Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an 2024 action-adventure game designed by Machinehead Games. Its aim is to make the player feel as though he or she is playing through an Indiana Jones movie, and it succeeds rather admirably in that regard. Utilizing a first person perspective with occasional shifts to third person (mostly for platforming), player will sneak through several Fascist-infested locations including the Vatican and Giza. Gameplay is divided into three categories: puzzles, platforming, and stealth-combat. Jones isn't an action hero--he can punch his way out of a jam, but more than one or two enemies, and he's better off fleeing than grabbing a machine gun. The melee system is pretty simple, and although I never really got the hang of how to parry (seems like you have to press it well ahead of when you should) Indie knocked out his share of Nazis during my playthrough. If you grab a gun and use it, every enemy will be alerted, so guns are really a last resort. It's better to flip that weapon around and use it as a Nazi-bashing tool. All sorts of environmental objects can be utilized in combat, from shovels to frying pans to guitars and scrub brushes. Stealth is pretty simple. Just hide out of sight and in darkened areas. Really, the game almost felt like playing a WW2 version of Thief sometimes. One annoying feature though is that Indie's companion Gina will brazenly creep right in front of a Nazi if you're sneaking, but he won't see her like she's a ghost or a figment of Jones's imagination. I'm guessing it was too annoying to have her out the player, so Machinehead Games just said "fuck it" and made her invisible.
Puzzles are never really very hard, which is fine, since you don't want to slow down gameplay too much, and this title is more about the ride than feeling like a genius. One particular puzzle involved a chess-like game where you have to rotate pieces in the same direction sequentially in order to access the next area of a tomb. Platforming involves mantling and using your whip to climb or swing to traverse the multitude of traps and pits that litter ancient tombs. This often necessitates a switch to a third-person perspective, and Indie looks pretty good rendered in the latest version of idTech. The game doesn't quite look as sharp as the latest Unreal Engine 5 titles, but it runs much, much better, and that's with ray-traced global illumination and reflections turned on. On my aging RTX 3080 12 gig, I was able to manage a locked 60 FPS without upscaling at 4k. I did notice copious amounts of pop-in, however, as geometry spontaneously loads into view, especially in the jungle levels.
What really sells this game is that it looks exactly like an Indiana Jones film. The story involves Indiana globe-hopping to keep several ancient artifacts out of the hands of Nazi archeologist Emmerich Voss, who resembles Arnold Toth, the SS officer from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Machinehead Games did the most recent Wolfenstein titles, and they're in their element crafting a WW2-era adventure. Honestly, the cutscenes are a bit long, but they're more satisfying to watch than Indiana Jones and Crystal Skull. Overall, I enjoyed the story and thought it held its own as an Indiana Jones adventure. Troy Baker does an excellent Harrison Ford impression, by the way. Over roughly 40 hours of game time, I never once said "that's not Harrison Ford," while hearing Baker voice Indie.
One note on the screenshots: I played this game mostly on my 4k OLED TV with HDR enabled. Windows doesn't have a good way of taking HDR screenshots, so they take two, one bright and one dark. So some of the screenshots don't look exactly like they did while I was playing.
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