Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Punches Above its Weight
That said, it absolutely has issues that annoyed me immensely and hold it back from being truly amazing.
In the 90s when I was a kid my parents showed me the Indiana Jones movies on VHS. We had all three and they showed them to me before I was 7. My dad and mom, before they split, often showed me movies (and TV shows in the case of my mother) they had loved when they were younger. That lead to me falling in love with Film and with the Star Wars (the original unaltered VHS versions) and Indiana Jones films. When I went into film, I used Spielberg and his amazing work in the Indiana Jones films as my inspiration for how I shot my student films. All that is to say that I love the Indiana Jones series, even have found some love for Crystal Skull years later. Fuck the Dial of Destiny though.
The only game that has felt similar to those movies were the Uncharted games, which I've written about before. I never played the Indiana Jones sidescrollers so now, with MachineGames ending the year with a game in one of my absolute favorite series, I of course had to play it. And its got some issues, yet, I kept being reminded of the films over and over. I kept taking screenshot after screenshot because of how similar the shot composition was to the films. I just kept falling more and more in love with the game. It's not amazing, but I still love it.
The Good
This is exactly like I'm playing an Indiana Jones movie. It has the same camera angles, the same great writing, the same enemies you'd expect, even the same lighting. From a filmmaking perspective, this is perfect beyond expectation. I don't think I can say that enough. The great thing about Indiana Jones movies are they often show and don't tell. They have these puzzle moments Indiana has to work out, they have these moments of tension where you as a viewer think that Indy might not make it out, only for him to manage to survive. The game hits all of those notes.
Speaking of filmmaking, it's Cat's Film Nerd time! Indiana Jones has some of the best filmmaking in the industry. See, as I've discussed in my other reviews where I've mentioned filmmaking (Kingdom Hearts 2 and Stray Gods), in the best films there is an invisible communication between the Director and the audience, but not just that, the best films have depth.
Now what do I mean by depth? Well in the best films there isn't just good framing in the foreground, but there's great framing in the background. Sometimes the background is even whats supposed to draw your attention. For instance, in the film Citizen Kane, first time filmmaker Orson Wells invented many techniques but he particularly used things like doorways and the blocking of people to frame the shot. Now, in Indiana Jones, they do this kind of thing a lot, like in Last Crusade when Indy and his dad are escaping from Nazis and Indy gets in a boat and sends it down the river without them, leading the Nazis to think they had done that. But in the foreground, there's a big box, and once the Nazis get in the boat, Indy and his dad burst out of the box on a motorcycle. And all of the movies have this kind of depth. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is no different, there's a moment below Vatican city with a priest and a Nazi talking in a secret Vatican vault and in the background is Indy and Gina dragging a guy they knocked out behind cover. We see them between the priest and Nazi, they are framed by those two, its fantastic and there isn't just great framing, but great play with Shadows. For instance, in Vatican City you can save an assistant to an archeologist, and when you open the door he knocks you over the head but you see it in Shadow. Just like when Henry knocks out Indiana in Last Crusade, or the use of shadows in the best Noirs or even once in Casablanca. Filmmaking isn't supposed to be flat, it's supposed to show you things through framing, composition, structure, and acting. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle doesn't do all of that a few times, it does it time after time.
Another example of shadow play is when you get to Gizeh and Gina and Nawal are talking about whats going on in Gizeh, Indiana is feeding a snake in the background, but the Director doesn't show this through obvious means, it's not a direct view of it, they use the shadow of Indiana behind a piece of cloth instead. This does an amazing job to show the character of Indiana, his fear and his attempt to overcome it, and it does it through an indirect shot. I could talk for hours about the filmmaking of this game, it is superb and the exact imitation of the Indiana Jones movies.
And that imitation doesn't just exist in the Directing, but also in the acting. There's so many moments where Indiana does his Indiana things. Something that was particularly good was that when he reads something and it's a big thing to him, he moves his eyes off of the thing he's reading and they kinda move back and forth a bit as he thinks about what he's reading and realizing. You can see his gears turning in his head and it's incredibly well acted and well Directed.
The puzzles in this game were largely easily solvable but the couple of times that I got stuck, the game has an amazing hint system where you take a picture with a camera and it will give you hints, both through text and through Indy commenting about it in dialog. The game is designed to communicate the puzzle to you in the same kind of way that Indy figures out the puzzles at the end of Last Crusade. Again, they're just difficult enough to be interesting and not be annoyingly difficult. And considering how frequent puzzles are, I'm glad they aren't too difficult, because if they were it would ruin the entire game.
Finally, something that I really enjoyed about the game were the side quests, or fieldwork as it's called. Each one is a different story and there's usually only a few in each hub world but they didn't feel like diversions from the main plot. It simply felt like the Directors Cut of the main plot where we get to see more detail and character development and story details.
