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

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not just the best video game take on the character to date, it's one of the best outings for Dr. Jones in general. I'm not really here to relitigate the films, but as baseline for where I stand on the series I grew up on the trilogy, seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was probably about 3 or 4 years old, and I love them. Save for certain moments I mostly dislike Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and even if it's flawed I think The Dial of Destiny is pretty solid all things considered. I also watched The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as a kid and have been on the Disneyland attraction a ton so, that's the Indy litmus for me. I would consider myself a pretty big fan of the series. Opening with the Raiders intro is a fantastic way to set things up. It's obviously going to be familiar for long-time fans and thus, the on-boarding should be pretty easy when teaching the player how control mechanics will work. This is where I first notice some issues on the tech side like odd stuttering when cutting between cutscenes and gameplay, and sometimes within moments that I'll call quicktime events as they'd loop around on themselves like brushing spiders away from a young Alfred Molina's shoulders. Nothing game-breaking or anything, but just one of those performance things that's super evident. When it was first announced, I was worried about the fact that The Great Circle would be a first-person experience. With licensed titles I want to see the character in third person, especially when it's something that has been part of my life for almost all 40 years I've been alive — Hey, it's not the years, it's the mileage. Right? It's something I'm familiar with and want to see it in action as it happens, to take control during the story, not necessary make it MY story. But I do think being in that first-person POV works after all, particularly when it comes to main stealth aspects. Stealth doesn't quite hit the same when you're out-of-body, so it makes sense to lean into it with a game that is mostly about sneaking around. It also makes for some real Benny Hill running around when things go awry, and Indy mantling at the speed of light is cartoonishly funny in the right kind of way. All that said, even though it works here I still wonder what kind of experience it would be had MachineGames gone with third-person like most folks expected after the initial teaser art animation. Troy Baker's performance as the titular teacher/adventurer mostly goes beyond impression. He captures the character that, after Harrison Ford made so iconic, seemed irreplaceable. Now, there are times when Troy's voice pops through the facade but generally speaking, that was just Indy the whole time. As far as pacing goes, I'm glad I was given the choice to ignore the excess open world stuff and optional missions. I was in this for the bespoke Indiana Jones adventure, but when I was given the option of extended exploration and side missions I found it just slowed everything down, causing me to be less interested in what I was doing. That's why I'm so thankful I had the option to just go full critical path and from then on, that's basically all I did. It also shows that's where I had the most enjoyment because my favorite parts of this game were the sections where it was having me go through actual linear levels instead of huge maps peppered with things to do. I also appreciate that in-story, it addresses the fact that Indy does basically steal the history of other cultures. It's something that I've very specifically been told by younger folks is a character flaw that makes sure they don't connect with the character. He's still an archeologist and he still lives for history, but here he shows more compassion about what the artifacts he recovers mean to the descendants of that culture. When everything comes together it's very much a classic Indiana Jones adventure and the details are impeccable, right down to making some of the supernatural moments look as if they were done with old school film techniques. MachineGames has done something really special with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, slotting it into the franchise timeline like a stone-carved puzzle piece and making cinematic history feel new again.