Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review: Is this the 1st Great Indy Game?

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was a confusing game for me since it was announced. I wondered after all the box office flops if people still cared about the franchise or if this game would attract a younger audience. I also wondered how a Indiana Jones game would play and if the game would be would be able to break out of the shadow of comparison that would likely come due to Uncharted and Tomb Raider. So how is the game? Is it a good single player experience and should you play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle? 

Now before we begin, I must confess that I’m not the biggest Indiana Jones fan. I don’t dislike the movie franchise, but even after watching the movies I never found myself wowed or as infatuated. Maybe it’s because this 90’s kid watched the Mummy movies before Indiana Jones, but I found myself enjoying those movies much more. 

So keep that in mind as for this review. 

Let’s dive into it. 

Narrative: 

In Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, you play as the man himself, Indiana Jones. The man starts off minding his business doing his job, and a mysterious intruder brings him into a mystery that takes him around the world. The story reminded me a lot of the movies and the is great for fans. I do think it has massive pacing issues, but the story is decent for an non-fan like myself and likely great for massive fans of the IP. 

The narrative starts off strong with its first two levels delivering fast paced strong linear experiences that feel very Indiana Jones. The first big section of the game, the Vatican, is the Semi-open world area that kills all the momentum of the game and this starts the theme of pacing issues that plague the story throughout the game. 

Gameplay: 

In this game you will melee, shoot, sleuth and stealth your way throughout world as Indiana Jones uncovers the mystery of the Great Circle. Puzzles and stealth(more on that in a bit) is the bulk of the gameplay. Fortunately, the puzzles in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle offer more variety than the combat sections, and they stand out as one of the game’s main highlights. While there aren’t many of them — as puzzles typically appear between the game’s larger sections — they are diverse enough that each one feels like an exciting challenge to solve when it comes up.

In Indiana Jones, you mostly play in a first-person viewpoint out side of clubbing and some small other moments. This helps differentiate the game from others in the genre specifically Tomb raider and Uncharted. I know many people or a bit uneasy about this design choice, but Machine Games made it work enough to stand out. 

With that said it’s unfortunate that while all the gameplay elements are serviceable, nothing stands out as special or even great. The stealth is simple especially for a game made in this era. You can knock someone out with a guitar or bottle and a person across the room won’t notice. The enemies go back to what they were doing stupidly fast if your discovered even after you harmed and killed multiple people. I’m addition to that the melee aspect of the game, while fun is simplistic and gets old quickly. 

Additional Pros:

The one area of this game that you can’t knock is the presentation aspect of it. While it’s not going to be the premiere game that I used to showcase graphics, the game looks great on the Series X and solid on the Series S. The Cinematic scenes presentation feels like both a good Indiana Jones film and a modern day middle budget movie. 

The game’s soundtrack and score is fantastic bring in the music. 

The voice acting is another area that is superb. Troy Baker delivers such a stellar performance as the voice of Indiana Jones that I had to constantly remind myself that it’s not Harrison Ford. The other members of the crew deliver a solid performance as well which blends in the other aspects of the presentation to make this a story that many would find closer to being on Par with the classic trilogy as opposed to the disjointed mess of the modern Indiana Jones films. 

The game has a numerous amount of set pieces, some of which are linear and some of which are semi-open world style areas. Most are fairly detailed and layered enough that you don’t feel like your traversing the same areas over and over. 

Additional Pros Part 2:

One of the game’s most impressive features is how it dynamically updates the main menu image based on your progress. When you reload the game, it overlays the menu onto your current scene, and when you select “continue,” it smoothly transitions into the gameplay. It’s incredibly cool! Each room and dungeon is highly detailed, though some repeated assets detract from the immersion. The level design evokes comparisons to Dishonored, with opportunities to climb rooftops and sneak undetected.

Every character is believable and has their own motivations. They don’t just exist to push Indy further along. It’s every bit of an Indiana Jones adventure. The voice acting has to support that, and Troy Baker’s version of Indiana Jones is nearly indistinguishable from Harrison Ford’s voice. Given that the game takes place between Raiders and The Last Crusade, Baker needed to lose himself in the role.

puzzles in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are more varied than the game’s combat sections, and these are one of the highlights of the experience. There aren’t that many of them — puzzles tend to crop up in-between the game’s bigger areas — but they’re mostly different enough that whenever one appears, you’re looking forward to figuring it out.

Cons:

A small con is that it’s inconsistent with skipping cutscenes. Some you can stop and others won’t let you at all. Normally I’m fine with that, but there were quite a few moments were the story was a slog and skipping some moments might have made up for that a bit. 

Let’s be honest here. This is a good, but nothing outside of the visuals is great. Is the game great at stealth, No. Is it great at combat, just average. Are the NPCs responsive, adaptive, and realistic? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact there are moments when the NPCs will hear a long crash, hear me hit a man with a guitar close by, or see a downed ally and quickly go back to doing what they were doing. Is that an Indiana Jones trait, yes it is, but it doesn’t make for a great stealth system. Enemy AI is so simplistic that I could use the same repetitive techniques throughout the game. The enemy AI is laughably weak. Even on the highest difficulty, I could easily cheese my way through crowds of enemies. Early-game combat relies heavily on melee fights, but later you can pick up weapons—only to find that Indiana Jones can’t hold onto them for long.

When this game flow initially started to take shape, we were really enjoying what The Great Circle had to offer. The Vatican level is absolutely gorgeous, and once we’d been directed to a local vendor to pick up a rickety old camera, we were enjoying some chilled out exploring and picture-taking as the game’s main quest began to unfold. However, even as just the first of these big open areas, The Vatican level eventually began to outstay its welcome, and that’s something we felt through a lot of this new Indiana Jones adventure.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from some confusing or useless mechanics, such as the map. While opening a map doesn’t pause the action and allows us to continue walking, it’s not fully visible, and we have to move the camera around to get a better view of it to see where we’re going. Another issue is switching from first to third person, which is a completely unnecessary action, like opening a door, picking up objects, and other actions that don’t really add anything to the gameplay.

Should you play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: 

Honestly this is a tough question to answer because on one hand I could see how a lot of people would really dig this game. For Indiana Jones fans in particular I can see why this would be a dream game. It feels very much like you’re playing an Indiana Jones adventure. With that said no I wonder if everything that is being presented with this game on the positive side outweighs all negatives. This game has pacing problems, the combat especially the melee and shooting get old fast, and the stealth feels like “baby’s first stealth game on it’s simplicity.” This game is hard to recommend because it is so middle of the road in a lot of aspects that it depends on who you are as a gamer if you are going to enjoy the game. 

If you’re a Indiana Jones fan, a fan of easy First-person stealth games, and don’t mind repetitive gameplay then this game might be for you. If none of those things sound like who you are as a gamer then you might need to skip this adventure.