For instance, one of my favorite missions was in Sukhothai where there's a big explosion and you have to go investigate. When you get there you discover that the Nazis have discovered an underground Tomb, but not by themselves. They had one of Indy's former students working with them. We get to see not only Indy reacting to his former student working with the Nazis and how much he fucking hates that, but see her develop as a character as the Tomb goes on. We see her expressing disappointment for not providing her a reference and when the inevitable twist happens, we see her anger that Indy wasn't a better teacher. She has her own little Arc and I really appreciated it, even if I saw the twist coming.
The fieldwork all have their little story arcs for the characters they introduce and I loved that we got to see more than just the main cast in troublesome situations. It was great and I loved all of them.
The Bad
Realism is often not fun in this game. In order to unlock a door I have to equip the key by pressing right on the d-pad, press X to insert the key into the keyhole, then press right on the left stick to unlock it. Three actions I need to do that other games will just do instantly when you get keys to doors. And ya know why they do that instantly? Because it's important when you're sneaking around. Doing this shitty bit of realism is purely annoying and nothing more. For instance, there was a time early in the game when I was sneaking, as ya do, and I came to a door I had to unlock that I had the key for. But there was also an enemy just about to see me. So I had to take out the enemy first before opening the door, while in other games like this (an Immersive Sim) I could have just, pressed X and unlocked the door and went in to avoid the enemy. The 3 actions keeps me from being able to fully engage with the stealth because I can't easily avoid enemies as much as I can in other games. Its not satisfying and not good gameplay. This is often a problem in recent games that like to force realism into places that weren't needed. The Im Sim genre has already perfected opening doors, why do you have to reinvent the wheel? When you try to reinvent the wheel, it can either be great, or shit, and this one is shit.
That realism also extends to other things, like how Indiana climbs so slowly. Even when you find the book that allows you to climb faster, it's such a small amount faster that I often only know that its working because climbing drains my stamina slower. Then there are moments where I'm trying to pick up some kind of item (non weapons) and when I do, I drop my fucking weapon. So when I pick it up and press X to take it or put it back, I have to find my weapon that I just tossed down. Sometimes this is easy, other times it flies away and even despawns.
Ya know what I really hate in videogames? Fucking stamina meters. I do not like that in a game so focused on melee combat that I can only punch 5 times at the start. I just want to punch dammit, stop taking it away from me. Plus, they then add stupid screen effects that make it harder to see when you're out of stamina. I just don't enjoy it. Now if it was just combat, I could deal, but its also fucking running and that sucks. Let me run around Vatican city without having to slow down for a bit, it's annoying and needless. Importantly, you can upgrade your stamina meter, just like in most games, but that doesn't make it more fun for me. It's a frustrating game mechanic that also impacts how often you can use your whip and it's just...it needed tweaking and possibly to only have some things impact it. Let me run infinitely and I would have been much more satisfied. This becomes especially annoying for running when you get to Gizeh and the hub world is massive and you often can't climb on things to make your path to your location shorter that you should totally realistically be able to climb on. Half way through Gizeh and I was desperate for infinite running or a fucking vehicle to make traveling faster (thankfully the last hub world does have a vehicle that helps you get around, but its really the ONLY way to get around). Or even fast travel, just something because running super far and with a stupid stamina meter fucking sucks.
And speaking of frustrating game mechanics. The melee combat, when it is fists, is hit and miss. Mainly because you have the ability to dodge, but you don't have the ability to lock on to a target and dodge around them. Its incredibly frustrating when, for instance, you go up against a lone enemy in an underground boxing ring and dodging back is not possible. It's infuriating and I think, either, they should have gotten rid of the dodge mechanic and made you more resilient, or had simply allowed for me to easily dodge around someone like one does in so many other games that have dodge mechanics. Add on to that when I'm fighting large groups of enemies because I absolutely failed at stealth, all of a sudden dodging backwards won't necessarily work because I'm getting swarmed by enemies from all sides. It just feels halfway implemented and ends up being more frustrating than it should.
And then when you are in the heat of combat and trying to find a weapon, you can only pick it up if you have your cursor dot directly over it, so you'll often end up in fights where you are trying to pick up a weapon to fight back but, because when you get hit your cursor moves around, you end up just slamming the pick up button trying to get the damn weapon and often, at least for me because of the failures of the stealth system, if you have a bunch of bodies laying about and are trying to pick up a weapon among those bodies, it can be absolutely impossible because of how perfect your cursor has to be to pick up the weapon. I'd find myself almost always only seeing the "pick up body" prompt because that takes precedence for some fucking reason over being able to pick up a very necessary weapon. It was infuriating and I don't exactly know how to make it easier, but that doesn't change the annoying reality.
