By 
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle begins with a nearly shot-for-shot recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s famous opening. Why? Well, for one thing, it’s an incredible sequence. It also gives developer MachineGames a chance to show you the gameplay ropes via scenes that perfectly demonstrate nearly everything Indiana Jones is about.
More importantly, that opening sends the clear message that The Great Circle exists to deliver the kind of Indiana Jones gaming experience we’ve never really gotten before. Yes, there have been good Indiana Jones games, but the kind of big-budget adventures required to recreate such an iconic sequence have been few and far between. Meanwhile, otherwise incredible gaming franchises like Uncharted and Tomb Raider have practically built their empires by offering “close enough” Indiana Jones campaigns.
With The Great Circle, MachineGames does more than make up for lost time. They deliver the kind of Indiana Jones experience we never thought we’d see again. In the process, they also help Dr. Jones stake his claim in a medium that owes him a tremendous debt.
The Great Circle Offers the Best Indiana Jones Story in Decades
Set between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, The Great Circle properly begins with a mysterious large man stealing one of Indiana Jones’ prized artifacts. While searching for that item, Jones uncovers another Nazi plot to use ancient artifacts to take over the world. This time, it seems the Nazis and their allies are following the titular Great Circle, a mythical path around the globe that they believe will lead them to a tremendous treasure.
It would be a crime to tell you any more about The Great Circle’s narrative. MachineGames has always been an excellent storytelling studio, but they’ve outdone themselves this time. It’s not just the genuinely compelling twists and the ways they are perfectly placed throughout a globetrotting adventure; it’s the way that every inch of this game’s narrative and presentation so clearly demonstrate how much this team understands and loves this franchise.
Yes, The Great Circle features timeline-appropriate callbacks to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom. However, the game rarely relies on mere easter eggs. Even the legendary Indiana Jones theme is used sparsely and with great care. MachineGames is more interested in using the considerable technological advantages of this medium to craft what is essentially a “lost” Indiana Jones movie that never got made during the creative prime of the series.
So far as that goes, voice actor Troy Baker deserves love for essentially playing a 1980s version of Harrison Ford. Rather than settle for an SNL-like impersonation, though, Baker delivers a performance that feels close enough to being “his own” while still forcing you to stop and remember that is not Ford spitting out one-liners in the VO booth. Without that performance, the dream experience this game aspires to deliver would have fallen apart.
It’s not just Baker, though. The Great Circle’s cast is packed with actors who are clearly thrilled to be playing some of the best characters in any Indiana Jones story. Hearing the late Tony Todd play the mysterious Locus is an obvious highlight, though the show is often stolen by Marios Gavrilis’ portrayal of Emmerich Voss, a rival archeologist who finds new and surprising ways to remind us why Nazis are evergreen villains.
Mind you, there are some lowlights in this area of the game. Indy’s main companion, reporter Gina Lombardi, is often forced to fulfill the “sidekick who is mysteriously great at lockpicking” role, and the plot does veer into some wild mystical territory that I think MachineGames has handled a bit better in their Wolfenstein series. The game also relies on played-out design tricks, such as hidden loading screens in crawlspaces, that occasionally undermine the brilliance of its narrative.
Still, calling this the best Indiana Jones story of the last 30 years is a tragic understatement. Remarkably, that story isn’t even The Great Circle’s best feature.
The Great Circle’s Gameplay Lets You Make It Up as You Go
We’d seen very little of The Great Circle’s gameplay in the lead up to the game’s release, which is usually be a red flag. But in this instance, it turns out that MachineGames may have been trying to hide the ways The Great Circle essentially delivers a Thief-like immersive sim experience disguised as an Indiana Jones title.
The Great Circle’s main “levels” are sizeable hubs filled with hidden items and side quests. For instance, the early Vatican City area allows you to participate in an underground fascist boxing ring (if you can find the right disguise, of course) or help a priest rescue his captured assistant. All the while, you’re encouraged to stay on the lookout for hidden items, stat-bolstering food and fruit, cash, and other collectible goodies.
These objectives are compelling and extend the game beyond the 10-12 hours it will take you to complete the main quest. However, they often also reward you with Adventure Points that can be used to learn new skills from hidden books scattered throughout the major areas. The economy of encouraging you to find those books and the points required to unlock their abilities flows beautifully, feels true to the adventurous nature of the character, and grants the game the kind of depth we’re just not used to seeing in other action-adventure titles.
