Review: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Almost four years after being announced, the next canon adventure for Indiana Jones is here with the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. This isn’t Indy’s first foray into the gaming world, but it’s been a decade and a half since the daring archaeologist had a playable adventure.

Now I’ll admit, I’m not a diehard Indiana Jones fan. I’ve seen all the movies and enjoyed them—yes, even Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—but it’s not a franchise I’ve found myself rewatching many times over the years like Lucasfilm’s other IP, Star Wars. However, I am a huge fan of Wolfenstein and, therefore, developer MachineGames. I didn’t realize just how awesome the concept of a MachineGames-developed Indiana Jones would beꦕ u𒁏ntil the developer, with publisher Bethesda Softworks, revealed the title in 2021 as being a developer in close collaboration with Lucasfilm Games.

Across my roughly 20-hour journey, I explored dark tombs and ancient archaeological dig sites while fending off Nazi soldiers and navigating deadly traps. And while the journey wasn’t flawless, it was a lot of fun. From its gameplay and mysteriously grandiose story, to the witty and quirky quips you’d expect from Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the most authentic playable version of Indy yet, and one I’m happy to have experienced.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC [reviewed], Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: MachineGames
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Released: December 8, 2024
MSRP: $69.99

The story of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set in the year 1937, between the events of the original Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the third film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After a brief intro where you explore a South American tomb and get introduced to the controls of being Indy, which, of course, includes you making use of his trusty whip and escaping a giant boulder that comes tumbling after you, Indy returns to Marshall College only to find it’s been ransacked.

After cleaning up the place, Indy discovers one of the artifacts he previously found is missing, and with only a medallion referencing Vatican City being left behind. And thus the events of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle begin, with Indy h𓃲eading to the Vatican to track down the stolen artifact and determine why it was stolen🐲 in the first place.

While the argument can be made that developer MachineGames has historically taken a gameplay-driven focus in its previous titles (Wolfenstein and Quake), with somewhat of a more backseat approach to the story, that’s not the case in The Great Circle. With four hours of cinematics, the storyline is the focal point here, and it’s a good one.

After tracking down the stolen artifact, Indy realizes a long-standing secret order in the Vatican is working with the Axis powers (Fascist Italy led by Benito Mussolini and Nazi Germany led by Hitler) to try and uncover and bring to life some sort of spiritual event that is connected to a series of sites built throughout history that form a perfect circle around the world, AKA The Great Circle.

Look, I’ll say it, this may be the best Indiana Jones story yet. Throughout The Great Circle, you’ll encounter classic staples of the franchise, like comical quips and deadpan stares from Indy, all while exploring beautiful parts of the world like the Great Pyramids in Egypt and the ancient Sukhothai Kingdom in Thailand. I was worried that the plot taking place in the year between two movies would make it feel rather redundant. After all, logically speaking, if this story mattered so much wouldn’t we have heard about it? But thankfully, that’s not the case, as the story continues to ramp up throughout Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, culminating in a rewarding and impactful ending that, in my opinion, leaves its mark on the franchise. This is canon, after all.

My only gripes with the story were essentially afterthoughts by the end, but is certainly worth mentioning. The pacing of things is a bit off at times, especially at the beginning of Indy’s adventure. After the introduction, you head to Vatican City, which I expected to be a quick way of further setting up the story before heading out on an epic Indy adventure. However, your visit to the Vatican is far from quick. You’ll run around Vatican City interacting with various characters and uncovering hidden tombs for a while—for me, it took about four hours—before heading to your next destination.

Don’t get me wrong, Machine Games created a beautifully dystopian Mussolini-controlled Fascist Vatican City, it just feels like you’re there a bit too long, and I was definitely ready to leave well before you actually do so. In the end, the events in the Vatican are important, and it does introduce you to a lot of the characters you’ll continue to interact with over the rest of the game, it just felt a bit offputting to be kick off the adventure running around the Vatican for a few hours.

Of course, a proper Indiana Jones outing can’t rely on story alone. At its core, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a stealth-focused game. As you sneak into various Fascist-controlled tombs, dig sites, and even entire cities, you’ll have to do so while navigating around patrolling guards and soldiers.

