For the longest time, I have considered myself to be a fan of Indiana Jones, the movies to be sure but for me it was the games that let me be Indiana. So when it was revealed that MachineGames were creating an all-new Indiana Jones adventure, I was on board, but then the waiting began. After years and years of waiting the good doctor is ready for his latest adventure. Was this a whip cracking good time or are the adventures of Dr Jones a thing of the past?

The game opens in a way that I was not expecting, namely with the opening moments of the original movie, but in a way it is smart. Indiana Jones fans know this sequence very well and it introduces us to the basic controls of the game, but that is just a flashback. Snapping out of the dream, Dr Jones is in his office at Marshall College and discovers someone has broken in and while Indy puts up a valiant effort to thwart the would be robber, he is not able to do so. Upon discovering a few clues, Indy takes off in the middle of the semester and heads to the Vatican, in the hopes of finding out just what is going on. Here is where Indy encounters Gina, a local reporter who is on the hunt of her missing sister and the pair discover Emmerick Voss, a German archaeologist, who has crossed paths with Indy previously. After making a discovery of gigantic proportions at the Vatican, Indy and Gina head out for Egypt, in order to track down Voss and try to stop him from achieving his goals.

I won’t say any more about the story, or nothing more about the characters that you encounter, as I honestly believe you need to discover them for yourself. With there being a number of games where Indy is voiced, there was always something off about the character and I expected that coming in here, but I was wrong. Troy Baker has done an incredible job of bringing Indiana to life, snarky little quips and all, with the result being that Indy is truly Indy. The same can be said for Gina and Voss, their respective actors bring the characters to life that when extended cutscenes were happening, I often put the controller down to just watch and enjoy the story that I was watching. Coming into the game, I did think that the story would be good and while I don’t think the ending is the strongest it could be, from the opening moments of the mountain framed just like it is in the movies, to the credits rolling, I was just so invested in the story. One of the elements the developers promised is that you would be Indiana Jones and I can say without a doubt that was true. After a few too many narrow escapes upon claiming a relic, I got to another place and before I hit the button to grab the item, I spent time looking around the room for the likely exit I would need. What made me laugh is that after interacting with the item, Indy did that exact same thing, here I was thinking that the room was a little to open and Indy was thinking the same just as I was, it was a moment I don’t think I will forget for a while.

Story aside, what I was most excited to discover was the gameplay, which from the moment it was revealed to be a first-person adventure, did leave me with a few concerns. The biggest concern was perhaps around the first-person platforming, which traditionally never works that well, but I can report that they did really good with it. Why it works is that apart from a few jumps here and there, the camera will usually pull back into a third-person view point, letting you see Indy in action. When you have a lengthy climb or a big swing, moving the camera back works great, but when your swing or climb barely breaks a few seconds, the camera moving in and out does feel janky. Those moments don’t happen all that often, but when they do, you will notice them. Thankfully there are more times when you can see Indy in action for more than a few seconds, so it balances out in a good way. Something to be aware of is that every physical action you do, running, punching, climbing and swinging, all uses stamina and if you run out of it, you will be stuck waiting for it to recover. That means that you can’t hang off a ledge for 20 minutes while you wait for a guard to get out of your way, it also means you can just crack your whip like it’s a machine gun. This mechanic of stamina was something I didn’t expect to see, but after a little bit, it felt completely normal, as if it should have been apart of every Indy game previously.

The other part that makes Indy, well Indy is that he has smarts, dead languages, random trivia about mummified cats and other assorted nuggets of knowledge. The game honestly makes incredible use of this in the puzzles that you can solve, now I will use a few examples, but I obviously won’t give any solutions. One of the puzzles you have to solve is saying words in a specific order, but not all the words are available to you in the room, so you have to find them. Once you have them, you need to work out the order, the game does not tell you what they are. If you do get stuck, you can use the camera that you have in order to take photos of the puzzle and it will give you hints, but those are just that, hints. The more photos you take though, the more hints you get until eventually the game will explain the solution and you just then have to execute it. If you have someone running around with you, which does happen, then they might give you a hint if you appear stuck, but unlike God of War Ragnarok, they will wait for a good amount of time before they say anything. There was another puzzle where I had to use a codex to decipher a combination to the safe and I will admit that I had to break out some pen and paper, or iPad and Apple pencil in my case, to take notes, so I could make sure I got the right solution.

That makes for a good segue to talk about Indy’s notebook, which is given to him by someone fans will know quite well. As you explore a location, take photos of things and pick up various papers, the book will fill out. Some of these items will just be photos of a place or people within, some of them will be for puzzles. The papers that you collect though, they will usually be connected to a mystery, sometimes they are as simple as handing off something to a person, other times they are the first clue in a new thread you will want to follow. The notebook does break things down into the cases, so if you find a random piece of paper about a safe combination, you won’t find it in with the notes about mysterious objects. The maps that you get are also in the book, it will always open to the map of the area you are in, but if you want to investigate another map, you can navigate to it to find it. The best part is that you won’t get an insane list of notes, photos and maps by the end, as they are all grouped by location, which I am very happy about.

