4.5/5 ★ – ColeTrain's review of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Aside from being a huge Star Wars fan I'm also a fan of Indiana Jones I loved watching the original movies a long time ago and when Indy was finding ancient relics and hidden locations or fighting some rival archeologist it felt like such a wild ride that I got to come along for and this game absolutely nails that same vibe for me feeling like a "lost" movie in the series that was never released until now. The story takes place in 1937 and Indy is dreaming about a previous expedition when he eventually wakes up in his office at Marshall College and decides to get up from his desk and go for a walk around campus. As he's walking he eventually ends up in the College lobby and finds a rather tall individual standing there as an uninvited guest Indy asks what he wants and the intruder who is an absolute tower of a man turns around and speaks to him in another language before walking towards Indy to fight him so Indy picks up a post like the ones to "rope off" certain areas so people don't go into a place they shouldn't be and hits the giant with it and they go back and forth slugging it out for a while until the giant knocks Indy out. When Indy comes to another teacher who works at the college named Marcus finds him and asks what happend Indy tells Marcus that someone broke into the college then knocked him out and Indy then says that the intruder was very tall like a giant. Marcus then tells Indy that they should check the exhibit room to figure out if anything was taken from the collection of artifacts when they arrive Indy and Marcus find that the room is in a bit of a mess with broken glass and artifacts from Indy's travels laying everywhere on the floor so Indy puts all the artifacts back in their usual places until in the Egyptian section of the exhibit he notices a cat mummy that was originally in one of the cases is gone. After figuring out what was stolen Indy then notices that there's a pendant lying on the floor and remembers that the giant was wearing it when he broke in. Indy then inspects the pendant and he then notices that it has a symbol associated with the Vatican church in Italy and tells Marcus he needs to go immediately to see if he can find out who this intruder is and find out why they took the cat mummy and where they're taking it to. Marcus then says Indy can't go when mid term exams are happening and Indy tells Marcus to get someone to cover for him as he heads to Italy to find out why someone would want his cat mummy so badly and find out what connections this giant has to the Vatican and whatever clues may be hiding there. Ok gameplay time Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first person action game I guess would be the best description of it where you'll travel to different locations around the world to investigate sites of historical significance and find out the connections they have to each other so you'll have to do a bit of searching to find where you need to be heading in order to get to those sites however it won't be a cake walk as you'll have to solve puzzles to access certain areas for example when you are in Italy there is a fountain with two dragon statues one that's white and one that's black high above on either side of it facing away from each other with inscriptions on one side there's one which says " A light scaled dragon turned to the dark and saw his horde unveiled" and another on the other side that says "A dark beast looked upon the light and the den of dragons opened" so getting the dragons to face each other is the basic idea. In order to do that you'll need to get through a gate near the fountain which is locked and requires a key so you'll have to search for it in that area. Once you find the key unlock the gate and go inside then you'll need to go up some stairs until you come to a gap that you can't just walk over however there's a beam above the gap that you can use Indy's trusty bull whip to grab on to it and swing across which you can do by pressing the right bumper when you're looking at it and in the right proximity then once you're attached you have to move forwards and backwards on the left stick to build up the momentum you need then pressing the A button once you're on the other side of the gap to unattach your whip from the beam and land on the other side where there's an opening then walk through the opening to get to the dragon statue. Once you're at the dragon if you twist its clawed foot that's raised up a handle will come out of the base of the statue then you can move the statue with it then you'll have to grab the handle and move it so that the statue faces the dragon on the opposite side. For the other dragon in question it's missing its pointy appendage so you'll have to search for that down below. once you've found it place the missing foot on the dragon and then twist the foot to reveal the hidden handle in base of the statue then like the first statue move the handle to make the statue face the one on the other side. Once you've done that get back down to solid ground and use the whip on the dragon statue that's in the fountain then a gate will open up and you can walk on through. Aside from puzzles you'll also find your fair share of enemies throughout the game that you can either sneak past or give them a heaping helping of whoop ass and if you think that enemies need their daily values worth of beatdowns here's what you need to know about the combat in this game. The combat in this game is more melee focused and less so on shooting than other first person action games with Indy being able to make make enemies talk to the hand or shall I say fists by quickly punching enemies if you press your left or right trigger you can also hold right trigger to "charge" your punch which can do a lot more damage but is a bit slower as it takes a little bit of time before Indy can fully pull back his punch not that it's a stupidly long amount of time but still is something you have to take into account as enemies may hit you as you're charging it. Another thing you have access to are a variety of melee weapons which can be swung by pressing right trigger these can be found either lying on the ground on shelves or boxes or held by enemies