Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review – Into the Heart of Adventure

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle marks another exciting chapter in the legendary archaeologist’s career as he embarks on a perilous quest to uncover a long-lost artifact tied to an ancient mystery thought to be of myth. Racing against time, Indy faces a series of heart-stopping challenges, from deadly traps to cryptic puzzles, all while delving deeper into history’s mysteries. With stunning action sequences, sharp wit, and a relentless sense of adventure, Machine Games proves that the spirit of Indiana Jones lives on, delivering a thrilling ride for both die-hard fans and newcomers alike when it comes to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Always Knew Someday You’d Come Walking Back Through My Door

The adventures of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle begin a few years after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Still in his prime youth, Indiana Jones, or as he likes to be referred to, Dr. Jones has taken a break from his globe trekking adventures to continue his teaching work at Marshall College. As you’d expect, it’s a quiet and easy life, but also boring for Indy. It’s a life he loves living when he’s not out raiding tombs for lost treasures. But like so many of those treasures he’s uncovered, it all eventually comes to light no matter how hard he tries to bury his past. In his many years of exploration, Indy has met various people, some allies, while others with sinister intent. His goal has always remained the same, with whatever treasure he finds either returning to the people it belongs with or safely inside a museum, or as he would say, “It belongs in a museum!”

Well, not everything, Dr. Jones, as he often learns, that sometimes discovering ancient treasures thought to be lost forever can attract the wrong kind of person. This is precisely what happens, as one late-night evening while working at the college, Indy discovers an intruder within his midst. Little did he know, this intruder would get the upper hand, knocking him out cold. The next thing Indy knows, countless exhibits have been smashed, and one of the exhibit’s artifacts has gone missing.

Here, Indy finds himself again taking on the role of the adventurer, though little does he know that the artifact he’s chasing has ties to a mystery that he thought to be a myth. That mystery? Why, the mystery of the Great Circle.

Obviously, there are no spoilers here because who likes to have a great mystery spoiled? I know I don’t, but I can say that whether you’re new to the series or a longtime fan, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a thrilling, timeless adventure that captures everything fans love about the iconic series. With a perfect blend of exploration, history, and excitement, the story draws you in from the first moment and keeps a hold of you until the very end. Indiana Jones is the epitome of the classic hero—intelligent, witty, and charming, yet deeply flawed and relatable, which makes him all the more endearing. With a straightforward battle between good and evil, the stakes are high, and every twist keeps you on the edge of your seat. As far as the story goes, I can comfortably say that this is Indiana Jones at his utmost greatest.

We heard similar things about The Crystal Skull and Destiny of Dial. Though I have opinions about those films, the consensus wasn’t very positive with the audience. But if you’re a fan who longs for the glory days that the original trilogy delivered, then the Great Circle has you covered. Machine Games has really taken it home here with the story and the writing, to the point that it might just be up there with the best films in the franchise. It’s impressive how closely written The Great Circle feels to the original trilogy, something that I’ve always felt the newer films could never get right. The franchise has lacked that “Spielberg magic,” as many would call it, with the last one having it (in my opinion) being the Last Crusade, released over 35 years ago.

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That might be because Harrison Ford has become too old to play the character. As much as we all love him, seeing an aged Indy on screen always broke my heart. I applaud Ford’s acting regardless, and I’ll always love the character despite his age, but there’s no denying that the new movies can’t quite live up to the magic of the first films. 

But a video game? Well, in the right hands, it can, and in this case, the Great Circle picks up right where things left off after Raiders of the Lost Ark and does so without skipping any of the magical beats.

What I love most are all the tiny details that Machine Games have included. Harrison Ford tends to exaggerate certain gestures, but you don’t think much about them because they work so well. For example, has anyone noticed that his character always seems to have a scene where he’s angrily pointing at someone in many of his films? Or, like how in Star Wars New Hope, he has that awkward run he does when chasing down the Stormtroopers? It may all seem silly, but those tiny little things add so much to a character, and it’s something that Machine Games paid close attention to. There will be moments when you’re watching a cutscene, and Indy’s little gestures will just put a smile on your face. It’s a 3D-modeled character that is all scripted to do these things, and yet, there’s a level of improvisation that feels more like something Harrison Ford would help bring out these characters.

