Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review

This is it; the big Xbox Holy Grail to send off 2024. We’ve heard it all before of course; Halo Infinite, Redfall, Starfield, Hellblade 2; all games that were to be the next big thing and turn Xbox’s fate around, and all games that – although mostly good to great – were met with issues and disappointment in one way or another. Well, in MachineGames we trust considering the excellent Wolfenstein titles, and it’s safe to say they haven’t disappointed. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a stellar videogame, leaning on the historic IP and it’s leading man to provide a solid base, and building on top of that a fun, varied gameplay experience that offers far more to get our teeth into than we expected.

It’s testament to The Great Circle that in the 30-odd hours we’ve been playing it, we’ve rarely hit a moment that we wanted to stop playing – much the opposite in fact, as we’ve struggled to find an extra half hour here and there to squeeze more in. It’s the kind of game that we can quite easily lose hours at a time without even realising it.

The likeness of Ford as Indy is utterly incredible – both in visuals and Troy Baker’s performance

We put this down mainly to the variety on offer in The Great Circle. We avoided as much as we could pre-release, and so going in our biggest surprise was that the game is split up into several hub worlds, each with a main mission thread to follow but also dozens of side-quests and activities that are ours to choose in how much we do – or don’t.

We’ll take the first area – the Vatican – as our example. Once we’re settled in, almost the entire area is explorable at our leisure. We can follow the main quest ‘Adventure’ tab, where the story of The Great Circle continues, or delve deeper into the subplots by following the ‘Field Tab’ section. These compliment the main story with meaty extra missions that are well worth exploring for the plot and for the bonuses we can get out of it. Additionally, ‘Mysteries’ are smaller side objectives that range from simply finding a certain amount of collectibles to going down a rabbit hole of lost people and items, extra puzzle rooms, and much more.

Puzzles range from super simple to mildly head-scratching, though when we have a companion they do tend to speak up far too often reminding us there’s a puzzle to solve

Everything we do in The Great Circle rewards us with items, money, or Adventure Points, the latter of which are essential as they allow us to upgrade Indy’s abilities. We’ll also need to search for Adventure Books, again one of the Field Tab objectives, although this one is far more essential as it’s the only way we get new powers and abilities with the use of the Points.

What we’ve found this loop of finding books, gaining points, and then combining them for upgrade do is have us excited and engaged to actually explore the areas. The maps aren’t massive but are filled with areas to explore and get into, and getting the most out of them feels rewarding almost constantly.

It helps that completing the objectives has a fairly freeform approach, letting us tackle things in a far more open manner than we’d expected. Wolfenstein has aspects of this, but the game we kept thinking of while playing was the excellent Dishonoured series. Now, the stealth and open-endedness is not on the level of that masterpiece, but the approach and feel of the gameplay hits a lot of the same notes. Back to the Vatican, and there are several areas within that are blocked off by Nazi’s and seemingly impossible to access. However, a little snooping and we might just find a gap in the fence, or an crawlspace underneath that will make getting in much easier.

The game is full of slapstick comedy reminiscent of the films, but being able to pile up the bodies like so never fails to entertain me

Where the limitations come in in this aspect is in, well, the limitations The Great Circle places on some progression. Once more at the Vatican and we stumbled across two locked doors near a mineshaft. The curiosity got the best of us (as did the clearly visible collectibles on the other side) and we spent a good twenty minutes trying to figure out to open the doors. We tried climbing up and over, going around, looking for other doors, and more, thinking much like Dishonored that a locked door is just a test to figure it out. However, when The Great Circle tells us “this door is locked from the other side”, we should read that as “you’re not allowed in here yet, come back when you’ve progressed the story”. It makes sense, but we wish it would have been clearer that this was a story blocking door rather than a test as elsewhere there are areas as mentioned that seem to be blocked but we can get into if we’re clever. As a result, it can be more prudent to complete the Adventure and Field work missions and keep tabs on any extra missions as you go.