As someone not so good at stealth games, this was a bit daunting at first. But thankfully, stealth isn’t necessarily required in The Great Circle. If you manage to get spotted, you initiate mostly hand-to-hand melee combat with the soldiers. You can block, parry, and even dodge attacks while managing a stamina bar to swing back at your opponent. Of course, the noise will often attract other nearby soldiers, so you’ll often end up taking on a small army before you can proceed. But while this is often a near-impossible task in most stealth-focused games, The Great Circle is very fair at letti🐻ng you fight your way out of blowing your cover and still🧸 get back to the task at hand.

You’ll also find a ton of melee weapons scattered throughout every area where you can pick objects like a shovel, a pickaxe, a hammer, or even just a plunger and use it to stealth-takedown or even engage in melee brawls with your opponents. There are various guns you can find as well as loot off of enemies you defeat, but they are often very limited in ammo. Oddly enough, the gunplay in The Great Circle feels very tight and well-designed. I didn’t engage in many firefights as Indy, but when I did, they were a lot of fun although a bit short-lived.

Overall, the combat in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle fills its purpose: to provide some fun gamepl🔯ay elements༒ while exploring Indy. It’s nothing game-changing, but it works. With it being a lesser focus compared to the story, exploration, and puzzles The Great Circle has to offer, I think it was a great choice by MachineGames to make combat less hassle and more fun. It’s nice not being forced to stealth or feeling like you’re doomed when you get caught.

The real gameplay strengths of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, though, is its puzzles and exploration. Each of the three main areas you explore—Vatican City, Giza, and Sukhothai—are open-world hubs. You’re free to roam around them as Indy as you wish, taking on side quests, exploring on your own, or progressing the main story. There are actually quite a few optional activities available in each of the three hubs. I did some of them, which resulted in my roughly 20-hour playthrough. For the most part, they will build on backstories for certain characters or areas, but the optional content doesn’t really affect the main story. If someone wanted to ignore all the side content, I expect they could get through The Great Circle in 10-15 hours, whereas a completionist looking to do everything might be looking at upwards of 30 or more. There’s plenty of content here, and it’s up to you how much you want to explore.

Regardless of how much you explore, there’s one thing you can expect to find in both the main story and optional side content: puzzles. I have to hand it to MachineGames, every puzzle was unique and assuming I missed out on some through the optional content, there are a ton of puzzles in The Great Circle. For the most part, they get more and more creative as well, as you progress further through the game. There are a couple that were tricky to solve, but using a Camera item you get early on, you can take pictures of key parts of the puzzles, and Indy will essentially think out loud, which provides you with clues on how to proceed through the puzzle.

At times, the puzzles were so easy I thought for sure I was missing something, only to be shocked to see that I had the right solution and that was it. At other times, I found myself really scratching my head on how to proceed. In all of those moments, however, taking a picture with the Camera provided enough of a hint to get me thinking in the right direction, a🔜nd I never had problems progressing.

Aside from the early pacing issues, I did encounter a handful of bugs. Nothing game-breaking, thankfully, but they often ranged from silly to annoying. More than once, I’d be engaged in hand-to-hand combat with enemies, and they would seemingly just get overwhelmed and stand in place. It’s like I broke them, and no matter what I did they would just stand there and let me hit them while circling around me.

Another very comical bug I experienced early on while in Vatican City at least made for a good story. After sneaking around Vatican City doing tasks for an Indiana Jones-ally named Antonio, I returned to his location to find him sitting in a chair with an object impaled through his chest, staring at me, eyes open wide. Assuming he was murdered for working with Indy as part of the story, I moved forward to try and get a better look at the situation when suddenly Antonio spoke: “Well, Indy, did you bring me any photographic evidence?” Turns out that somehow, an interactable melee object had just glitched out and was just clipping through him.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an incredibly authentic Indiana Jones experience, and MachineGames really makes you feel like you are Indiana Jones. If you’re looking for an epic journey of exploration with a fun and mysterious story, that’s exactly what you’ll get with The Great Circle, and with a high level of polish to boot. The combat can feel like window dressing at times, but it doesn’t really take from the adventure. The exploits of Indiana Jones are all about exploring, puzzle solving, and having some laughs, and there’s plenty of that to go around in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.