Arriving the year after Harrison Ford’s decent but unspectacular final bow as Indiana Jones was met with a bit of a collective cultural shrug in theatres, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle might seem like it faces a bit of a battle to gain much attention in a gaming market crowded with newer, sexier franchises. But huzzah, Great Circle turns out to be a great time, reminding you how very cool Indy was in the first place, and essentially comes across as a better Indiana Jones film than at least two actual Indiana Jones films.
To be kind to those movies, the game has a bit of an unfair advantage in being able to decouple itself from the steadily advancing age of the star of the series, jumping back in the timeline to 1937 when those eminently punchable Nazis were still around in bulk. Indy is still reeling from the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and trying to pretend the fact that his on-again, off-again relationship with Marion Ravenwood has entered an off-again phase doesn’t bother him. When a mysterious giant with ties to the Vatican breaks into his college’s museum and pinches a cat mummy he retrieved on a recent expedition, he jumps at the chance for a distraction and on a plane to Italy to investigate, after first throwing his bullwhip in a suitcase. Oh yes.
The Great Circle makes a good decision to take place primarily from a first-person point of view, putting you into Indy’s shoes as yet another of his archaeological investigations slowly morphs into a mission to thwart Hitler (that Hitler, always up to something). Rather than being an all-action sort of a game, much of it plays out a bit like an Indiana Jones-themed version of first-person stealth classic Dishonored. Indy dons disguises and sneaks around large, open-world levels (starting with the Vatican, and progressing to more exotic locations) via routes of his own choosing to collect clues and artifacts, help folks fight fascism and pursue his broader goals, all without arousing too much alarm. This open world gameplay is punctuated by puzzle-solving / tomb exploring and more action-oriented set pieces where fists fly more freely.
Everything feels delightfully hands on, in keeping with Indy’s more analogue era. Maps and quests are kept in a journal he brings up to look at; keys and ancient stone machinery alike must be manually rotated; and the environment is littered with objects just waiting to be picked up and turned into improvised weaponry — get ready to introduce goons to unconsciousness with guitars, crutches, scrubbing brushes, frying pans, brooms, bottles, and much more besides. Indy also packs his trusty revolver but ammo is scarce and escalating to firearms means the enemies respond in kind (and besides which, picking up a soldier’s dropped rifle and flipping it round to smack the one behind him upside the head with it just feels so much more Indiana Jones). If all else fails there’s a fairly robust and fun fistfighting system to fall back on, with punches landing with just the right thunderous matinee crack. Nazi bringing a truncheon to your fist fight? Just whip it out of his hand — now it’s fair. Or trip him up with the whip and kick him when he’s down — I mean, he’s a Nazi.
When it comes time to explore ancient temples and secrets, too, the game nails exactly the right tone. The clunks of unseen, ancient machinery, flickering torchlight on stone walls, and spooky and awe-inspiring underground spaces really make you feel like you are the first human to enter in a thousand years — there’s none of your underground tiger populations here, Lara Croft. Puzzles are set pleasantly at a level that is just hard enough to make you feel a bit smart when you solve them, and the overall mystery slowly coalesces as you progress. It’s tops.
Throw in daring escapes, swarms of scorpions, a partner in crime Indy sparks off big-time in the form of Italian investigative journalist Gina Lombardi, a pitch-perfect sneering Nazi villain, supernatural forces and a pretty dead-on Harrison Ford impersonation by voice actor Troy Baker as all the globe-hopping goes down, and it really does feel like you’re experiencing a great lost Indiana Jones film that was made about 1983. By the time I was having a fistfight on the wing of a Japanese fighter-bomber in flight, I was cackling with glee. What a character. What a fun game. Go do some archaeology.
By Ben Allan
