Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

What a great experience. I had been circling around this game for a long time. Having suffered through the last two movies, was I ready for another poor treatment of my childhood hero? Well, I finally pulled the trigger and bought the game, and what can I say? This game captures the adventure, the humor, and everything that made Indiana Jones 1-3 so great. It is phenomenal. The cast is amazing. Troy Baker as Indiana Jones fits perfectly, and Marios Gavrilis is the ultimate bad guy. Both have incredible chemistry, and it definitely feels like the movies. On the technical side, the game looks and plays very well and, well... maybe we'll get a second part. I would be down for another adventure. So long, old friend.

I have mixed feelings about this game, but I finished it with a big smile on my face so I think overall I'm falling on the side of positivity. That said, I have notes... Great Stuff: + The voice acting is excellent, Troy Baker does a solid impression of Harrison Ford, and the motion capture of the main character also feels fittingly 'Indiana Jones' (much index finger wagging). + The opening recreates the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it's fantastic. + The developers absolutely nailed the general vibe of Indiana Jones. There are loads of references to the films, but it never felt annoying to me. + The story is engaging and feels fitting for the franchise. + The level design and exploration is really fun, especially early on. + Pretty much anything can be used as a melee weapon, including guns (which is a really nice touch). Indy can find various outfits to blend in with the fascists, although certain enemies can see through his disguises (so you'll need to avoid them). + Some of the puzzles are excellent. Meh: ~ It feels like the game is 'meant' to be played stealthily: Using guns kind of breaks the game, especially early on as you can easily funnel enemies into narrow corridors to pick them off and clear areas. The stealth and combat works well, but is quite simplistic. ~ There's something a little off with much of the animation in this game. Facial animations are generally decent, but a lot of the characters look like puppets or action figures to me (I think it's the lack of animation on the clothing?). ~ Lots of upgrades to unlock but many of them don't really feel like they do much. ~ 21:9 is supported and works well during gameplay, however I did notice during the real-time cutscenes that the framing sometimes seems incorrect as people's heads or other details are awkwardly cut-off at the top of the screen (I suspect they've just cropped into the 16:9 frame rather than expand the edges). Note you can move the camera with the mouse, but only on the horizontal axis. ~ There's one incredibly stupid action set piece with a plane, but I guess that's par for the course in this franchise. ~ Each level effectively contains the same content that's just re-skinned. I think this is why I enjoyed the e early Vatican area so much, as it felt fresh. Once you get to the second level you realise each location is going to be quite similar. In this way the design feels a bit unimaginative. ~ You can revisit old locations if you like to find the bits you missed, but you shall suffer the wrath of ludonarrative dissonance if you do so. Try and clear everything before you leave each location (the game tells you when the area's final mission is next). Not So Great: - Ordinarily I'm a proponent of Ray Tracing effects, but this game is extremely heavy to run on max settings, and to my eyes it doesn't look good enough to justify the performance cost (Ryzen 9 5900x, 32GB DDR4, RTX5080 FE). Performance in the last major area absolutely tanks, probably because of the amount of water and associated effects. The image resolve often looks soft/soupy/smeary to me, too. Cyberpunk runs and looks better than this. Did this game really need RT? There is no dynamic time of day, so it feels like a lot of the lighting data could've been baked in? - Some of the player animations and UI are way too slow. When changing between healing items the UI regularly mismatches what item you're actually holding, because the animations are laboriously slow. When Indy walks through water it is PAINFULLY slow. Likewise climbing with the whip feels so heavy and slow. - Some of the platforming is terrible; you get pushed off surfaces for no apparent reason, or the whip simply doesn't work. It's not challenging and you rarely die because of something you did wrong, it's just the game deciding to push you off a platform or miss a ledge-grab arbitrarily. - The romance with Gina didn't land with me at all.