The stealth in this game is also hit and miss, mostly miss honestly. Most of the areas don't work well for stealth except The Vatican and the Himalayan Nazi ship. Besides those two, stealth is hard. Particularly, in the Gizeh location. That area is filled with spots that only have one path to get to and have very little, if any, cover. It feels like the game is telling you when to do stealth and when to go fists out, guns out. I know the game isn't meant to be an Im Sim, but I think the stealth would have been much less frustrating if I had more ways to go about infiltrating different locations. Some of them had multiple ways but most didn't and that just lead to frustrating moments where I thought I was being stealthy, but because there was no cover, I got discovered and just killed everyone. Now this could be fixed with disguises, but I shouldn't have to search to find the disguises in the location in order to be able to do simple stealth. Frustrating and not super well executed.
The Ending
Finally, after the exhausting Sukhothai, Gina gets captured and then you and Locus follow her and the Nazis to the Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq. The Giants attack, Indy saves Gina, we go to the bottom of the dig under the Ziggurat where the Nazis have discovered Noah's Ark because of course. We then discover, through Voss informing Indy in some decent exposition reminiscent of many Indy films, that the stones you've been chasing were given to Noah by Metatron, the Voice of God, and were used by him to collect all the animals, through what are essentially wormholes, around the world and then post flood, repopulate the Earth. Next, you get knocked out and Noah's Ark gets dragged by trains out of the dig into Lake Hammar. Voss then uses all 17 stones by putting them in the wheel of the ship while everyone is aboard Noah's Ark, calling forth The Flood and then the storm strikes Voss and other Nazis with Lightning from God, Gina cuts you and Locus out of your bindings, you fight Voss on the top of the Ark with fisticuffs, a great wave washes Voss off the edge, he holds on to Indiana's whip which he had used to wrap up your hands, he pulls you off and then you and Voss sort of fight again, hanging off the side of the ship by the whip. It's more just kicking him away from you until Gina helps. Then Gina saves you and you both fall off the fucking edge again but only for a short amount of time, Locus then uses the power of the wheel to kill Voss, finally, in a very Indiana Jones way. Locus tells you to jump off the ship and then guides the ship into a portal and that's it, Indiana and Gina are on the shore and the storm has cleared. Cut to an airport where Indy and Gina kiss and she flies off without Indiana and the credits roll.
One thing is for certain about the ending, it is consistent with Indiana Jones finales and their ancient mythology proving true. Raiders had the Arc of the Covenant being real, Temple of Doom had the Hindu gods being real, Last Crusade had the Holy Grail being real, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had Aliens being real, and Dial of Destiny had Time travel being real. So of course this game had to have something and it steered more towards Christianity because those were what most considered to be the best films. Finding Noah's Ark though felt kinda...flat. We had known that the Nephilim had been around far longer than the Christian church so I was hoping it'd be something not Christian related to be the final Mythological item that's real, but hey, it's better than Time Travel in Dial of Destiny. Thankfully they do mention that there are plenty of Flood myths besides the Judean myth which I appreciate and only use the name Noah because it's the simplest name among the myths.
Once we get to the actual paranormal part on the ship, the ending finally got good and enjoyable. It had the climactic fight, the mythological powers being used, and the tension of not knowing how Indy is gonna make it out of this one. I really enjoyed it when it finally got going. That said, I do wish we had seen Indiana go back home or something but we do know he gets his job back because of the other movies so ending it at the airport wasn't that unsurprising.
I also don't know if I like getting loaded back in to complete stuff, but I guess it's nice for people who want to complete everything, of which I am not one, but this is just a me thing and didn't impact my opinion on the ending.
The Conclusion
Well, after all that and an unknown amount of hours, I think Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a very good Indiana Jones game and overall a very good game. It's filled with fantastic moments of exploration and intrigue not just in the main quest, but also in the fieldwork/side quests. There are still frustrations when it comes to the "realism" being overdone and stealth being impossible sometimes because the level design forces you to go down one path, but overall, I really enjoyed it. It having an ending that's satisfying and it being very very Indiana Jones helps a lot.
While this is not a perfect game, or even close really, I still think you should play it. Especially if you love Indiana Jones content. Just keep in mind, you don't have to collect everything for the game to be fun. But I would recommend doing all the fieldwork, there are some really good moments in them that if you miss it's not as satisfying of an experience and I don't know how well they'd play after the game is done. I hope there is a sequel, maybe one that takes place just before or during the war, but no matter what, it was a great experience and ranks third in the Indiana Jones stories in my mind, only closely behind Raiders and Last Crusade.
Meow,
Cat