I’ve spoken at length about my family’s connection to Indiana Jones. With a history teacher father, and a shared affinity for museums, it was an inevitability that we’d grow up imagining ourselves cracking whips, and sprinting through ancient stone caves.
When I was given the opportunity to get hands-on with the preview build for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I was immediately hyped. Would the game skew more to the greats, ie. Raiders of the Lost Ark? Or would it slide all the way down to align with some of the lesser appreciated films? (I’m looking at you, Crystal Skull.)
In my opinion, MachineGames has got a true gem on its hands with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Capturing the essence of Indy is paramount to making a game like this work, and after playing through a couple of missions, I feel a lot more confident the game is in safe hands.
Read: Indiana Jones And The Great Circle preview: We’re intrigued
The Indiana Jones and the Great Circle hands-on started right at the very beginning of it all, at Marshall College. Indiana’s grounding as a professor is front and centre, but when there’s a late night break-in, and an artefact goes missing, the pace tightens, and we’re off on an adventure that spans vibrant places like the Vatican and Gizeh.
The time I spent with the game felt equal parts longer and shorter than I expected – short in the way that I wanted more, and long in that it felt like I was getting away with something cheeky, being able to play as much as we did.
My biggest takeaway was how tactile and engaging Indiana Jones and the Great Circle felt. Whether I was sending Indy off through a shadowy path to take out some guards with a well-placed stealth approach, or fending off a host of skittering scorpions with a fire-lit torch, there was an ever-present sense of being.
Even when the stealth approach went down the toilet and I had to start swinging, I was able to really feel the weight of those swings (and often the repercussions, because let’s be real: Indy isn’t exactly going for a boxing title anytime soon). The combat was brawny and slightly messy in the right way, not forcing Indiana to be any more than he is.
Across stealthy sojourns and puzzle-solving zones, Indiana also worked surprisingly well in first person. This was my only major concern leading into Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, especially in the face of similar third person treasure-hunting games, like the Uncharted series and Tomb Raider. How could you infuse the game with Indy energy if you barely even see him?
Thankfully, the blend of first person gameplay and third person cinematics does a strong job of balancing this, with opportunities to lean into the Indy energy at both ends of the spectrum. It feels a lot more gripping in first person. When I swing a stray weapon at a stray Nazi, it feels like me. What more could you ask for?
And there are a lot of weapons to discover, which truly felt like one of the best parts to me. Indiana Jones is not a superhero by any means – he’s just a guy, and he’s a scrappy one, at that. So it feels all the more right for him to be grabbing makeshift items from all over the place in his adventure.
Possibly the best two options I experienced were the assortment of instruments at the Vatican, and (inexplicably) a big arse fly swatter. There’s something very engaging about whacking your enemies really hard in the face with a lute, and swinging that fly swatter around gave me the giggles for longer than I care to admit.
Strictly not for whacking, you’re also armed with a camera and a journal – which allow a much more immersive experience as your snapped pics appear in the journal, helping you crack clues and nail down your next objectives. As a wannabe scrapbook girlie who writes in her journal every day, it gave me a fun sense of kinship. He’s truly just like me!
Read: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle lands in December 2024
The whip will always be his most iconic accessory, though, and ultimately it was the most important to get right. Getting a rope-like object to move and dangle and swing in a natural way is tricky as it is, let alone when you need that object to crack firmly at Indiana’s enemies, snatching weapons away and yoinking them from the ankles.
The level of devotion that’s gone into making the whip work as well as it does in this game is clear. There’s an understanding that MachineGames clearly has about fidelity, and I have to respect the fact that not only have they made the whip feel realistic and grippy, but they’ve also integrated it into some of the traversal mechanics, in a way that never came across as ham-fisted.
I’m not going to talk too much more about the narrative, because in true Indiana Jones fashion, I think it’s best kept to firsthand discovery, but what I will say is the character choices and dialogue feel really organic. While sure, sometimes Troy Baker’s rendition of Indy’s voice skews a little more Troy than Harrison Ford, it works well for the cinematics, and doesn’t stand out in a bad way.
There’s also a level of detail present that I really appreciated across the entire hands-on – and that’s not just because I got a giggle every time Indiana would stumble across some biscotti for his health in the Vatican. Each environment feels really carefully designed, and there is a clear attitude of “specificity is king.”
I’m excited to see other locales in the game, especially given the promise of richly developed landscapes and towns that feel properly fleshed out. I can’t say I’ve ever clambered over the top of the Vatican walls with a whip, but I can say the experience felt accurate enough to me, because of that sense of detail.
Will Indiana Jones and the Great Circle stack up?
It’s always hard to tell in hands-on previews like this as to whether the game will meet the lofty expectations of the masses, but if there’s one thing I can certainly attest to, it’s that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle did surprise me.
I wasn’t going in expecting it to be sub-par or iffy, but I did go in wary. Apprehension over how well the game would reflect a franchise so near and dear to me ran rampant through my bones as I sat down to play.
Fortunately, the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle preview went a long, long way in allaying a lot of those concerns. Will it be an exact vibe match? Probably not. But I no longer think it has to be. There is enough of the Indiana Jones spirit in this project that it feels capable of being a faithful interpretation of canon and entirely its own thing.
I’m keen to see more of what Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has in store, but mostly, I’m keen to see what my dad thinks of it. Who knows, maybe I’ll even hand off the review duties just this once. Let’s see how a retired ancient history professor with his own fedora, and a lifetime of the Indiana Jones theme song as his ringtone, feels about it.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is set to release on 9 December 2024 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, with a PS5 version expected in early 2025.