I do want to point out that Harrison Ford isn’t involved (to my knowledge) in any capacity in the Great Circle outside of providing the likeness of his younger self. Instead, the voice of Indiana Jones is provided by Troy Baker, who many of you probably know as the voice of Joel from The Last of Us. But he’s voiced plenty of other characters, and time and time again, I’m left completely shocked by just how much range he has. When Arkham Origins needed to find a replacement for Mark Hamill, he stepped up, providing a voice that sounded strikingly similar to Hamill’s, to the point that many thought it was him. He’s a master of not only creating voices for original characters but also imitating that of others, and in the Great Circle, it’s that of a much younger (and less gravelly) Harrison Ford. Honestly, he does sound like Indy from the original films to the point that if you weren’t told it’s not him, you’d probably think it is.

Mind you, there were times when I thought the line delivery sounded a bit off, but credit where credit is due: Troy Baker absolutely nails the voice of a young Indiana Jones. It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who also voiced the Joker, but I was also saying the same thing about his role there. He is a man of many voices, and his performance is one of his best yet.

But the whole cast of characters that you’ll meet during your adventures are all fantastic. Tony Todd, who sadly passed this year, plays a brooding character called Locus, and you can tell he was having a lot of fun with how sinister he makes his voice sound. Marios Gavrilis (Money Heist, Attack on Titan, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) plays the Nazi archaeologist Emmerich Voss. He serves as Indiana Jones’s villainous equal, obsessed with power and control over others. And finally, we have Alessandra Mastronardi playing Gina Lombardi, an investigative reporter searching for answers behind her sister’s mysterious disappearance. Her personality resembles that of Marion (Raiders of the Lost Ark) in many ways, as she is clever, witty, and charismatic. She’s not just some damsel in distress, as she can hold well in a fight, and her onscreen chemistry with Indiana Jones is just fun to watch. 

I don’t think there was a single character in the game that I disliked in terms of performance. I might have found them annoying or hated their guts, but that’s only because those characters called for that. Everyone understood the assignment and delivered it exactly how it was meant. It all comes together beautifully, giving us one of the best Indiana Jones stories to date.

Snakes. Why’d It Have to be Snakes?

As many know, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is played from a first-person perspective. At the time of its announcement, the choice in perspective was shocking, considering that the franchise has inspired countless video games in the third-person perspective, with Tomb Raider and Uncharted being the biggest that comes to mind. However, looking at the developers, Machine Games, and their lengthy history of games, it made sense why it was in the first-person perspective, as that has always been what the studio has been known for. They have decades of experience with the perspective, so if anyone could pull it off, it’d be them.

Still, as a fan of Indiana Jones, to see our first major first-party AAA-produced title in the series be a first-person genre, I didn’t have high hopes it would turn out any good. Thankfully, I was wrong, as Machine Games has proven quite well that an Indiana Jones game can work in the first person; granted, it’s far from perfect. 

Growing up and watching the Indiana Jones films, many, including myself, wanted to be Indiana Jones because he was incredibly cool. But looking back at his character years later as an adult, I’ve realized that there was much more to Indy than being a badass treasure hunter. He has tons of relatable qualities as a character, but the ones that stick out and make me appreciate his character are his flaws. He’s not invincible, far from it, as he has a past that constantly haunts him, a fear of snakes, and though he’s the protagonist and is sure to survive, he always has a bit of uncertainty that often gets covered by sarcasm or humor. He’s self-centered and often reckless. Yet despite those flaws, he always manages to overcome them, displaying great heroism when the moment is most needed. It’s relatable, which is why so many feel like they could be him. 

Machine Games has driven that here with their version of Jones. I think that’s partly because of its first-person perspective. Traveling the globe to various parts of the world, exploring unknown lands, and looking for lost treasure, I did feel like I was Indiana Jones. 

There’s a sense of exploration that the films produce that you get from the game, too: those moments where Indy is exploring a tomb for the first time in thousands of years, uncovering its secrets while avoiding traps and such. It’s thrilling to watch him do it on the big screen and even more so to do it yourself. This is where the adventure part of the game comes in, as a big focus has been placed on exploration, with each location filled with all kinds of stories and hidden secrets to uncover. 

One of my favorite things is venturing away from the story to do some side content. Granted, it’s not the most diverse content, but the locations you see while pursuing them make it well worth the travel. The visuals can be jaw-dropping at times, something that many can agree the films have always nailed, especially regarding lighting and visual effects. The general aesthetics in the game feel like they’ve been ripped right from the sets of the films. 

I get why Machine Games went with first-person for this. It works really well in terms of adventuring and exploration, and I felt it made the experience more immersive. That’s not to say that playing in third-person can’t do the same, but first-person is one of the strengths that Machine Games are really good at, and the Great Circle really shows it.

