Let’s get something out of the way: I don’t care for Indiana Jones. Frankly, I’m not the biggest fan (or even the smallest one) of Steven Spielberg’s films in general. Heresy, I know, but I’ll leave my reasoning for a future feature article. Nothing against the fedora-wearing archaeologist, he’s a fine character who has been portrayed with wondrous wit and charm by the great Harrison Ford; it’s simply Mr. Spielberg’s tonal directions behind the camera of which I’m not all too fond of and never have been. Again, in a future article, I promise. So when Lucasfilm Games announced in 2021 that they, in collaboration with Bethesda and MachineGames were working on a standalone Indiana Jones adventure in the form of a video game, my reaction was akin to that of an unenthused Stanley Hudson from The Office.

Still, a licensed IP the scale of an Indiana Jones being made by MachineGames, makers of arguably one of the best single-player first-person shooters of the past decade in Wolfenstein II, was at the very least enough to pique my curiosity. However, that positive curiosity quickly turned to skepticism when gameplay trailers for The Great Circle began making their way to YouTube. Something about the game looked…off. From stilted facial animations reminiscent of late Xbox 360-era capture technology to janky transitions from first-person action to third-person traversal to slow and wonky-looking fisticuff combat, it all came across as something incredibly unrefined; a stark contrast to the sleekness of MachineGames’ past works.

Unfortunately, after having put in more than 25 hours across the PC and Xbox Series S to finish this latest Indy adventure, much of this skepticism manifested into full-blown criticism. Yet, to my surprise these criticisms, though inarguably present on my part, weren’t enough to deter my overall enjoyment of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.   

The Heart

Set in 1937, The Great Circle acts ostensibly as a sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, telling an original story that has Dr. Jones, voiced by the omnipresent Troy Baker, flinging, in classic Indiana Jones fashion, across the globe in pursuit of a stolen artifact from Marshall College. As Indy, you’ll visit the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, The Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, and a few other landmark locations I won’t spoil. Throughout your adventure, you’ll encounter several characters that will either help or hinder your pursuit of the MacGuffin du jour. Most notably of which is your patented female cohort, this time being one Gina Lombardi, played by Alessandra Mastronardi. Along the way, expect your classic supernatural twists, a villain that’s cartoonishly but wonderfully evil, and writing that’s wholeheartedly Indiana Jones in the best of ways.

It’s good that I’m starting with the narrative presentation first, as this may be the game’s saving grace. Sure, the actual writing and overall plot may not be anything to write home about as it follows many of the same beats as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it’s the way the game presents and paces itself that had me genuinely hooked. Additionally, the game perfectly dovetails from the main quest to the side quests where the same importance is given to both and their quality is almost indistinguishable from each other; making for a far richer narrative experience and a world that feels larger and more significant. It also helps that the voice acting throughout is nothing short of fantastic. 

Troy Baker hasn’t simply done a young Harrison Ford impression and called it a day, no, the actor took all the iconic facets of Indiana Jones the character and funnelled them through his own wonderfully rendered version of the classic voice; making for an incredibly nuanced and honest performance. His co-stars are no slouch, either. Mastronardi brings all the sharp wit and heartful vulnerability to Gina and Marios Gavrilis is unflinchingly detestable as the villain Emmerich Voss. If The Great Circle was an animated movie, it’d probably receive a far higher score than the one I have given. Unfortunately, it is not. 

The Controller

Any game that allows me to kick a Nazi in their racist privates is going to get a point in my book. But alas, I must cover the gameplay with a bit more nuance. Remember that “jankiness” I mentioned seeing in the gameplay trailer a few paragraphs ago? Turns out that wasn’t just pre-release “jank” that was going to get ironed out upon release. The more I played this game, the more I saw Bethesda’s fingerprints smeared across it. Indy lumbers around with a heft. Less so in first-person, but somewhat laughably so in third-person. It’s clear this was a studio well-known for their first-person games’ first attempt at doing third-person gameplay. Even if it is nice to see that iconic silhouette of the beloved archaeologist, it’s a little odd seeing him clunkily scale a wall as if unaware of how a human body is supposed to move. 

But even in first-person, so much of the gameplay simply feels sluggish and unintuitive. The grappling, which looks and can feel satisfying, doesn’t work the way you want it to half the time. The first-person platforming, which is a mechanic that is rarely (if ever) a good idea to begin with (unless your name is id Software, and even then I’d reconsider it), is cumbersome at best and infuriating at worst. And the combat, which flows from basic stealth mechanics that are ruined by abysmal enemy AI, to gunplay which is just fine albeit unremarkable considering this is MachineGames we’re talking about, to fisticuffs that feel very one note. 

