Indiana Jones and the Great Circle: The Final Preview

The last truly great Indiana Jones movie came out 35 years ago. Since then, pop culture’s most famous archaeologist’s last two big-screen outings have been flops. In fact, Indy’s best work since The Last Crusade has come in video game form: 1992’s LucasArts point-and-click adventure classic The Fate of Atlantis, The Collective’s excellent third-person action-adventure The Emperor’s Tomb on PS2 and original Xbox in 2003, and more recently, LEGO Indiana Jones in 2008. So no matter how you look at it, it’s been a long time since Indy has showed out, and it’s fair to wonder if the current generation of gamers even cares about Dr. Henry Jones and his relic-chasing, Nazi-punching escapades.

I’m here to tell you that after playing a few hours of MachineGames’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, generations of gamers both new and old should care. Because as good as the studio’s recent Wolfenstein reboots were, The Great Circle might be even better. (Editor's Note: Don't miss our new interview with MachineGames discussing more about Indy's latest playable outing.)

What playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle showed me, among other things, is that it’s more of an “adventure-action” game rather than the typical “action-adventure” game. And it’s absolutely not a first-person shooter. Yes, Indy has a revolver here (you can also grab rifles and German Luger pistols), but I used it exactly once the entire time I played. And when I did, the gun wasn’t the only thing that got loud. It alerted everyone at the Gizeh dig site near the Great Pyramids – and Indiana Jones is no match for two armed bad guys, let alone several. In short, firearms are clearly a last resort in The Great Circle.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My hands-on session started at the beginning of the campaign, at Marshall College, where Dr. Jones is, of course, a professor of archaeology. Indy’s working late with his friend and colleague Dr. Marcus Brody. A noise stirs him, and Henry investigates, with you controlling our hero as he walks down the college hall towards the source of the noise, finding broken glass and a display scattered along the way. Thus we come to Great Circle’s first puzzle: putting the fallen relics back on their proper shelves using clues in the displays. Once that’s done, Indy encounters an extremely tall man wearing a talisman, who takes something from the college’s museum display, beats up our good doctor, and escapes, leaving the pendant around his neck behind after it tore off during his getaway. When a presumably concussed Dr. Jones awakens the next morning, he and Marcus suss out a lead based on the stolen relic and Indy quickly packs for the Vatican, bringing only his bullwhip, the pendant, a vinyl record for a friend in Italy, and of course Indy’s infamous fedora.

The gameplay during the Vatican mission reminded me of a game I didn’t expect The Great Circle to tap into, but I certainly didn’t mind: Thief. I suppose the nighttime setting and classic Italian architecture contributed to that vibe, but it was more so the fact that stealth is the dominant approach here, along with the fact that there are a whole lot of doors to find keys to unlock, valuables to backtrack to later, and hidden items and information all over the place. While Indy’s fists are his primary weapon in The Great Circle, I quickly learned that it’s best to get something in his hands whenever possible, as sneaking up from behind with a sufficiently potent object can yield a one-hit stealth takedown. I say “object,” by the way, since most of what I picked up weren’t proper weapons but instead things like brooms, violins, guitars, shovels, candlesticks, a pipe wrench, a frying pan, etc.

I smacked Mussolini-sympathizing priests on the back with all of these objects and more. Even more fun was using the push button to send bad guys crashing spine first to the ground below from great heights when encountering them up on ledges (of which there are many at the Vatican, apparently). Indy can punch, strong punch, block, shove, and use his whip to stun enemies or knock the gun out of their hand. It’s a simple system that works quite effectively in practice. And to once again reference Thief, you can pick up the bodies and hide them in dark corners to prevent other patrolling padres from discovering them. Note that you can’t get too far, though, as carrying heavy adult humans around over one shoulder tires Indy out, quickly spending his stamina.

Fortunately, The Great Circle packs an upgrade system that lets you spend the adventure points you get from thoroughly exploring each environment and discovering secrets and, later, taking pictures of notable sights. You’ll discover books that contain said upgrades, but you’ll need sufficient adventure points to actually apply the new skill. Punch Out, for example, replenishes your stamina when an enemy is knocked out. I used Lucky Hat a few times, which gives you a second chance when “killed” in which you’re on the ground, the screen goes black and white, and your fedora is somewhere nearby. If you can crawl to it in time, you’ll get back up and be able to continue on. In all, the upgrades fall into five categories: survival, fitness, packing, brawling, and combat – thus giving you incentive to not only fully explore each area, but to tailor Indy to your specific playstyle.