The best thing is the history that plays out while you explore and adventure. It’s easily one of the game’s best highlights, going around and learning about these locations, the locals, and the rich history behind all the temples and treasures you find. Puzzles will play a role, and they come in the bountiful. Some are easy, while others are real head-scratchers, as they should be. This is an Indiana Jones adventure, after all, and having a bunch of mysteries that need to be solved is precisely what I was hoping for. 

For general combat, you can either go into fights, gun blazing, or, my favorite approach, all-out fist fighting. The melee combat is simple, with left and right punches, a block, and a parry. There’s no combo system, but that doesn’t mean beating up enemies isn’t satisfying. It’s one of my favorite things about the game because I found hand-to-hand combat to be mindless fun. Something about it puts a smile on my face, be it the sounds your punches make or when an enemy rags dolls around after knocking them out. Alerting an entire base and having them all come at me is just stupid and a sure way to die, but it feels like such an Indiana thing to do. I get myself into a dumb and dangerous situation and just wing it and hope I make it out alive. The whip can be used here, letting you stun enemies and knock weapons out of their hands. I mean, I don’t think it gets better than facing off against a bunch of Nazis while the Indiana Jones theme starts playing. You know exactly what to expect when that theme starts to play. If any of you played RoboCop Rogue City, you know exactly what I’m talking about when that theme begins to play. It’s just pure excitement and joy that puts you in such a great mood.

I mentioned before that the gameplay experience is far from perfect because, beyond the scope of exploration, things like stealth, platforming, and other things leave a ton of room for improvement. Platforming is especially important, which I’ll talk about in a bit. But first up, let’s go over the stealth play.

Besides the traditional action sequences that all Indiana Jones movies have, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle can be played entirely in stealth. You can probably get by without killing anyone (except those scripted action parts) if you try hard enough, which is pretty nice as it was the approach I took most of the game. In fact, I didn’t shoot my gun once until almost three-fourths the way done with the story, and again, it only happened because the scene called for it.

But as someone who stuck with the stealth approach, I will say that this style of play can get pretty repetitive rather quickly. That’s because there’s not a whole lot to the stealth mechanics. It’s basically as bare bones as it can get, though it does function enough to be somewhat enjoyable. It’s just that, as a player, I wanted to be able to do more with it than what was allowed. Take distractions, for example. If you want to distract an enemy, you have to throw something like a bottle that will cause them to investigate. Now, if you want to take them down, you need to use a weapon: a broomstick, a fly swatter, a pipe, a shovel, a guitar, or whatever else you can find on the field.

It’s basic stuff, but what makes it lacking is that you can never use these mechanics simultaneously. So, if you’re holding a weapon, you’re forced to drop it if you want to pick up a bottle to distract an enemy, and vice versa. This creates a bit of an awkward stationary style of play where you force yourself to stay in place or within a few steps so that you can pick up the object you just dropped to perform a specific task. You can’t carry the weapons on you (via backpack), so they immediately get dropped whenever you climb something. You have to throw them up. I get that, but I don’t understand why you can’t use a bottle and a weapon at the same time while sneaking around. Indy has two hands, yet he seemingly forgets this unless he’s holding a map or his journal.

This might not seem like a big thing, but it would have been such a good feature to include that it could make a massive difference. Maybe it would have made the stealth too easy, but at that point, balance it out better.

The unfortunate part of this, and I’ve spoken with a few other reviewers on it, is that this choice in gameplay also seems to be conditioning the player into forgetting that they can fight with two fists. When you pick up an object, it’s always in your right hand. Most actions use the right hand, and though it might be embarrassing to admit, I completely forgot that you can punch with your left hand because of how little the trigger gets used elsewhere. You can parry with the left top bumper, which is where I ended up associating the left-handed actions to be. I know Indy is right-hand dominant, so that could be one of those “smaller details” you won’t notice unless pointed out, but that doesn’t suddenly mean he forgot he has a left hand. It’s just an odd design choice not to allow using both hands during stealth.

Your whip also doesn’t have much purpose in stealth, which is a bummer. There are small fruit crates you can pull down from shelving that will cause a stir, but that happens so sparingly. There’s not much else you can use it on unless it’s during combat or traversal. I would have loved to be able to pull down stacks of wooden boxes as an enemy passes by them to knock them out or bring down a heavy object from the ceiling onto them. Maybe even latch onto someone’s foot above me and pull them down, serving as a way to cause a distraction and knock an enemy out at the same time. It’s a missed opportunity that could have made the stealth feel more “special” and interesting, rather than what it is now, which is your basic cookie cutter.

