Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – MachineGames Kills Fascists

The arrival of a new AAA Indiana Jones game in 2024 is a bit of a surprise on a number of grounds. First, this is some commitment to a franchise that means little to anyone born later than 1980 and has been diminished by a run of underwhelming and under-performing sequels.

Bethesda’s Tom Howard (the publishers in this case) has gone on the record saying that they wanted to see Indy “done right”. If the aim was to exorcise his fanfiction into reality, then fair play. This is, hands down, the most “Indy” Indiana Jones has been since The Last Crusade back in 1989. You could even go as far to say that Troy Baker’s performance in the role is more than just a Harrison Ford impersonation and delivers on what has been lacking in the more recent films. This, combined with the score, location and setting (hey, even the choice of the title card fonts) leave you in no doubt that you are firmly in Indiana Jones Land, here.

So, with the hard bit done, layering some gameplay over the top should be easy.

Well, not as easy as it should be, evidently.

Given the nature of the franchise, you could drop in a number of genres and still have your Game Of The Year flowers. But this is MachineGames, the folks behind the very successful Wolfenstein reboots and, in a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, we have a first person adventure (or “immersive sim” to use a more modern parlance) taking place in a variety of open world environments with the occasional liner bits of gameplay. For some part, the decision to view Indy’s world from this perspective is a triumph. Beautifully rendered “open zone” areas provide some of the hardest hitting visuals seen on the Series X/S, with the frame-for-frame recreation of the original Raiders intro shining, if not unavoidably treading down uncanny valley. Predictable then, that stealth and hand-to-hand combat are cumbersome from this point of view and choosing to button mash rather than sneak through encounters unsighted will shave hours off your run time. To this you can add the numerous systems and weapon upgrades on offer that can be easily eschewed should you decide to just bop every enemy on the head with a hammer.

To this point, the AI is unbelievably dumb. More often than not you will stumble on a hapless Nazi, staring at a blank wall awaiting a blunt strike to the cranium. These action segments are interspersed with some well designed and surprisingly hands-off puzzle sections that, for the most part, avoid the classic LucasArts eye-rolling esoterism. And, from there, you ‘rinse and repeat’ as you travel the game’s titular Circle.

While the developers should be applauded for taking a brave gameplay route with a damaged franchise, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle stumbles on some questionable design decisions, but, infuriatingly succeeds in telling a story that easily surpasses the more recent films.

So proceed with some measured caution. If you (like me) are as old as time and have a fondness for the original trilogy, you will enjoy how well MachineGames landed the Indy experience and the feel of those movies. If you are looking for a FPS shooter experience to live alongside the recent Call Of Duty, you will leave feeling like you are controlling a game is as old as Harrison Ford himself.