Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review – an authentic Indy adventure

Indiana Jones has this hat. He wears it when he goes adventuring; it makes him look dapper and has the added benefit of shading him from the sun. Indy is one of the few action heroes you can identify by his shadow alone, partly due to his fedora, so if you want to capture the feel of Indiana Jones, you have to nail the hat. Enter MachineGames’ Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which is an excellent game in its own right and a worthy entry in Indy’s existing canon, surpassing anything Dr. Jones has accomplished since The Last Crusade.

The Indiana Jones movies are a cultural touchstone for many my age and older. Indy is an archaeologist and a professor, and when he isn’t teaching classes, his job is getting into scrapes and making sure artifacts end up where they belong: in a museum. Tomb raiding is a morally questionable business at the best of times, but Indy is comfortably the best of a dubious bunch.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first-person action adventure game where Indy sets out to stop the nazis from getting hold of ancient artifacts that may or may not hold great power. It’s a globe-trotting journey that whisks you from Connecticut to the Himalayas, and back again. The story is extremely Indiana Jones, making small-scale explorations significant and each small trinket you pick up intellectually valuable.

Before the story kicks off, we’re treated first to the best tutorial I’ve played in years: an interactive recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s opening. Here you’ll get to grips with the controls and the dangerous nature of Indy’s job. You’ll poke around the floor looking for traps and then fill a bag with sand to offset a pressure plate, adjusting it ever so carefully before finally making the switch and grabbing the statue. For me, this intro was an instant mood-setter. I know that temple like the back of my hand from multiple rewatches over the years, and I immediately felt comfortable with what the game was trying to teach me and say about the adventure to come.

The story begins in earnest in the Vatican, which is infested with fascista and nazis. This occupation is at the behest of Mussolini and The Great Circle’s larger-than-life antagonist, Emmerich Voss. He’s gathering a bunch of small stones for an unknown purpose, and you take it upon yourself to stop him; this isn’t your first rodeo, after all.

The Vatican is yours to explore, and with the priest disguise you acquire early on, you have no real issues wandering your lavish surroundings. There are restricted areas that you shouldn’t get caught in, but that’s never stopped us before. It’s a densely packed, busy-feeling miniature city with a layer of verticality that reminded me of games like Dishonored.

The Great Circle feels slower and more deliberate than you might be used to in, say, the Uncharted series. It plays like an immersive sim; enemy forces are numerous, and you’re hopelessly outgunned, so it takes a bit of ingenuity to bypass obstacles in your way. You can approach most encounters however you like, whether that’s pure stealth, creating distractions, or simply punching your way to victory.

When violence does break out, hand-to-hand combat is king, with improvised weaponry being my personal favorite. You can pick up a shovel, pan, mandolin, or almost anything else and use it to beat a nazi senseless. It all adds to the improvisational nature of Indiana Jones – he always has some part of a plan, but making it up as he goes is generally his modus operandi.

Getting caught and fist-fighting your way out of a corner never feels like a failure, only part of the scrappy adventure, and tapping someone on the shoulder before knocking their block off never gets old. It requires a herculean effort at times, but through sheer luck and perseverance, you’ll get the job done, which is exactly how it seemed when I watched the movies for the first time all those years ago.

While bashing fascists about the head would be the highlight in most other games, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s real strength is its exploration and puzzles. Whether it’s a gargantuan tomb or a seemingly insignificant shrine, I found immense joy in delving into the game’s off-the-beaten-track adventures, picking up trinkets, taking photographs, and meddling in whatever I could get my hands on.

The puzzles aren’t brain-meltingly difficult, but they’re engaging and tactile enough to be satisfying to solve. Even figuring out the combination for a nazi lock can involve some light investigative work. That said, one minor annoyance is that your partner, Gina, offers hints too readily and too often. There were times I’d barely stepped foot inside an area before she started handing me a solution. I don’t mind a gentle nudge if I’m struggling, but I’d appreciate being able to at least attempt the puzzle first.

Gina and the rest of The Great Circle cast are fantastic, with a specific shoutout to Troy Baker and his mostly spot-on interpretation of a younger Harrison Ford. I say interpretation because even though he sounds like I remember Indy sounding, he’s not attempting a hammy impression; it’s more natural, as though it belongs.

Marios Gavrilis also gives a strong performance as Voss, a nazi and an archaeologist with flavors of Raiders’ Toht in that he’s slimy and arrogant but also finds joy in poking Indy at every opportunity. He wants power, like many villains do, but he also wants to be seen acquiring it. Merely defeating Indiana Jones isn’t enough – he wants to break him first.

With a gun to his head, Voss still sets about needling Indy, questioning Jones’ life choices and querying whether his life has meaning. “Afraid of becoming a father? No, afraid of becoming your father,” he jibes. I couldn’t stand him, the prim horror, and even though your encounters with him are largely non-interactive, I couldn’t wait to see just how he would get his comeuppance.

The satisfying puzzles, the engaging story, and the bopping fascists about the head all form a seamless experience that feels natural and quintessentially Indiana Jones. A must-play for fans of the movies and a superb adventure for the uninitiated, The Great Circle does almost everything right, and most importantly of all, it nails the hat.