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

Machine games knocks it out of the park once again. Not only did they manage to create the best Indy adventure since the The Last Crusade, but they also made an engaging immersive sim that combines the best of deus ex, tomb raider, and uncharted into one compelling package. Acting as a direct sequel to raiders of the lost ark, and taking place before The Last Crusade, Indiana jones goes on a journey of biblical proportions. The scale of the set pieces really is something else, I won’t spoil anything, but two in particular really made my jaw drop. Troy Baker does a tremendous job voicing Indy. From his mannerisms to his devil may care attitude, he absolutely sells this as a young Harrison ford, and id bet if you weren’t aware it was Troy, you might think it was Harrison Ford himself (okay maybe speaking through a filter to sound younger). Indiana is surrounded by an equally compelling cast, from his love interest this time around, Gina, to the friends he meets both old and new, and of course the franchise staple of bumbling idiot Nazis, led by their Nazi Archeologist Voss. Voss is a great villain in the sense that you love to hate him, he is a little man with a big ego who loves to act like the smartest man in the room, yet throws tempter tantrums when things do not go his way. Voss and his chronicles highlight machine games past experience of writing despicable yet dumb as nails nazis who absolutely chew up the scenery when they are present. The writing here is top notch, from witty dialogue, romance, quips, and plenty of sincere moments, it’s all expertly crafted. The game is played primarily in first person, though I’d hardly call this a shooter. It’s about as much as a shooter as deus ex is, where yes, you can try and shoot your way out of a situation, but that is hardly the ideal way to go about it, and more often then not will lead to a quick death. Instead, almost any hand held object in the enviroment can be used as improvised melee weapons. Sneaking around and clubbing nazis in the back of a head with a broom or a hammer is often the best and most efficient way to get around. You can also find costumes, these will allow you walk around enemy encampments largely unhindered, but they are not completely fool proof, and much like the hitman games, captains will notice that you are out of place. The game is broken up into 3 large open zones with set piece area in between. These open zones are filled with side quests and collectibles to find. The side quests here are engaging, and often feel just as written and considered as the main story. In terms of collectibles, you can find plenty of optional tombs and dungeons to delve into which often lead secret artifacts, or medicine vials. Turning these medicine vials into the area doctor will allow you to purchase permanent stat upgrades for Indy, like increased hitting power and reload speed, or more pips of health and stamina. The promise of these upgrades, which absolutely do become useful, add even more incentive to explore the games gorgeous environments. On pc this is one of the few games along side cyberpunk that is fully Path traced. It does incur a steep cost to utilize it, but on my 4090 I found it to be largely performant, with only a few noticable dips into the mid 50’s using dlss quality with frame generation. At balanced I wasn’t going below 65 fps. The cost is worth it however, because the patch traced lighting makes each part of the environment feel that much more believable and lived in, and the way light naturally bounces off of objects and realistically casts shadows really is a site to behold. In that regard, this game is a technical achievement. If you are on series x/s or would just rather not incur the performance cost of path tracing, then fear not, because the built in rtgi also looks fantastic, and is present in all configurations of the game, even at the lowest setting. No matter where you choose to play it, you are getting one gorgeous looking game. I firmly believe that Indiana Jones and the great circle stands beside the likes of Batman Arkham Asylum, and Alien isolation as one of the best licensed games ever made, and also one of the best games Bethesda games publishing has ever released. As a first party xbox game it is a well deserved feather in Microsoft’s cap, it is something that should be available everywhere, and I cannot wait for more people to get to try it out on ps5 in April. I hope this game does well, because the prospect of another Machine Games Indiana jones title is very exciting. As it stands now, they released an astonishingly great game, and one of…, maybe even the best game of 2024.