The third and final section I got to play fast-forwarded me to Gizeh, Egypt, a bit later in the campaign. Here Indy had already connected with Gina, an Italian reporter looking for her missing sister. Gizeh is wide open, like an old Splinter Cell Chaos Theory mission. You can visit dig sites, a bazaar, and the Great Sphinx. And mercifully, street signs you find serve as fast-travel points; you can highlight any area listed on the sign and you’ll zip over there instantly, sparing you a lot of walking.

I started by walking around in a camp, searching amongst citizens and patrolling Nazi soldiers alike for a blue tent that housed our contact. I lacked a disguise – which it turns out I could’ve found and been able to walk around unbothered in – and so at one point I stayed in an Axis guy’s field of view for a moment too long, and he yelled and began pursuing me. I knew I couldn’t take on more than one or maybe two of these guys, so I ran! I bobbed and weaved through the crowds, zigzagged around the various tents, and…somehow it worked. I lost them!

A hilarious cutscene with our contact in the blue tent ensued, featuring an absolutely mortified Indiana Jones being asked to feed Osiris, our contact’s pet snake. And from there I made my way to my choice of several of the highlighted areas on my map: a dig site. I had to suppress my typical first-person shooter instinct to take every one of them out and instead try to avoid as many of them as possible to get down to the elevator leading down to the tomb containing the artifact. I did so, but not before dying once.

Remember what I mentioned earlier about guns being a last resort? Well, a big red fuel barrel next to a truck and two bad guys was too tempting, so I took out my revolver and shot the barrel from a safe distance. It blew up real good – taking out the truck and both bad guys, but also alerting the other dozen-plus Nazis patrolling the dig site. They all came at me like a nest of furious fascist hornets, and in mere seconds my Indy was taking a dirt nap.

Anyway, after my generous checkpoint reloaded, I successfully snuck my way around to the opposite side of the dig site, where the elevator was…only to find that its two sources of power were disconnected. This led to two more stealth sequences into separate caves to get them turned back on – one of which let me sadistically fry some Nazis who were standing in a pool of shallow water with a wire I just brought to life, and another even had me swimming underwater – before finally getting to ride the reactivated elevator down to the underground tomb. A stone glyph logic puzzle challenged me to place three round stone plates into their correct spots on a mural, triggering a beam of sunlight that shone across the room onto a wall. I picked up a nearby sledgehammer, bashed the wall a few times, and a hidden room was revealed. Inside was the relic the Nazis were after, but Indy had beaten them to it instead.

Unfortunately, I soon ran out of time before my demo session ended. It turns out I’d spent more time than I should’ve in my limited preview window exploring other paths, taking on sidequests, and taking photos of Gizeh. In other words, a bit too much time adventuring. As I said, it’s clear now that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is more of an adventure-action game than an action-adventure one, but after a few hours playing it, I love it for that. The first word you’d likely associate with Indiana Jones is probably “adventure,” not “action,” and The Great Circle hones in on that. I’m absolutely smitten with the look, tone, pacing, and voice acting here (shout-out to Troy Baker for effectively pulling off a 40-something Indy). What MachineGames has got going here is a unique blend of gameplay here.

In fact, I talked in my first hands-off preview about how much Indiana Jones and the Great Circle reminded me of 2004’s seminal first-person stealth-adventure game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay – which not only proved that licensed games could be incredible (the opposite was usually the case back then), but it showed that a first-person game didn’t have to be a shooter to be riveting. Butcher Bay was built by the same core group of developers that later founded MachineGames – many of whom are still with the studio – and that Riddick influence is just as evident when playing The Great Circle as it is watching it. I don’t know if executive producer Todd Howard, who famously pitched this idea to Lucasfilm many years ago, had MachineGames in mind when he came up with it. But the pairing absolutely works, and I absolutely can’t wait to experience the rest of Indy’s latest adventure.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.