Now, the platforming. I’m just going to be straight and say it’s not very good. It has all the pieces to be so, but it never comes together in such a way that makes platforming fun and exciting. This is crazy, considering it’s Indiana Jones, the franchise that essentially spawned Tomb Raider and Uncharted, both series with incredible platforming. Yet here we are, with perhaps some of the slowest and clunkiest movement I’ve seen for a platformer in a long time. There is an Adventure Book that increases climbing speed, but it really should have been the default. A stamina system also exists. You’ll likely never run out of it when climbing around, so it’s pointless other than to slow you down when it does happen.

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I think part of the reason why it feels so clunky is because it switches between the first-person and third-person. Whenever you swing or climb walls, the perspective switches to a third-person, then back to first-person whenever you can stand on your feet or jump. I love that they did this because it helps you see where you need to go. But the transitioning isn’t smooth at all and becomes a distraction. On top of that, it’s easy to die from this accidentally. Jumping to a rope will go from first-person to swinging, then back to first-person when you jump from the rope, making it hard to see the ledge you need to grab. Sometimes, you won’t even jump as far as you thought you would, but by the time you realize it, you’re already dead.

It’s not broken by any means, it’s just a bit too clunky where I wished it got more polishing to make it flow better. I’m sure updates can fix that, but at the same time, it’s not super major where it detracts from the entire experience. Some of the bugs you may encounter will likely hamper your experience. During my 14-hour campaign playthrough (40+ hours with side content and collectibles), I was fortunate enough to be bug-free, but I have some helpful advice for anyone planning to tackle all the side content as you play: Don’t. I recommend playing through all that stuff after the main story, because the side content really showed just how unpolished the game can get.

I’ve encountered all kinds of bugs while exploring the big open zones. Some of these were minor ones, like the occasional clipping and graphical ones, while others forced me to reload an earlier save because my character was permanently stuck in something. One such instance saw me spawn underneath the map. My checkpoint was saved here, and I had to find an opening somewhere that would pop me back up.

Objective markers often get bugged, where they will either display it and take you to a random location or not at all. I’ve gotten a little over 40 hours of playtime in total, and I can’t 100% the game because some of the collectibles aren’t marked as they should be. I had to use a cheat engine at one point to finish the final puzzle in the game because of a bug. If it’s not out the same day as this review, there is a patch in the works, so your experience might end up being a lot better there regarding bug encounters.

At least performance-wise, the game seemed to hold a solid 60fps on my PC. There were occasional stutters here and there due to things loading, but overall, I had little frame drops. Granted, my PC is equipped with an RTX 4090 and a suitable CPU. I did test the game scaling down with an RTX 3060 on a rig that didn’t meet the minimum requirements on the CPU side, and I was still able to push for high settings at 1080p. Hilariously, high, in this case, is more of the middle ground, as there are two ultras presets and a supreme setting that pushes the graphics. I want to point out that while I had DLSS enabled, the performance I got was without frame generation enabled. 

Fortune and Glory, Kid. Fortune and Glory

Putting its flaws aside, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a fantastic adventure that delivers everything fans have come to love about the franchise. It’s a thrilling ride filled with action, mystery, and unforgettable moments, capturing the very essence of what makes an Indiana Jones adventure so iconic. From the heart-pounding chase scenes to the witty dialogue and historical intrigue, it’s everything you could dream an Indiana Jones game would be, leaving audiences eager for more. Being Machine Games’ first crack at the licensed IP, they’ve certainly managed to live up to the expectations that fans hold on to for the series; I look forward to what might be a glory-filled future for both the studio and the franchise. 

Score: 8.5/10

Pros

• A spectacular story that feels like an Indiana Jones adventure.
• An incredible cast of characters with excellent voice-acting performances. 
• World exploration is fun, with plenty of history that can be learned from it.
• The visuals are stunning, and some of the exotic places you visit feel like they’ve been plucked right out of the set of the movies.
• Combat packs a punch, literally. 
• Musical scores – I’m a sucker when I hear that Indiana Jones theme, and it gets used so perfectly here. 

Cons

• Stealth is pretty basic. It’s not terrible, but it could have been better.
• Platforming is slow and janky, and it can sometimes feel like a chore.
• Needed a little longer to address some polishing. 

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review code was provided by the publisher. Platform played on was PC. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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