Stealth is a big aspect of The Great Circle, often being the best way to get through a camp of Nazi’s. It’s not the most robust system but it works, and we can knock guards out and hide their bodies to avoid detection. The Nazi’s in The Great Circle aren’t the brightest bunch mind you, and even if we’re in plain sight of them, as long as we get to cover before their awareness meter fills up they’ll soon forget we were ever there. For the most part it works well enough to make sneaking through camps a fun but tense affair, but there’s were a few moments where the illusion was broken as we smashed a spade over one Nazi’s head, only for his friend to be just on the edge of their vision cone and just stand there idly as we dispose of his body, then sneak round ad deliver him the same fate.

It doesn’t always go to plan though, and when we’re spotted we’re treated to some meaty first person melee combat (it’s nice of the heavily armed Nazi’s to often ignore their weapons in favour of a scrap). Indy can swing lefts and rights as long as his stamina meter has some segments left, and can pick up a huge variety of melee weapons to assist, from bog brushes to spades, hammers, batons, and more. These all break after a few uses but there are always many more lying around. We can even use our pistol or one of the Nazi’s guns as melee weapons should we prefer, which is nice. Using them as intended is an underwhelming affair anyway, the feel of gunplay a far cry from the incredible Wolfenstein gunplay, and there’s such little ammo it’s hardly worth getting any practice in.

There are different classes of Nazi to fight, some lightweight recruits, some brawlers, some commanders who will whistle for backup if given the chance. This is to be avoided at all costs – the amount of red exclamation points that pop up when the whistle means it’s likely a death sentence unless we can run away.

There are a lot of cutscenes in The Great Circle but luckily they are all of high quality, often playing out very closely to how a live film would have been shot

In between the open hubs are more linear story beats that offer the most explosive set pieces – we won’t spoil it here, but if you’ve seen the pre-release scene in the snow just know what follows is absolutely riotous movie action fun that looks and sounds incredible to make up for the lack of the more open area’s freeform gameplay.

In fact, the story throughout is captivating thanks to some great twists and reveals, the varied locales, and excellent performances. Naturally, the headline star is – as ever – Troy Baker as Indy. MachineGames have done a stellar job of digitally recreating the look of Harrison Ford of the ’80s, but it’s Baker’s performance that seals the deal. I heard Sam Claiborn on this weeks Gamescoop describe it perfectly; Baker isn’t playing Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones, he is Indiana Jones, and it’s incredible. Baker’s supporting cast must get as much love though, with Alessandra Mastronardi as Gina proving a worthy partner in crime, and Marios Gavrilis as protagonist Voss bringing true action movie villainy to every scene. Between these and the dozen or so extra characters we meet, the story really comes alive in every performance.

Conclusion

All of this amounts to the exact type of praise we hoped we’d be left with; this is Xbox’s definitive game this year, and a perfect love letter to the original films. It captures what made them great in the witty tone, sense of adventure, and captivating mystery and expands it into a full on 30 hour videogame packed with fun and meaningful things to do in addition to the story. Some smarter enemies and a bit more of an expansion to the freedom to solve certain areas our own way would have been welcome, but other than a few minor quibbles Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is a brilliant adventure from start to finish.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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Good
  • Excellent adventure that captures the Indy spirit perfectly
  • Varied mission types and open areas that are fun and rewarding to explore
  • Stellar performances across the board
Bad
  • Some exploration blocked off because 'reasons' but it doesn't make it clear early on
  • Enemies are pretty dumb for the most part
9.5
Excellent
Written by
I've been gaming since Spy vs Spy on the Master System, growing up as a Sega kid before realising the joy of multi-platform gaming. These days I can mostly be found on smaller indie titles, the occasional big RPG and doing poorly at Rainbow Six: Siege. Gamertag: Enaksan

2 Comments

  1. I was so genuinely, pleasantly, surprised by how good Indy was.

    The tutorial is flacid fan service and then the full game was a real delight.

    Reply
  2. Good story dreadful mechanics. A Bethesda
    special ….

    Reply

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