Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Reviews

Personally I've never been a fan of the Indiana Jones franchise, and before playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle I didn't know much about the brand.
However, I was intrigued by the idea of having Machine Games create a fairly large title, tailored around the character originally played by a movies giant like Harrison Ford.

The plot of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is very interesting, and sees the protagonist traveling the world in search of different relics, fighting in the meantime, against caricatured versions of fascists and Nazis, represented by the typical ironic style of Machine Games.
I found the cutscenes and the CGI animated interludes very well made, as they manage to faithfully represent both the most unbridled action scenes, and the most tense moments between the characters.

The gameplay of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes place in several linear, vast and freely explorable open-maps, full of secrets to discover and secondary missions to be carried out in parallel with the main campaign.
There are several ways to complete the missions, which mainly consist of exploring monuments and wild places, which often become enemy outposts.
They can be tackled through direct fights with numerous firearms and improvised melee, or through stealth.
The combat system is not excellent because despite being well made, it appears a little too flat and not very layered and favors hand-to-hand clashes, making the use of firearms unfavorable.
Even the stealth is simple and not too advanced, and is based only on the direct sight of the enemies, without considering their reasoning or hearing.
The game therefore gives the best of itself in exploration, which is much more varied and advanced thanks to more platform sections, the crypts to explore, and above all, to the complex but not frustrating environmental puzzles, solvable with simplicity and satisfaction.

The part that is most out of line with all the experience, is unfortunately the one related to the technical sector, which highlights several very evident smudshes.
On Xbox Series X, the game's graphics perform quite well in its simplicity, and manages to show off wonderful settings made with great care that, however, have a lack of detail and an acerbe graphic engine, which leads some visual elements to appear and disappear.
The models of some characters (especially those of outline for the enrichment of the scenarios) are not very well cared for and appear much rougher than the protagonist's model.

The animations are also poorly cared, but what ruins the experience the most, are the numerous bugs and glitches that are often encountered during gameplay, which are sometimes so absurd as to become hilarious.
And finally, there is also the artificial intelligence of non-playable characters, also poorly realized and very raw, typical of games of some past generations video games.
What raises the technical sector of the title is everything related to audio and music.
The orchestral soundtrack is made with great care and offers tracks that adapts perfectly to what happens on the screen, while the dubbing (both original and in languages) is of excellent quality, and performs well especially in the cutscenes, which are very close to small pieces of animated cinema.

In conclusion, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is undoubtedly one of the best titles made by Xbox Games Studios in recent years, an adventurous and interesting experience that allows fans of the saga to experience the pleasure of putting themselves in the shoes of the most famous archaeologist in cinema, and neophytes to discover a decades-old franchise "living it firsthand".
However, the title is not without technical smudgers, which are however compensated by an excellent plot and excellent sections of free gameplay, in which the interest in exploration and discovery far outweighs the attention to details and the obvious defects of the title.

Machine Games has always been a studio capable of developing excellent but technically imperfect experiences, and in this case it has tried to develop a much larger title than the previous ones and in any case better realized than others.

8/10

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review
by Wugster100 (My first attempt at a review - be kind)

Rationale
Having watched all of the Indiana Jones movies in my youth, when this popped up on Game Pass I was intrigued. The franchise certainly had the potential to have games based on it but could they reproduce the 'magic' of the films or would it be another wasted license? I decided to dive in and find out.

Story
Anyone who has watched the films will recognise the formula, Nazi's are after an ancient object of power that requires a race against time to collect antiquities to stop them. The game is very faithful to this formula and contains a lot of fan service. The story is well written and well paced, the main characters are well fleshed out and the relationships feel natural. One of the highlights for me is how well Indy's mannerisms were captured and at times it really felt like I was watching Harrison Ford. I also have to applaud the prologue/tutorial as great fan service - I won't say why for spoilers but anyone who has watched the movies will be delighted.

Gameplay
Okay, so the story is good but how is the game. Let's talk about the structure first. The story levels them self are fine, they can be gone through in probably around 20 hours, on top of this there are fieldwork quests (optional subquests) and Mysteries (smaller puzzle type quests). On top of this there are collectibles, and boy are there collectables..., journal entries, skill books, medicine, relics, cogwheels, artifacts. While some of these lead to upgrades others simply feel like they were put there to extend gameplay time rather than serve a purpose, yes some flesh out the lore a little but they never really enrich the experience. To help with the collectibles you can find/purchase guides on your map but to be honest the maps are a downside for me as they are so unclear and lack a decent zoom function as the game represents them as a handheld journal entry. The vatican map for example doesn't make it clear what parts are passages and which are buildings.

The actual mechanics of the gameplay are solid without being spectacular. There are several elements to the gameplay, combat, platforming, puzzling and stealth. For combat you have 3 options, fists, whip and guns. During my playthrough I never really used anything but fists, there was simply no need or advantage to using anything else. It boiled down to blocking and countering. Solid enough but not really taking advantage of the toys they gave us. Platforming again is solid and forgiving, I found myself several times thinking I'd missed a jump only for the game to miraculously make me reach a ledge. My only gripe would be at times when you have to swing with the whip it was tricky to find the right 'spot' to make the prompt come up, nothing major but an irritation. The puzzles are satisfying without being frustrating and can be simplified with a menu choice. Stealth is simplistic and basic, sometimes it was easier to simply sprint through areas and get to cut offs where enemies wouldn't follow. Uniforms also make it redundant as most enemies will ignore you.

As I mentioned earlier you can upgrade Indy's skills by various methods. Apart from health and stamina upgrades I did not really notice any 'change' in the game as I got these upgrades, they did not seem to make things easier or really change how I approached things to the point where I wondered what actual purpose they served.

Overall the gameplay experience is solid and enjoyable. My only main gripe is that there is nothing new here. All of it I've seen in other games, so while the experience is a good one there's nothing that makes me think 'oh that's a nice feature'.

Performance
I started this game reading about various bugs etc but my experience was a good one, I didn't encounter anything game breaking or where I had to roll back saves etc. A few minor little issues, sometimes the game would not let me go through a gap, but going back ten paces and trying again usually sorted this. The only time I hit a major issue was when this bug occurred and an NPC would not let me back out. I eventually after a couple of minutes managed to get them to move. Not gamebreaking but annoying none the less. Be aware that others have encountered some major issues though.

I played the game on a Series S and the graphics were great without any glitches etc, I'm not much of a graphics man so as long as it's playable I'm happy! The music and voice acting are excellent though.

Achievements
The achievement list is what I class as a 'do everything list'. Basically 100% the game to unlock the majority with a few miscellaneous combat achievements. There is one achievement that is classed as missable but if you're going for 100% it's pretty hard to actually miss. Nothing too challenging and a straight- forward completion.

Overall
A solid game that Indy fans will love, if this is the start of a franchise then it is a solid base with a lot of potential to build.