Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Review

When we think about the Indiana Jones films, we think of Harrison Ford, Nazis, whips, puzzles, treasure, and all of that coalescing into an exciting adventure. I’m not the biggest Indiana Jones going around, but my love for historically-flavoured adventures meant that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to step into the boots of Doctor Jones. Wolfenstein developer MachineGames has been tasked with turning Indy’s treasure-hunting heroics into an interactive experience, and when it lets you truly embody our titular explorer, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a great time, but unfortunately some design flaws stop it from being a generational treasure.

Set after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark (wink wink), The Great Circle starts with Indiana being robbed of an artifact from his collection at the Marshall College campus in Bedford, Connecticut (where’s Bedford?). After putting the pieces together, he heads to the Vatican where he discovers that the Nazis – led by the megalomaniac Emmerich Voss – are chasing the stones that make up an ancient artifact known as the Great Circle, which once collected will grant the user the key to unlock a great power that’s best left in history books. Naturally, Jones endeavours to stop Voss and the Nazis by finding the stones first, but he doesn’t do it alone, teaming up with reporter Gina Lombardi, who is also searching for her missing sister. The result is a globetrotting adventure that feels very Hollywood and perfectly fits the Indiana Jones framework.

Just like the Indiana Jones you remember

It’d be remiss of me not to wax lyrical about Troy Baker’s portrayal of Harrison Ford, which is simply sensational and quite frankly one of the best performances of recent times. Baker is a master of his craft, perhaps the best (certainly the biggest), and this performance shows why. It’s so bang on that anyone who’d forgotten that Ford is in his 80s would likely think that the old fella had been roped in for one last rodeo. While Baker will get most of the plaudits, others in the cast do a great job of bringing their characters to life and should be given a shoutout, especially Marios Gavrilis who plays Voss with real wickedness.

Taking place mostly in first-person, Indy’s search sees him travel around the world with nothing more than his whip, a bag full of quips and his trusty hat. Indiana Jones films may have inspired juggernaut gaming IPs such as Tomb Raider and Uncharted, but don’t be fooled into thinking that MachineGames’ rendition of Indy is Xbox’s answer to those games, as it’s a vastly different experience. Nathan Drake and Lara Croft can easily shoot their way out of a situation, whereas Indy is no killing machine and will need to use more of a stealth approach, using whatever weapons he can find in the environment to take down his enemies in silence. Now while thumping a Nazi over the head with a guitar or a shovel is fun, it does lose its appeal over time.

When using Indy’s whip for traversal or climbing environments, the game will switch to third-person, which can be quite jarring at first. I did find it was one of those things that the more I saw it the less jarring it became, and it was cool to see Indy every now and again.

It looks like Harrison Ford, sounds like Harrison Ford, but it’s simply a Troy Baker masterclass

Where it truly shines is when it does away with all the filler and fluff and focuses on being a linear adventure, forcing you down a set path to explore gorgeous old environments to solve puzzles and find treasure

Indy will venture to several destinations, with the Vatican and Gizeh serving as open zones that give Indy freedom to explore. On paper, this sounds like a neat idea – I mean as a kid I dreamt of being an archaeologist and digging up ancient Egypt treasures, so the thought of exploring Gizeh and stumbling upon a long-forgotten tomb seemed great. Unfortunately, these open areas hurt the game’s momentum by asking players to do mundane tasks and backtrack repeatedly. Sure, some of these are side missions and are not required if you want to run the golden path, but it makes these sections drag on and it feels like MachineGames has designed it this way to pad the game’s length, when in this case, less is better.

It probably wouldn’t be as frustrating if exploration and some design elements weren’t so galling. For example, in these areas Indy can utilise disguises to keep a low profile. However, Nazi captains can see through these, which does seem unrealistic and can be quite annoying when you simply want to explore. It’s even more tedious when you can’t find a disguise and every guard is triggered by your presence.

Indy also has a stamina bar (a very short one too; you’d think someone who travels by foot as much as he does would be as fit as a fiddle), which depletes when he runs, climbs and fights. More often than not it’s not an issue, but occasionally it can be a pain, especially in combat. But given Indy can simply hang off a ledge he’s traversing or sit on a ladder rung and wait for it to regenerate It just feels like it serves no real purpose other than allowing Indy to eat fruit to buff his stamina. Indy is also incapable of holding onto items when interacting with other items or traversing, which can be a pain when you’re relying on a torch to guide you and you keep dropping it every time you pick up a note or interact with an object. These are only minor issues individually, but collectively they chip away at the experience.

With this disguise I’m invisible

Probably the game’s biggest sin is just how stupid the AI is. For a game that pushes stealth it is embarrassingly bad, with Indy able to stroll past enemies in plain sight while their gauge fills up only to mutter “Must have been nothing,” and going back to their routine once you’re out their view. Or Gina, bless her cotton socks, would be standing in a metre from an enemy without them raising an eyebrow, it was as if she wasn’t there. It became a game of just how far I could push the idiocy of the AI before blowing my cover.

Sadly, combat is The Great Circle’s Achilles heel, with the mechanics feeling clunky and unfun to use; so much so that I actively avoided combat encounters. It doesn’t help that Indy’s stamina is depleted after a mere couple of haymakers. Plus, Indy’s revolver is basically useless (I think I used it about three times), and taking the Nazis on with guns is more than likely to get you killed (unless you run away).

Despite these grievances, there’s a lot to like about The Great Circle, and where it truly shines is when it does away with all the filler and fluff and focuses on being a linear adventure, forcing you down a set path to explore gorgeous old environments to solve puzzles and find treasure before the Nazis. I can’t tell you how much I loved discovering temples that had been reclaimed by nature or underground chambers that had been lost to time, especially as the locations were teeming with detail. And the puzzle design is great. They’re not brainbusters by any stretch and some do feel rather generic, but they feel grounded in the world of Indiana Jones. These sequences, which were expertly paced, genuinely made me feel like I was playing an Indiana Jones movie. It’s why I can’t wrap my head around why MachineGames’ didn’t just follow this plan the whole way through, because the back half of the game (once you leave Gizeh) is actually pretty damn good.

Exploring this area was a highlight

Final Thoughts

While MachineGames certainly captures the adventure spirit of the Indiana Jones films, The Great Circle feels like it was caught between being a cinematic adventure and a modern video game. There are some truly captivating set pieces and sequences that play out, and I cannot understate how exceptional the performances are, particularly Troy Baker. But for all the ear-to-ear grins I made exploring the remnants of ancient civilisations, I groaned at the times that the game took me out of the adventure and into a video game. If MachineGames’ gets another whipcrack at it, I hope they lean into what works more, because there’s a great video game buried under the sands here.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X // Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics