Indiana Jones And The Great Circle: The Kotaku Review

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not what I was expecting. My expectation and fear was that developer MachineGames’ AAA action-adventure adaptation of the popular franchise starring Harrison Ford would play mostly like Uncharted, but in the ‘30s and with more Nazis. Thankfully, Great Circle is nothing like Tomb Raider, Uncharted, or the countless other games that have been directly inspired by Spielberg’s iconic ‘80s adventure films. Instead, Great Circle mixes Hitman-like stealth, Dishonored-like first-person gameplay, and some escape room puzzle design to create a unique, open-ended experience that feels both fresh and yet distinctly like Indiana Jones.

Out now on Xbox and PC, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes place in 1937, after Raiders of the Lost Ark but before The Last Crusade. The game opens with a flashback tutorial sequence that perfectly recreates the tone, feeling, and pacing of the iconic opening of Raiders, complete with outrunning the boulder and a digital Alfred Molina. It’s the most fan-servicey moment in the entire 30ish-hour game, but it also serves a purpose here beyond introducing you to Great Circle’s mechanics. The opening of Raiders is famous. Everyone knows it. So no matter how familiar you are (or aren’t) with the franchise, you’ll likely get a kick out of this action-packed intro.

But this intro serves another purpose still: By recreating it in Great Circle, MachineGames proves right out of the gate that, yes, the first-person perspective was the perfect choice for an Indiana Jones game. For the first time in any game, I truly felt like Indiana Jones.

I get why some questioned this choice before launch. For years, every game that tried to emulate Indy’s cinematic adventures did so via the third-person perspective, and that’s just how we usually expect action-adventure games to play in 2024. Here’s the secret though: This ain’t an action-adventure game. 

This ain’t Uncharted: FPS Edition

The Great Circle is instead an Indiana Jones simulator, and the first-person perspective is part of that. Indiana Jones isn’t punching Nazis, leaping across large spike pits, or solving ancient riddles. No, instead, you are doing all of that stuff as Indy. You are getting to live out the fantasy of being the world’s greatest archeologist, and the first-person perspective is key to making that work.

And no, this isn’t a linear, cinematic action game like I expected. There are definitely missions and moments that limit what you can do and where you can go, but for the most part, Great Circle plays more like the newer Deus Ex sequels or Dishonored. You aren’t completing a dozen different levels, but instead exploring a handful of large, dense, and highly detailed maps filled with things to collect, side quests to complete, mysteries to solve, and enemies to avoid or fight.

The first big map you get to explore is set in the Vatican, and you can easily sink eight to nine hours into that first map completing everything, discovering every shortcut, and collecting all there is to collect. I admit that initially, I wasn’t sure if this design would work, but that’s because I was expecting Great Circle to perfectly recreate the pacing of an Indiana Jones movie, just like so many other games have tried to do. Yet, what Great Circle is really offering with these large maps is an Indy sandbox. And it’s glorious.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a mechanically rich game in which every piece and part seems to interact with each other. Nearly any object can be picked up and used as a weapon, a distraction, or a tool. Your whip, an iconic part of Indy’s toolbox, can help you reach new places, swing across chasms, or even take down enemies. It can also stun baddies, knock weapons away, scare away guard dogs, or help solve puzzles. A lighter you get early on can light up dark areas or ignite torches. Torches can be tossed across gaps to help light up far-away objects or can be used to set off explosives.

Throughout my time with The Great Circle, I was constantly surprised by how often I’d think, “Can I do this?” or “Will this work?” only to find that the answer was almost always yes.

I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go

This level of interaction and cause-and-effect isn’t just fun and rewarding, it also lets you truly be Indiana Jones. This is a game all about improvising and making things up as you go. Here’s an example:

I was sneaking into an enemy base to grab some gold to buy an upgrade so I could enter a hidden temple. I successfully sneaked into the compound, taking out a few guards with swift melee attacks using a shovel and a wrench I found. Then I entered a building and started looking over documents about another dig site. I heard a guard nearby, so I stopped and picked up a glass bottle. Just as I was preparing to toss it out the window as a distraction, though, the guard moved away and I went back to what I was doing. Then I picked up a sledgehammer, which I was going to use to break open a locked box. But—oops! I dropped my bottle in the process, which shattered, alerting the guard.

He came in and, before I could take him out, yelled for his friends. I whipped his gun, shot him, and then shot two more who entered. A big guy showed up and beat me to the ground. But I crawled to my hat, picked it up, and took him down with a few good jabs. I grabbed his dropped baton and jumped out the window, landed, tossed the baton at an enemy in my way, and slid under a fence into the jungle. I dressed up as a soldier (outfits are a feature in the game) and walked back into the building. I dodged a captain who could see through my disguise, got what I needed, and left as guards patrolled on high alert.

Screenshot: Bethesda / Lucasfilm / Kotaku

This kind of stuff happened all the time while I played Great Circle. It’s a game that lets you pull off really cool moves, but also lets you fail just as easily. Yet failing is fun in Great Circle as you then have to improvise your way out of the situation, just like Indy so often does in the movies. And Great Circle nails that part of the franchise.

As you progress through all these Indiana Jones moments and locations, including Egypt and a snowy mountain, you’ll earn “Adventure Points” which you can use to unlock new abilities or improvements, though you’ll first need to discover skill books.

This means that discovering a new tomb or solving a puzzle or just helping someone who has been kidnapped by Nazis will reward you with the points you need to become an even better adventurer. And yet, you don’t get points for killing or fighting, because ultimately that’s not what Indiana Jones is about.

Sure, he’ll kill some people if he needs to, but he’s an explorer and archeologist first, and Great Circle reinforces this idea. (Though it certainly won’t punish you for punching a Nazi.)

Surprise, a new Indiana Jones movie is here!

At this point, you might have noticed that I’ve not talked about the story or characters in Great Circle, and that’s because I don’t want to spoil any of it. If you‘re a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, what Great Circle offers is something I thought impossible in 2024: A new Indy movie starring young Harrison Ford (voiced perfectly by Troy Baker), and I don’t want to ruin that gift.

I will say that MachineGames clearly studied the past films while making Great Circle. Camera angles and lighting in cutscenes look very 1980s Spielberg, and the cast of characters Indy meets would feel right at home in any of the films. I do want to shout out the main villain of the game: Emmerich Voss, a Nazi archaeologist and Indy’s old rival.

Screenshot: Bethesda / Lucasfilm / Kotaku

At first, I was worried that Voss would be just another Nazi, but as the game progresses it becomes clear that while he has evil plans that involve powers and relics beyond his understanding, he also just desperately wants to impress Indiana Jones. He wants Indy to respect him, talk to him, work with him, and admit that Voss is better, smarter, and more successful. Indy doesn’t do that, as you would expect, and watching the two of them go back and forth on screen is fantastic. Voss is a highlight of the game and will go down as one of the best Indy villains around.

By the time I wrapped Great Circle, I realized that what I’d played wasn’t just one of the best games of 2024, but it was maybe my favorite Indiana Jones adventure—across the entire franchise—since Crusade.

And yet, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle doesn’t rely solely on nostalgia, fan service, or that iconic John Williams fanfare that plays whenever Indy succeeds. If it did, it would be a game I’d only recommend for fans of the series.

Instead, I recommend that everyone who loves immersive sims and mechanically rich stealth-action games play Great Circle. It’s one of the best games Bethesda has ever published, and I’m happy this thing will be on PS5 next year so more people can experience it.

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