Indy as we know is a lover of books and as you explore locations you will come across a few types of them, some are comics, some are skill books and some are guides. Picking up the first will net you adventure points, taking photos and solving mysteries does the same, you can then use those points to unlock new skills that you can learn from the skill books. The first book I found let me move faster when climbing, without increasing the cost of stamina used, another book actually let me punch harder. There are a lot of books and some have smaller perks like letting you carry more of a resource, but others let you dish out more damage and finding them is a fun challenge. Of course, finding them doesn’t mean you get those skills, again those adventure points come into play and if you don’t have enough points, you may need to prioritise. The final books you can pick up are guides, some are lying about the world, others are available for purchase, these will basically give you help in locating things. Each location has artifacts that have a hidden meaning and while you can find a few by just navigating off the beaten path now and then, some are very well hidden. That means unless you spend forever combing every nook and cranny of a map, the guides will be your, well guide to discovering all the secrets. The best part, some guides are for other locations, I found one in a chest in Italy for secrets of Marshall College.

Speaking of the college, it is perhaps the one location from the movies that we never really get to see, yes we have the office, the classroom and a storage area, but that is it. Being able to walk around it was a great experience, but it pales in comparison to the exploration of the many locations. Now I knew the game would head to Italy, Egypt and the Himalayas, but I wasn’t expecting the locations to be as big as they are, well most of them. When I say Italy is big, I mean it, as there are multiple sections, some off limits to you unless you are dressed the right way and then of course there is the below sections. Some of those are just small little nooks that are just off the main path, but some are quite varied and require a nice amount of exploring to discover. Egypt and Siam, what is now known as Thailand are also massive and have lots to discover and even though I have finished the main story, I have had fun going back and trying to complete all the locations in full.

On speaking about locations, it feels like it’s a great time to talk about the presentation, because it is damn near perfect. Now I don’t mean that it looks incredible, which it does, but it does have some issues you will spot, but the perfection comes from just how well everything has come together. When you see Indy walking around in his trademark outfit, complete with hat and remember, Indy never loses the hat, he looks exactly as you expect. Wandering around the marketplace in Egypt, you will see a number of folks going about their days, dogs lazing about in the shade and the occasional monkey or two getting up to mischief. I mentioned before about how in cutscenes I was just watching them, and for good reason they not only look great, but they are made with the right amount of fun. There was a fight in an office between some Nazi soldiers, Voss, Indy and Gina, with it being serious at times, fun at others and when it came to playing the game again, I forgot for a moment. Something that I am honestly very, very happy to see included in the game is a cinematic widescreen mode, Star Wars Outlaws had this and seeing Indiana have it as well is great. Basically with this enabled, you get an experience exactly like you would if it was a movie, which with some of those very rich cutscenes, it honestly feels like it is at times.

Now I do need to mention the visual issues that I did encounter, the most egregious was in the jungles of Siam, basically there is too much vegetation for the game to load, so there is a bit of pop in. Actually there is a fair amount of it, but you won’t notice it when you are on foot, only when you are in the boat. That same pop in happens with other trees and plants, even in places like Egypt, so it isn’t an isolated issues. Parallel to that, the game does have some issues loading in detail on some items, such as the fascist tents in the Vatican’s Cortile del Belvedere. Each time I came up to one, it loaded in the extra detail and shadows at the last minute, no matter how slowly I walked up. An issue that is not really an issue is the whip, yes it is fun to crack, even better when you can rip the gun out of the hands of a Nazi, but there are times when it goes a little weird. This was always going to happen, ropes or rope like objects in video games have always done this and while it is not a gameplay issue, it can result in some funny little moments.

On the audio side of things, the game shines just as much as the visuals, if not a little more. First up the acting in the game is incredible, Troy Baker just does a phenomenal job as Indy, just as Alessandra Mastronardi does as Gina. The pair have some great scenes together and you just can’t help but be pulled into their moments, that is how good they are. Marios Gavrilis plays Voss and normally you would not want to support a Nazi, but Gavrilis does such an astonishing job, that you can’t help but like Voss, especially when he openly becomes a little silly. Now the remaining cast are just as great, from those that support Indy to those who oppose him, with many of the NPC characters also sounding great. What I liked is that the people all spoke in the right language for the region they are in, in the Vatican everyone was speaking Italian and you can have the subtitle only turn on when someone is speaking another language and it helps the immersion. Now there is a fair bit of repeating lines for the NPCs, more so if you are trying to discover every secret, but it never really got in the way of the good time I was having.

Voice aside the other great part of the audio is the sound effects and music, and both those help make the world of Indiana Jones come to life. One of the things I love about the movies is the old school effects, like when Indy lands a punch, we get the iconic noise and while part of me did wonder if it would become to much, it never did. But honestly the part that I loved the most was the soundtrack, from a few John Williams melodies to the original score for the game, it was incredible. Now this is coming from someone who listens a lot of the music from the Indiana Jones films every few weeks and to say that the team at MachineGames made an amazing score does not do them justice. It is so good that if they released it on disc, I would buy it in a heartbeat to add it to my collection of Indiana Jones movie soundtracks, it has earnt that place there.

Going into Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I knew I would have a good time with the game, as someone who has played every Indiana Jones game release, not counting weird DVD games, I would have liked it regardless. But not only did this exceed the expectations I had, it did so in a way that proves the pedigree of the developer and their love of the source material. The story has you venturing around the world and each location has a lot to offer, some more than others, but it is still great. While the ending of the story feels a bit less than I would have liked, everything up to that point is wonderful. There are some visual blemishes to the game, but none of them impact the joy that I had in playing the game and there was a lot of joy. I did spend a good amount of time trying to avoid getting into fights, but when I did the whip came out and the enemies went down. In all honesty though, those are the only downs I have for the game, from the opening moments to the closing credits, The Great Circle will go down for me as not only the best game ever for the character, but one of the best adventures for the character.