Exploring Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

It’s been over 30 years since I wore out my VHS copy of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Since then the film franchise has been in a state of escalation. Where do you go after uncovering the literal Holy Grail? Aliens, then time machines, apparently. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the perfect antidote to all of this; one that uses its own figurative Dial of Destiny to propel us back in time to Indy’s prime. The result is easily one of the best Indy stories across both the games and the movies, with painstakingly detailed environments, wonderfully atmospheric tomb raiding and puzzle solving, a pitch-perfect score, and quite possibly the greatest punch sound effect in the business. While it does stumble occasionally as a stealth-focused sneak ’em up, The Great Circle is an otherwise grand and gorgeous globe-trotting adventure that left me giddy as a schoolboy. Yes, it’s true that bringing Indiana Jones back to the big screen (twice) after he literally rode off into the sunset was probably a poor choice. But having MachineGames craft an Indy experience inspired by all the best games in that development team’s past?

Bethesda chose wisely.

Legacy of MachineGames

MachineGames’ most immediate legacy is the modern Wolfenstein series, and there’s certainly some of that on show in The Great Circle. Like The New Order and its excellent prequel and sequel, The Great Circle is first-person and highly story-driven, and I’d wager if there’s anyone who hates Nazis as much as Indy, it’s the Gestapo-gutting, SS-slaying BJ Blazkowicz. The Great Circle is not, however, a bloodthirsty exercise in double-fisted, lead-flinging fury. Unlike Wolfenstein, The Great Circle’s focus is patient and slower-paced exploration and stealth – where guns are rarely (and barely) a viable option.

That said, with the founding members of MachineGames all hailing from fellow Swedish studio Starbreeze, MachineGames’ DNA admittedly runs much deeper than Wolfenstein. For many of the team, it dates back to 2004’s outstanding and highly acclaimed The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Riddick’s first-person fisticuffs and adventure elements appear to have been a huge inspiration on The Great Circle, and it’s refreshing to be playing a game like Butcher Bay again – particularly when it’s done with this much verve and commitment to a storied franchise.

Innovative Gameplay and Detailed Environments

The first-person perspective blesses The Great Circle with a fantastic sense of scale. Looking up in awe of the Great Pyramid – or staring out at a giant Nazi battleship perched atop a mountain in the Himalayas – simply has a more pronounced effect at eye-level. It also does wonders for immediacy, with puzzle solving in particular benefitting greatly. Picking up and poring over documents and clues, directly manipulating and placing objects, and watching the results unfold in front of your eyes makes it feel like you’re personally inside some of the world’s most expensive escape rooms. Puzzles come regularly, and they’re mostly light lifting, but I’ve encountered at least a couple of slightly curlier ones that left me smugly satisfied that I wasn’t stumped. If you do hit a roadblock, there’s a baked-in hint system that will only interject if you take an extra photo of the offending puzzle with your in-game camera. It’s a smart and courteous way of offering aid only when asked that will keep players off their phones and in the game.

Genius of the Restoration

After beginning with a short flashback to Raiders of the Lost Ark as a tutorial – one that might’ve been a tad indulgent had it not been so utterly well done – The Great Circle’s second level is a wonderful (and equally nostalgic) trip through Connecticut’s Marshall College. It’s a magnificent rendition and draped in layers upon layers of bespoke details that distracted me constantly on my way to the objective. Busts and other paraphernalia related to the history of the school. Cabinets full of exotic items. Notice boards cluttered with handmade signs. If you’d shown this version of Indy’s famous school to the eight-year-old version of me who cut his teeth aimlessly point-and-clicking his way around Marshall College in 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, I might have had you burnt at the stake. Or at least lowered into a sacrificial lava pit without a heart.

The eye-catching environments keep coming: The ornate Italian architecture and crusty catacombs of Vatican City; An ancient town and multiple Nazi dig sites in the shadow of the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Sphinx; Sukhothai’s winding waterways and flooded temples, which are being reclaimed by the jungle. It’s all excellent stuff, and bolstered by exemplary ray-traced lighting to boot. I love the huge contrasts between the levels, and “the great circle” as a fanciful archaeological concept is an admirably effective premise to justify Indy hopping all over the globe during a single story.

Aid our own resuscitation

On the topic of knockouts, combat in The Great Circle is satisfyingly brutal without being gratuitously violent, which is in keeping with its family-friendly, swashbuckling adventure serial roots. I love the deeply impressive sound design, which makes every strike sound like a golf club being slammed into a huge bunch of celery, and I love how visceral the fighting is in first-person. You block and parry blows with the correct timing, and deliver quick jabs and loaded up power punches. On top of that, Indy’s bullwhip can be used to quickly disarm enemies, and stun them long enough to either wade in and whack them or scoop up their dropped weapon and bludgeon them with it.

I enjoy how Butcher Bay-adjacent the fighting is but I’m a little unconvinced by the stamina system that rules over it, which depletes as Indy exerts himself climbing, sprinting, and throwing hands. It just creates pauses throughout the action where you’ll be compelled to wait for a beat, or jog backwards as a gaggle of goose-stepping morons march towards you with their dukes up. I can’t really detect what it adds other than something to be arbitrarily upgraded to the point where it’s no longer an inconvenience.