When Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was first announced, I was a little worried that it would end up in the same pile as another bad movie-based game using the Indiana Jones name for a quick cash grab, but boy, was I wrong.

Developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set in 1937 between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. It sees Dr Jones venturing across the world to places such as Gizeh, Shanghai, and the Himalayas, just to name a few, searching for a collection of stones that, in the wrong hands, such as with the Nazis, could end the upcoming war in the wrong way. Emmerich Voss, a German archaeologist working directly with Adolf Hitler, is hot on his trail throughout the story. 

The opening chapter perfectly puts the player into Indiana Jones’s shoes by having you play one of the most iconic scenes from an Indiana Jones movie of all time. It also acted as the perfect tutorial level. Once it was over, I was keen to dive into this new chapter of storytelling within the Indiana Jones universe.

The storytelling and the writing in Indian Jones and the Great Circle are spot on and true to the movies. It felt like just another movie that I could watch, but it gave me control over our favourite archaeologist. Troy Baker’s performance as Indiana Jones is perfect. If you didn’t know he was voicing Indy, you’d think Harrison Ford was. It was crazy how perfect Troy took on this role.

Alessandra Mastronardi plays the Italian Investigative journalist, Gina Lombardi, and Marios Gavrilis as Emmerich Voss, the game’s villain, is absolutely spot on. MachineGames has picked out the perfect people to take on every single role.

The game itself, and every location you’ll visit, look absolutely gorgeous. Just like any game where the maps and areas are pretty much open for you to explore, I did just that. From massive German warships to the Pyramids or the frozen mountains in the Himalayas, MachineGames have done an amazing job at capturing each location perfectly in great detail. 

As for gameplay, there are a few different ways you can play and approach different situations, all while keeping an authentic feeling for the whole experience. As you explore, you’ll be able to climb, shimmy, jump or use your whip to yank levers or swing across open floors filled with spikes to traverse through areas. As for being stealthy, there is crouching for when you need to sneak past enemies or crawl into areas as you explore.

When it comes to combat, you can approach this in two ways; quietly, which as I mentioned is done by crouching around engines and avoiding any hand-to-hand combat, or taking the enemy on directly. In most cases, I found this to be a last resort option as the hand-to-hand combat was a little clunky.

Blocking punches when shovelling them will put them off balance giving you time to swing a few punches. You can also dodge and parry attacks opening a door to an immediate counterattack. Keep in mind everything chips away at your stamina bar, so plan your swings wisely. 

There are items scattered all over the place that can help you take enemies down, but you only get a few good hits on them with most items before they break. Then you’re back to using your fists again. You can also use your whip to stun or disable enemies that might be holding weapons.

Guns aren’t much better either, as anything outside a headshot can take a few rounds to down the bad guys, but they are very noisy, and before you know it, everyone is shooting at you. If you do get low on health, bandages will restore your health quickly while food such as bread which will give you a temporary buff to your health or fruit that will temporarily boost your stamina. Both of these are good to use if you plan on getting into a one-on-one fistfight. 

Each area you explore is broken up into three different experiences: Exploration, Puzzle-Solving and Combat. As with any games in this genre, exploration is always my favourite, and there are plenty of hidden side quests and secrets to find and unlock, such as artifacts, notes, and books. These books act as abilities that can be unlocked to help improve Indy’s chance of survival, such as additional health, dealing more damage while in hand-to-hand combat, or dealing more damage using different weapons, just to name a few. 

The puzzles were pretty fun, too. While not all of them are hard, some do require a bit of brain power to work them out. There was a good variety of puzzles to solve, too, from redirecting light using mirrors to open doors, to interacting with certain objects in a certain order to process to the next areas, all while Indy is talking to himself like he would in the movies, trying to work out how the puzzles are solved. It was a great touch. If you get suck, Indy has a camera that you can pull out and take photos of things that will give you hints on what you need to do in order to solve them. The hints are very subtle but offer enough to work it out. 

Now, while Indiana Jones and the Great Circle can technically be finished in around 12 or so hours, if you’re like me, you’ll get caught up in the many side quests the game has on offer. These side missions are called Fieldwork. On top of these side missions, there are also other mysteries that you come across that can be solved, and some of these can take an hour or more to work out and complete, so don’t worry about not having enough to do – there is plenty, and you’ll enjoy every single moment as it easily pushes your playtime to over 30 hours. 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the Indy game we’ve always wanted. The game’s story, exploration, and puzzles have all been thought about carefully, giving us the perfect Indiana Jones experience while keeping the action we all know from the films.

Written by: MKAU Gaming