Indiana Jones and The Great Circle – PS5 Review

We love Indiana Jones here at PSC. Well, the classic three films before we had to run for our lives from Shia LaBeouf and Mads Mikkelsen in this century’s variable efforts at least. So it was with a little excitement we took notice that Indiana Jones and The Great Circle was announced in January 2021, then tempered by sadness as Microsoft bought Bethesda a couple of months later with the game seemingly destined to become an Xbox exclusive.

Then in light of Microsoft’s strategy of releasing their games on other platforms other than Windows PC and Xbox, we were delighted that things were back on. Developed by Bethesda and subsequently Micrososoft subsidiary, MachineGames, developers of excellent latter-day Wolfenstein games, on the id Tech 7-derived Motor engine, The Great Circle opens up with Henry Jones Jr in the opening scenes of Raiders.

It’s a great little flex as to the power of the engine, especially given how iconic the scene is. Alfred Molina’s Satipo is faithfully depicted in his 1981 role as is the golden idol switcheroo and Indy’s subsequent escape away from the giant rolling boulder. This also acts as a tutorial of sorts, with the well-implemented whip mechanic introduced by tapping at an opportune moment.

If it sounds like a QTE, you’ll be relieved that things are a little more relaxed in that regard, at least on default difficulty. It’s not the only occurrence of Shenmue’s gift to gaming you’ll encounter but unlike, say, Tomb Raider Legend, things aren’t quite as intrusive here. In the game proper, the mechanic is used in a more freeform manner as part of your moveset alongside the other well-rounded controls.

The plot here is what drives the whole affair along, with Indy being woken from having fallen asleep in his office at Marshall College, gamely voiced and mocapped by Troy Baker off The Last of Us and Uncharted among other games. The smashing in the exhibition hall downstairs is down to a mysterious giant trying to find an otherwise unheralded cat mummy. It’s at this point that Indy confronts this interloper who turns out to be this game’s equivalent of the blokes in fezzes from The Last Crusade. Oh, and it’s Worf’s brother Kurn or that Candyman fella AKA the late departed Tony Todd.

Set between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom, the main antagonist turns out to be the scheming Emmerich Voss, voiced by German actor Marios Gavrilis who also provides his likeness. Though due to the weird animation, his character has the air of Steve Pemberton’s Herr Lipp from The League of Gentlemen. While we’re on the subject, most of the characters you encounter have their motion capture locked down. Unfortunately, in the case of Benito Mussolini, rather than Alexei Sayle off The Young Ones, you have this weird mesh abomination that doesn’t look anything like Il Duce, except perhaps his post-execution cadaver.

The plot is generally a bit of a mismash, there’s the standard exploration aspect you’d expect, but also a couple of shark-jumping moments worthy of Dial Of Destiny in particular. Almost as absurd, just without Phoebe Waller-Bridge swanning around the place and pouting at the camera.

Once you get going, you’re off to one of the three main locations you’ll spend most of your time running around in, that being the Vatican City where it’s all beautifully depicted with gorgeous architecture. Only due to the era in which The Great Circle is set, it’s crawling with bloody fascists. So a bit like a seaside town these days then. The other main locations are Egypt; tombs, sand and scorpions, crawling with Nazis, think Raiders of the Lost Ark and you’d be on the right track; and Thailand, verdant rainforests and them blinking Italians again.

You’ll soon bump into a lady called Gina who’s initially a pain but soon becomes a useful ally. Voiced and mocapped by the charming Alessandra Mastronardi, who you may have seen in the excellent Nic Cage film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, though unlike Gavrilis as Voss, she doesn’t share a likeness with her character.  Due to the way the game includes her in some scenes, she teleports from being behind you. We get that it’s a quirk of the scripting but it’s no less disconcerting when it does happen.

The core gameplay loop is you run around the place, finding objectives in a sorta 3D metroidvania way, especially given some secrets can’t be reached until you’ve unlocked the respective gadget and hence the ability to bypass the obstacles. For the most part you’ll be left to your own devices, but your very appearance is enough to aggro an enemy, especially if you’re in what’s deemed a restricted area.

You can pick up disguises to pass as one of their own, but even these aren’t foolproof as anyone higher ranking has the ability to be suspicious of your uniform and rumble your ruse. It kinda goes contra to Indy getting his notebook signed by Hitler in Last Crusade, though we understand the reasons for gameplay purposes.

Combat comes in three flavours: fisticuffs, using a blunt object as a cosh or shooting enemies in the face. Given you can genuinely be stealthy here, we’d recommend you go with your fists or melee weapons rather than shooting. As this’ll draw the attention of any nearby enemies, it’s only really recommended as a last resort. The guns, somewhat absurdly given how little they figure in combat, are accurately modelled to an absurd level of details. We saw a video recently with a military historian able to identify the submodels of each weapon purely based on their in-game depiction.

You’re limited by ammunition of course, but in the event you run out, you can resort to using your gun as a cosh. Just like any other blunt objects you’ll use as a melee item, they only have limited durability, so you have the slightly daft outcome of a rifle breaking after a couple of blows. You can repair your standard pistol, though that is wholly reliant on finding repair kits as you explore.

While you could tear through the campaign here, you’ll soon realise that the real fun in The Great Circle is in the exploration. There’s so many wonderfully placed incidental artifacts and side quests to complete alongside what you’re meant to be actually doing, only they’re deftly incorporated into the main storyline. It’s so well done and a triumph of clever design. There are also collectibles aplenty and as you progress through the game, you’ll unlock the ability to track down items via checklists and maps.

These work for the most part, though in some cases the onscreen markers can be a bit misleading, but this is thankfully the exception. Sometimes this is due to the labyrinthine catacombs you have to make your way through, but other times it is down to the little onscreen prompt not making it that clear as to the route you need to take.

The photography mechanic that you unlock early in the first area is put to good use throughout, being pivotal in giving you extra context. Baker does a good line in Indy exposition, for example you take a photograph and Indy plucks facts from his years of experience. It’s really well done and negates the need for you to refer to a notebook as you do in the likes of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It’s so well implemented.

One thing we did find a little annoying from a completionist point of view is that in an area, you’ll feel like you’ve exhausted every area to find money that let you unlock all the skills books in an area. There’s no one cash pot carried throughout your gameplay, with lira in Italy, pounds in Egypt and baht in Thailand. So even if you think you’ve explored everywhere you need to explore, you’ll still come up short of cash for the last unlockable. It’d a little infuriating. Though we think a post-release patch resolved the issue, as while we’d not bought all the ability books available, we still got the trophy for unlocking all the abilities. So perhaps there’s redundancy across the three main hub areas to allow for this.

We could write a novella on the staggering scope of Indiana Jones and The Great Circle, but it’s best for you to discover it yourself. It’s a wonderful addition to the Indiana Jones canon. If you’ve got access to Game Pass you’ll probably already have played and enjoyed this, but if like us, you’re locked into the Playstation ecosystem, get to it. This is the real deal.