Gabriel Stanford-ReisingerLicensed games have this poor stigma surrounding them; they’re low-effort, lack polish, and oftentimes cobbled together on short notice to appease the IP holder’s whims. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is luckily not like that.
Fostering a solid story and good graphics, packaged in a not-so-buggy experience, this Indy game is a nice addition to the actually good licensed library.
Crack That Whip
The story is fairly straightforward without getting into the spoiler territory; an ancient artifact is stolen, and Indy takes it upon himself to get it back from the clutches of the German army. On his way, he stumbles into a mass conspiracy and now leads the charge of learning about the Great Circle.
Along the way, he meets journalist Gina Lombardi who is searching for her sister with the Nazi Party believed to be behind her disappearance. Deadset on stopping Emmerich Voss from collecting an decoding all of the stones required to use the Great Circle, the two team up and prove to be a pretty powerful duo.
Give The Past A Slip
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle puts players in the shoes of namesake adventurer Indiana Jones in a first-person perspective most of the time. The only real times you get a third-person look are during cutscenes or out-of-combat action like climbing and whipping across gaps.
The game pushes the player in a couple of different gameplay loops that can either keep you engaged or check out at the door. For me, I found the puzzles to be very hit or miss; some of the more complex puzzles felt unfair, while others felt rather plain in comparison.
Now, I went into this knowing the combat is purposefully janky, but boy, was I not prepared for just how janky the combat is, and it’s only made worse by the durability of weapons strewn across the ground, meaning you may only get two good hits in on your opponent before they bum rush you with their friends if you aren’t careful. It also doesn’t help that it feels like enemies are bullet sponges. Seriously, it felt like I could unload an entire clip into one foe before they would go down.
The durability situation extends beyond the generic pool cues or hammers found in random rooms or toolboxes, though. Indy’s very own revolver can also be used as a melee weapon in dire situations, but I’d highly discourage that as it’s also very weak and will break on a single enemy. Once it’s broken, you can’t use it until you fix it with a Repair Kit, which aren’t always readily available.
There were also multiple occasions where its autosave feature messed me up big time. During A Harsh Climb, for example, it’s easy to get trapped between a rock and a hard place if your revolver is already done and dusted. You can only really rely on stealth attacks when using weapons, otherwise, you just clumsily swing a punch and have to hope there aren’t any other enemies nearby to aid your adversary and that your stamina is up to snuff. Oh and remember to use the whip from time to time.
You Must Whip It
Beyond the clunky combat, janky shooting, and all-over-the-place puzzles, it felt like some missions were more fleshed out than others. Some felt like they dragged way longer than had to, like The Idol of Ra. This one was a lot more open world than its previous two missions, and I feel like that was to its detriment. I started not having fun while having to trek across the map while managing my stamina because, yes, there’s a stamina meter, and yeah, it’s pretty frustrating to manage sometimes.
Indy’s latest adventure felt way more at home in a contained environment that had a light touch of open world but still very clearly on-rails. I think MachineGames wasn’t positive the way they wanted to go about the game — was it going to be open world? Do they want it first or third-person? Those two questions linger in the back of my mind.
Moreover, the boss fights feel dragged out almost like artificially lengthening the game. Those moments of required melee just feel way too forced and almost like MachineGames had a quota to fill.
Whip It Good
It’s not quite the most grandiose adventure by any means, but what we have here oozes “Indiana Jones” energy. Unlike tons of IP-plagued titles, MachineGames knew what they were doing and respected the source material well enough to keep both new and old fans happy.
Unfortunately, the melee combat is clunky in an unenjoyable way, the mission maps are all over the place, and its puzzles vary so insanely in quality and difficulty. But, overall, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle hits most every box for an adventure-addicted Indiana Jones fiend.