With that said, once you get a hang of the parry mechanic, the hand-to-hand combat can be quite fun. Unfortunately, putting up your dukes for every encounter is simply not a practical approach to combat as Indy is as squishy as a real-life archaeologist. Most of my time was spent either sneakily walking past enemies, or catching one unawares and bludgeoning them with a hairbrush. The former never felt quite right as enemies had the eyes of either a blind rat or those of an eagle, and the novelty of the latter was something that thankfully never got old; seeing how many different everyday items I could use to bash an enemy’s skull in never failed to make me chuckle.        

Surprisingly, MachineGames decided to forgo making a linear video game the likes of Indiana Jones’ copycat, Uncharted, instead choosing to go with a semi-open world design aesthetic similar to God of War Ragnarok, wherein each location acts as a hub for a number of side activities and options for exploration. Though I had reservations about this decision at the beginning, I must admit it works quite well. None of the locations ever feel too large and have the perfect amount of side quests and collectibles to encourage exploration and replayability while keeping things fairly condensed. Spelunking into a random cave or tomb, solving a quick puzzle, and coming out of it with a neat trinket feels satisfying and perfectly fitting for the role of Indiana Jones. The only hub I wasn’t too big a fan of was the one at the very end where the setting, though interesting, forced you to traverse it with a canoe, whose mechanics were less than stellar. Nevertheless, the way each hub opens up and allows you to tackle its contents in any way you see fit is very well done and kept me engaged until I wanted to progress the story. 

The Eyes

This section of the review is going to be slightly challenging to tackle. It would have been very easy had I simply played The Great Circle on the Xbox Series S. I’d have simply written that the game looked terrible and as if my television screen had Vaseline smeared across it and called it a day. But when out of curiosity I decided to boot up the game on the PC via Nvidia GeForce NOW’s “Ultimate” tier, turning all the bells and whistles to the “Supreme” settings and path tracing set to full, I was frankly blown away by how beautiful the game looked. 

The muddy textures with terrible pop-in, bad draw-distances with weird shimmering, and overall flatness in visual fidelity on Series S were all replaced with visuals on par with some of the best-looking triple-A titles I’ve played in recent years. At its best, The Great Circle looks incredible. I almost couldn’t believe that I was playing the same game because of how pretty it looked. Problem is, most people won’t be playing this game on a machine capable of running this game at its best, hence my dilemma of how to apply this to my overall score. Because on one hand, I played over 75% of the game with visuals that made me audibly say “yuck” due to how ugly some of it looked on Microsoft’s best-selling current generation console. On the other, I finished the game looking its best, which in turn left me with a more positive memory of the game’s visuals. Graphics are most certainly not everything, of course. The visuals didn’t change the core gameplay nor the general presentation of things, but the PC version definitely helped with immersing me in the environments. 

Irrespective of how I take this visual disparity into account for my final score, it is a little bewildering to see a game have such a disparity in visuals between not only the console and PC versions but between the Series S and Series X as well. If you’re interested to know why this disparity exists, I suggest watching the experts over at Digital Foundry here.   

The Ears

There’s not much to say about the sound and music of The Great Circle. The compositions of Gordy Haab do a more than adequate job of capturing the feel of the classic John Williams scores. Indy’s classic theme trills in at the perfect time to act as the crescendo of a tense moment or to backdrop the start of a new plot beat. The sound of every punch of a fist or a battering of a shovel against the face of a Nazi is satisfyingly crunchy, as is the “whatoosh!” of Indy’s whip. In general, though, I can’t say anything about either the sound design or the music particularly stood out, in one way or another. 

The X Factor

When thinking about this review, and it being my first one for Pixel Swish, I couldn’t help but feel something was missing that wasn’t painting my experience with The Great Circle with the full colours I wanted it to. Hence the creation of this category. As the name suggests, an “X Factor” can mean a lot of things. For me, it’s a feeling. Or something that resonates that’s not quite articulable. A game can be polished, well-executed, and do all the right things, but if it doesn’t have that something that makes it unique, then I’ll likely forget about it soon after I put the controller down. The Great Circle, though it falters on so many aspects, has this something. I can’t say precisely what, but whether it’s how the game presents its narrative, the weirdly addictive side content, the janky-as-heck-but-also-kinda-satisfying gameplay, the terrific voice acting, the simple feeling of playing as Indiana Jones, or a combination of it all, I must admit that I had a hard time putting down this video game.   

The Verdict: 6.5/10 – “It’s Aight”

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle falters in a lot of aspects. Its core gameplay is riddled with minor annoyances like cumbersome traversal mechanics, terrible AI that makes stealth encounters vapid, and clunky hand-to-hand combat coupled with uninspired gunplay. Though its visuals are a treat for the eyes on a capable PC, the game looks incredibly ugly on the Xbox Series S. Yet, whether through its genuinely engaging narrative presentation, terrific voice-acting, or oddly addictive gameplay loop, The Great Circle found its hooks in me. It’s far from a perfect game and its playing experience can often be infuriating, but it’s one that I doubt I’ll soon forget. I wouldn’t mind donning the fedora once again if MachineGames were to make their own Temple of Doom.