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

Beaten: 12/25/2024 Playtime: 26 hours Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is such a breath of fresh air. It fills the void for AAA adventure game akin to Uncharted or Tomb Raider but it's so very different from those franchises. This is an Indiana Jones movie made in game form. The love for the franchise and character are seen clear as day throughout the game. It offers a world-spanning (and I mean WORLD-SPANNING) adventure of a lifetime. Tons of tombs to raid. Tons of lost lands to chart. And a never-ending supply of Nazis to punch. There's so many different countries, regions, biomes, environments, climates. It feels reminiscent of Halo with the quantity and quality of environmental variety. My favorite region by far, with the coolest events occurring at the time as well, is Shanghai. I mean that was a jaw-dropping experience. This story takes you places... lots of places. The game design is open regions that you can travel back to at any point in time to do more side quests and 100% the game if you want. There's some places you need a tool given late in the game so backtracking is required for a completionist playthrough. I found myself having tons of fun exploring the entire region and finishing most of the side quests - which are for the most part collect-a-thons - purely through exploration rather than attempting to finish a checklist. My only criticism is that the quality, story-driven side quests are too few. I don't generally like collect-a-thons but I don't think it's too bad here because the game makes it pretty clear where everything is you need to find and a lot of it is found through natural exploration. Still, I'd enjoy some more narrative in-depth optional side missions. The combat is perfect. I actually couldn't think of a better way to make the combat in this game. You can left/right punch, block, parry, whip, and grab people. 99% of the game is melee. You get a plethora of guns at your disposal but it's almost never a good idea to shoot them. You can however use almost anything you see as a melee weapon. A pistol? Turn it around and knock someone on the head with it. A scrubbing brush? Knock someone on the head with it. A pickax? Knock a hole in their head with it. It's so fun using ridiculous items to kill Nazis, using their own guns as blunt objects against them, throwing lit dynamite, and more. The combat feels so great and has that Indiana Jones comedic quality to it that every time you punch a Nazi it's just funny. The sound design is on-point with the punches, the whip crack, and all of it. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a difficult game to describe but at its core it's an immersive sim. The level design is spectacular in a way that no words can do justice. I endlessly found numerous ways to get where I wanted to go and the levels are designed so intricately that they all connect in meaningful and sometimes surprising ways, offering shortcuts back by unlocking doors once you get to somewhere difficult. There's tons of verticality in these levels, allowing you even more alternate paths to your objective. The story is really interesting. The characters are all interesting. It genuinely feels like an Indiana Jones movie. You run into your old friends for assistance. You get a female sidekick. You get betrayed by some, saved by others. You get life-saving luck more than a couple times. You're Indiana Jones. You're invincible except you're not. You fall through trap doors, get caught by Nazis, get left for dead, and yet every time you luck out - as if karma owes you... a lot. You never feel like a badass in the way you do as Nathan Drake. You never feel like John Wick. But you are Indiana fucking Jones and that means something. Like I said earlier, the love for this character is oozing out of the game's story and mechanics. It's true to its source material. It sounds like a young Indiana Jones in an incredible feat of voice acting by Troy Baker. Easily holds its own as a great Indiana Jones experience right along with the movies.