these include Billy clubs, spades, pipes, sledge hammers, fly swatters (I'm not making that up I swear) , shovels, glass bottles that can either be used to divert enemies away from you with their sound or to stun enemies for a moment giving you time to follow up with a punch or to pick up another weapon, brooms, guitars, frying pans, wrenches and more. The bigger melee weapons like the sledge hammers are slow but powerful whereas the smaller melee weapons like Billy clubs are faster but aren't as powerful as the bigger weapons all of which can be thrown as well by pressing left trigger.These weapons have durability meters indicacted by these little circles with deplete every time once all the circles are completely gone the weapon will break and you will need to search for another one or find a repair kit that you can find in different areas which can make certain broken weapons usable again. You'll also be able to use Indy's whip by pressing right bumper as a way to disarm enemies that have weapons in their hands and it stuns them for a little bit too allowing you to either get some free hits in on them or to get past them if there's too many guys and you don't feel like you can wail on all of them. You can also use it to make attack dogs run away from you because they don't like the sound. Indy also has access to his trusty revolver which is really powerful but the ammo for it is rare so is best saved for bosses. You can also block and parry by holding left bumper to block or tapping it to parry. You can also dodge enemy attacks by holding block and pressing the A button. You can't slug it out with enemies forever though as you have a stamina meter that depletes every time you throw a punch, block, parry and if it runs out you'll move slower and have to wait until it refills before you can do any stuff like punching again. Another thing I'll mention are health items which sometimes can be food or bandages, food can be quickly eaten but only heals a small amount whereas bandages take longer for Indy to wrap them on himself but gives you more health. Indy's health will also a bit regenerate a small amount after not taking damage for a while. Yet another thing you can find on your travels are Adventure Books these allow you to upgrade Indy in different ways such as a book called Cutman which gives Indy faster regeneration of his health. Pep increases stamina recovery speed. Lucky Hat which allows you to take an extra hit but knocks Indy to the ground forcing him to crawl and knocks his hat off making it land a little ways away from you however if you can get to it Indy can stand up pick his hat up and keep going but if your health goes all the way down again you have to start from wherever your last checkpoint was and Brawler which increases the damage you deal in armed and unarmed combat with many other books to find but these are just a few examples.You can also find side quests in each of the different areas as well these can range from finding a nun's lost book and returning it to her to going into an underground bare knuckle boxing ring and fighting the guys in there and more. Doing these side quests will net you this games version of experience points called Adventure Points which is what is used to acquire the skills I had mentioned before another way to earn Adventure Points is by using Indy's camera to take pictures of particular things in a certain area which will help you figure out how to solve certain puzzles with Indy making comments on what you've taken a picture of. Aside from taking clue pictures you can take pictures of different locations where a camera icon will appear to tell you of a point of interest which Indy will also comment on those as well like that particular things significance to a certain culture as a few examples. On to the the good and the bad now to begin the good this game absolutely nails the look and vibe of the movies with humor that fits perfectly in line with them. I loved getting to see all the different locations and exploring all these ancient places that all had such good variety to them which helped things not feel too boring and stale. I found the puzzles were pretty interesting and engaging too making me have to really use my brain to figure things out which was a nice way to have some time to break up the more action oriented sections and kind of just chill for a bit. Another thing I enjoyed was the adventure books and having to find them in order to acquire new skills rather than just having a skill tree and picking stuff from that. It made for a unique twist on things to separate it from other first person games and added to that feeling of discovery and wonder for me of being in another country as well. I absolutely loved Troy Baker's performance as Indy in this game he really impressed me doing an awesome job imitating Harrison Ford's voice so much so that if I hadn't looked it up I could have been convinced that it was Harrison himself doing the voice work.I enjoyed the combat in this game quite a bit it was fun using all kinds of different weapons to use and it made laugh when I would be fighting an enemy and look for something to use as a weapon when I would come across something like a frying pan and just start wailing on someone with it. I also loved using Indy's whip it felt so satisfying hearing it make that crack sound when I was whipping guys and disarming them. I enjoyed the story of the game a lot too I found it had a really good hook and really interesting concepts in it that I won't spoil but it kept me feeling engaged in it throughout my time playing the game making me want to know more as soon as I started playing the game. Now as the bad I found that the whip wouldn't grab the grapple point sometimes if I wasn't in the right spot which was a little weird but didn't completely take away my enjoyment from playing the game by any means. Overall though I think MachineGames did an excellent job making this game and it really impressed me how good it was and I was happy I gave this game a go . If you're a fan of Indiana Jones I think you should check this one out. It's a fun experience that put a really big smile on my face and gave me some good laughs along the way and I hope that if you decide to try this game it does the same for you too.