put someone off the game initially, I found this to be a timeless introduction to Indy’s new adventure.

If anything, this intro plays into the game’s stellar visuals by delivering a gorgeous and lush jungle to trek through for a few minutes. Of course, Indiana hides his face, and the clever camera work adds to this iconic recreation. The intro also sets up the game’s tone that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle then kicks off with an unfortunate break-in. Indiana’s college is broken into, and an artifact is stolen by an oversized man. This so-called “giant” is played by the late Tony Todd, and there is simply no one else out there who could send chills down my spine in the way he delivers his performances.

It is important to note that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn’t a linear action game where you play through mission after mission. Instead, the game expands into large open-world-like hubs that are teeming with secrets, side missions, and a good chunk of personality. Essentially, this is a sandbox game, and it works.

These dense maps feel like wonderful opportunities to explore carefully crafted locations while picking up brooms to smack enemies over the head with, collecting treasure, reading newspaper articles, and often returning to previously visited areas once you have the right key or puzzle solution.

When I stumbled across a dark set of stairs leading down into a cellar, I always had to pull out my lighter to shine some light in the pitch-black environment. These dank areas feel unexplored with layers of dust covering the furniture and an ambience so real that I could almost smell the damp in the air.

A lot of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s best moments are when the game doesn’t tell you what to do. You have to figure the stuff out for yourself. Combat is very much in line with this. I could pick up virtually any item and bonk enemies on the head. I was also forced to find clever ways to deceive enemies when I accidentally stumbled into restricted zones.

There was a particular moment when I thought I was in a restricted zone. I snuck up behind a guard who saw me and said, “Good day”. I panicked thinking I was about to be caught, so I smacked him over the ledge to his death. As a result, other guards saw his body, and the entire crowd began losing their minds. I found myself in a 10-minute boxing match between a horde of guards while trying to escape through the area. I would hit a few of them, climb up a ledge, swing down a rope, and fight off the next batch.

Now, if that doesn’t sound like something you’ve seen in the movies, you haven’t watched the movies. I don’t know if this “clumsiness” is intentional on MachineGames’ part, but it works. It makes Indiana Jones and the Great Circle incredibly fun.

While I wasn’t uncovering the game’s overall mystery, I was then exploring hubs and completing side quests. Everything you do in the game rewards you with Adventure Points. These are used to unlock abilities, but these have to be discovered by finding books detailing the said skill first.

Yes, this means you’re kind of forced to explore. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. In some ways, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle feels a bit monotonous when it comes to its pacing. I felt as if some hubs overstayed their welcome while the main parts of the story didn’t last long enough.

The exploration can get a tiresome too. Especially when enemies start to detect you and the more “unpolished” mechanics of the game come into play. I get the whole “adventurer” stuff going on here, but after I finished the game, I could not help but feel like my favourite moments were when I wasn’t exploring these larger hubs.

Everything in-between the exploration played out like a brilliant action-adventure game. Puzzles were fun to complete, brawls with enemies were action-packed, and the general dialogue and music combined together to create compelling cutscenes. But then there’s always a few hours of sandbox nonsense that is padded in-between.

If you’re a completionist like me, this isn’t always a bad thing, but I did feel like the in-between stuff simply wasn’t compelling enough to keep me interested. It sort of became work and a checklist of stuff I had to do.

With that being said, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a fun game. It takes a while to get going and often feels like the excitement has more dips than anything else. However, sitting through this, I ended up enjoying this experience more than I thought I would. The game does capture the quirks of Indiana Jones, and the combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving felt like I was roleplaying Indiana.

This Indiana Jones and The Great Circle review is based on a code sent to us by Bethesda Game Studios. The game is available on Xbox and PC.