Impressively, that depth extends beyond those optional activities. The Great Circle often offers you multiple ways to overcome its various challenges or otherwise encourages you to think just a little harder than you would in similar titles. Enemy encampments can be overcome in several different ways, areas are largely free to be explored as you’d like, and the game’s puzzles are both abundant and surprisingly challenging. They are not Myst-like mind-benders by any means (and the game offers generous hints and puzzle difficulty options), but they’re substantial enough to make you feel like you’re raiding a tomb rather than inching through a pre-determined progression path.
Unfortunately, the game’s combat and stealth aren’t nearly as satisfying as its puzzles and quests. Sneaking around enemies is often as simple as crouching and making sure you don’t fill a guard’s awareness meter too quickly. Shooting is very bullet-spongy and nowhere near as good as what you’ll find in Wolfenstein. Most melee fights boil down to a repetitious series of simple strikes regulated by your stamina bar. In theory, it’s incredibly enjoyable to punch a Nazi in the face or crack a toilet plunger over their head. In practice, enemy encounters quickly become repetitive.
When it comes to big set piece action moments, The Great Circle is as thrilling as anything else out there. In terms of moment-to-moment combat, though, it lacks the simple, yet satisfying, gunplay of the Uncharted franchise or the more creative blends of stealth and violence found in the recent Tomb Raider games. While I understand the decision to de-emphasize the freedom to commit violence in an Indiana Jones game, that doesn’t quite explain why the individual components of the game’s combat are so basic given that MachineGames has offered better versions of those components in their other titles.
Yet, we’re ultimately talking about a relatively minor shortcoming in what is clearly MachineGames’s greater quest to use Indiana Jones as the face of a necessary evolution for the action-adventure genre.
Uncharted Territory
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle could have been an Uncharted game starring Indiana Jones, and it probably still would have ended up being the best Indiana Jones game ever made. After all, Uncharted has long been referred to as Naughty Dog’s attempt to give us the Indiana Jones game we’d given up on ever playing, and we’ve been happy to have it.
With The Great Circle, though, MachineGames showcases the many flaws in that seemingly simple comparison. We tend to remember Indiana Jones as the larger-than-life center of incredible action set piece moments. The truth is that Indiana Jones is a throwback to the adventure heroes of old. He debuted before the action films of the 1980s turned action heroes into gun-toting, bar-brawling, nigh-invincible specimens who calmly walk away from the explosion they likely caused. In many ways, Nathan Drake and the Uncharted games feel like a version of Indiana Jones filtered through that era of cinematic action.
The real Indiana Jones is intelligent, vulnerable, and willing to get physical only if it means making himself the barrier between evil and the integrity of humanity. He’s an explorer, not a conqueror. An academic, not an assassin. When you play MachineGames’ interpretation of that character, you’ll realize how often we’ve been settling for mere aspects of Indiana Jones in even the best games inspired by his legacy.
More than staying true to the character they love, MachineGames has delivered the trojan horse that action-adventure games need right now. We may never get the full-throated return of immersive sims like Deus Ex, Dishonored, and Prey, or even more exploration-based FPS games like Condemned and The Chronicles of Riddick. We’re told that their disappointing sales just don’t justify their creative brilliance.
Yet, by delivering a far more accessible version of those games starring a legendary character, MachineGames argues that there is a world beyond the linear, sometimes overly-cinematic action-adventure titles designed using the Uncharted mold. I love those games, but they’ve become the standard at the cost of more substantial experiences. With Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Naughty Dog tried to offer players a bit more freedom, but they didn’t come close to producing the kind of immersive adventure that The Great Circle offers at its best.
Truth be told, I believe that MachineGames has an even better Indiana Jones game in them. For now, though, it’s more than enough that they’ve delivered the most fulfilling Indiana Jones game ever while clearing the road for the return of a better kind of AAA action-adventure game. Most importantly, they’ve reminded us that our love for Indiana Jones isn’t rooted in nostalgia for movies gone by but rather in our appreciation of the fact that when he’s treated right, there is no other hero quite like him.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle releases on Dec. 9 on Xbox Series X/S and PC. It will hit PlayStation 5 in 2025.
The post Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Does What Uncharted Never Could appeared first on Den of Geek.
