Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - 9/10
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not a perfect game, but it might be the perfect Indiana Jones game. Those are strong words and hopefully I can back them up.
Before I can say how it’s perfect, I need to explain what I would want from an Indiana Jones game: it needs to capture the spirit of the character and the movies, and it needs to feel like I’m living out an adventure as Indy, albeit gamified. So then, what is the spirit of Indiana Jones?
Well, it’s aloof. It’s not too serious, despite having incredibly high stakes. It’s panache and style, but with hints of buffoonery. And, despite all their flaws, I think the original three Indiana Jones movies and Harrison Ford give us all that. A goofy character with a cavalcade of loveable friends, forced into the most serious of situations. And the game gives us that the entire way, from gameplay, to the cutscenes, to side-dialogue, and just the events and scenarios you’re put in.
The game starts out with you reliving the opening scenes from Temple of Doooooom before waking up in the museum, where something’s afoot. Of course, being Indiana Jones, we have to check it out, and what we find is a literal giant, who kicks our ass, and steals something. This is what kick-starts our adventure. Just like in the movies, there’s a catalyst to everything, something that gives Indy purpose. Having this hook, this setup makes total sense in the context of a game, but it’s done exactly how the movies would, again, just gamified. We actually get to fight the giant and experience the museum getting wrecked as a side-effect. We get to piece together what was stolen, side by side with Marcus, slowly putting artifacts back where they came from. And then we get to trace the giant’s path through the museum, looking for a clue that will give us our first destination. And that’s exactly how everything plays out.
Now, I promise, I’m not going to compare the game to the movies shot for shot, but I wanted to highlight how much effort was put in, and how good of a job MachineGames did right from the start.
And that’s something worth noting, that this was developed by MachineGames, the same devs that rebooted Wolfenstein to great success in the 2010s. After playing through The Great Circle, it’s easy to see how their experience transferred over. Big set-pieces, prominent stealth mechanics, and good gunplay all feel like shared DNA with the Wolfenstein games. This is by no means a Wolfenstein game, though, it definitely sets itself apart.
The game sees you travelling across the world chasing the shapeshifting (not literally) MacGuffin in typical Indiana Jones fashion. This sees you fighting fascists (Nazi’s included) in wildly different locales, each with their own flair, story, and side characters. And that’s a place The Great Circle really shines, is in it’s performances. All the main cast is exceptional, embodying their characters pretty much perfectly, but likewise, the side characters are just as well written and acted. I’d go as far as saying this is the best acted game I’ve ever played, or it’s at least on-par with other stand-outs like The Last of Us, though it’s hard to compare them apples to apples, when their tones are so different.
Beyond the voice cast, the rest of the game is good too. Maybe not as exceptional as the voice acting, but nothing felt cumbersome, tedious, or annoying. The puzzles were well made, the combat was fun with a good amount of depth, the exploration feels satisfying, and the different areas of the game are well-made. I could keep going, but I’m sure you get the point: there aren’t too many things that stand out, good or bad, and it’s overall just a fun adventure.
I’ve left out one big part of the game that really made it shine for me: the villain. Emmerich Voss is a Nazi archaeologist who is on a quest to get a series of artifacts he believes have the power to influence the ongoing war. He has simple motives, but what makes him stand out, is the voice acting. It might be the best single performance I’ve heard in a game. Again, comparing it to The Last of Us, Marios Gavrilis’s performance as Voss is on par with Ashley Johnson’s performance as Ellie. There are just so many moments where you find yourself hating Voss, and that usually only happen with good writing and great acting, both of which are present here.
But let’s step back from the performances and talk about some more merits of the game.
I think they dealt with the monotony of the game very well, better than a lot of games tend to. Just in case you’ve never thought about it, doing the same thing in a game for 20+ hours on end will get boring, no matter how fun it is, if it’s not broken up in some way. Games usually do this by introducing new gameplay mechanics throughout, and maybe having set-pieces like an on-rails section, or maybe they’re like It Takes Two and they constantly change the gameplay up in each area. In the case of The Great Circle, I don’t think it would have been feasible to constantly change mechanics, and what they could add in was finite. They’re working within a set universe, and it wouldn’t make sense for Indy to suddenly start carrying around a rocket launcher to blast his way into tombs. So what MachineGames did was vary the gameplay using the different levels. One area is somewhat restricted, lots of indoors gameplay, winding hallways and locked doors. Another area is in a wide, open area with tremendous sightlines. And another sees you trudging through the snow and clamoring along cliff faces. The fundamentals don’t change much, if at all between each level, but where you’re doing them does, and it was enough to break things up for me.
One thing I haven’t mentioned so far is that the game is pretty buggy. Nothing major (that I experienced, at least), but I did have a few bugs around the achievements. For example, I was able to avoid it, but if you happen to do the final puzzle in two parts, one when you first encounter it, and one when you get the final collectible after beating the game, you don’t get the achievement for getting all the collectibles because it’s based on you having all 50 in your inventory at one time. For me, this simply meant taking every single relic out of a wall puzzle and redoing it. For others, they weren’t able to get the achievement because the relics disappear after you put the final one in place. It might not seem like a big deal, after all, only a few percent of people are going to get everything for the final puzzle, and fewer still will be trying to get all achievements, but those are the people that put the most time into the game, and they’re the ones getting shafted. There’s also a fun bug that happens with some of the collectible photos. It happened for one to me, but others have reported multiple throughout the game. This renders you unable to get all notes in the game, at least normally, again, preventing someone from getting all achievements.
Despite the couple bugs that I encountered at the very end, I really enjoyed my time with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. It’s by no means a perfect game, and honestly, it might not even be worth playing if you aren’t an Indiana Jones fan. But I am an Indiana Jones fan, and I absolutely loved my experience. I definitely don’t think people should try and 100% the game, but there’s a lot of love and care that was put into making it, even in the smaller parts like the notes you collect throughout. It’s overall my favorite piece of Indiana Jones media; they managed to capture all the essentials, while getting rid of the racism and misogyny that plagued the movies. So if you are an Indy fan, and you’re interested in a new story, maybe for a new generation, please buy Game Pass for a month and enjoy yourself.
- Zack/AlaskanBeard
P.S. Thanks for reading, as always. If you want more content from me, check out the links below.