Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
So ends a game I did not expect to complete, especially with the Sukhotai underwater sequences.
In the end, it’s good but not great due to some very deliberate design choices that made it much harder for me, even with assists active. Overall, the good aspects outweighed the bad enough. The story, world design, characters and graphics all made me want to get to the end. This remained so despite poor 1st person platforming, messy combat, useless guns, bad signposting and evil underwater sequences.
Whether it’s first or third person, there’s always an aspect of doubt as to whether the character will make the jump that doesn’t happen in 2D platforming, only 3D. First person amplifies that effect. I’ve never liked first person platforming and that remains so here.
Signposting – there is a rather deliberate decision to not render it too obvious. The problem is I need it to be too obvious. There were times where the interactive element blended in with everything else.
Combat is messy, but that can be designed to look so without messy controls, which it also had. A colour takedown indicator would have helped on distance needed to trigger. Enemies are also a bit too good, with too much health, even on the lowest settings until upgrades are got.
The stamina system is irredeemable. The game would be immensely improved by its removal.
What does work? World design is superb, the way they bring to life the era of the 1930s is superb. Voice acting is excellent, with Voss being a superbly creepy villain. Graphics and sound are excellent.
Things that would improve accessibility is adding sound direction indicators next to the subtitles. In the absence of those it took me ages to find Savage in Gizeh Village. Have a more obvious highlight of whip pulls in temples, they oddly do this just fine in camps. Have an option to increase water survival, slow the snake instant kill.
Exploring the various environments, even Sukhotai with that crappy boat, is very fun. What’s far less fun are the cryptic puzzles. If Machine Games were running hardcore escape rooms, customers would be dying in them. There is a small number of them I liked, but the majority I loathed. I did not expect to hit 100% for fieldwork. Some of that was great, other bits not so much.
Boss battles, I think the game would have been better off without them. They feel like a nod to video game conventions contributing little good to the game.
The disguises, assuming you can find them, which I wouldn’t without a guide as it doesn’t advertise them, are clever and can transform how you play. That unwillingness to advertise is a double-edge, it can be very satisfying to find a route through but sometimes you’ll want it not to be so quiet about where to go.
The stealth can work, though I often found the sight lines to be too long and captains being able to see through a disguise just because irritates. The carry body ability remains mystifying even now as there’s rarely any good stash points for them.
For £15, as part of GamePass, you should absolutely play this. Should you buy it for £70? That’s a much harder sell. I found a good amount of it to be rough, which contrasted hard to its other, better, smoother aspects.
A New Game Plus that doesn’t boost the difficulty would make for a very fun time.
Would I play the DLC? I don’t know. If it goes the usual road of making harder content, probably not as I didn’t find this that easy to play.
Would PS5 haptics boost it? Perhaps, but I’m not sure they’d help that much for this game.
Overall, I like what they did here. They managed to craft an adventure game that is distinct from both Uncharted and Tomb Raider. It has a high level of presentation, but would have benefitted with some more polish in places. Maybe that happens for a sequel.
In that respect, I do wonder how well it’s doing when the stat for completion of the story is 8.9%. Even allowing for people bailing fast that looks absurdly low.
