Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Xbox Review (2025)

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Xbox Review (1)

IndianaJones and the Great Circle by developer MachineGames and publisher Bethesda SoftworksMicrosoftXbox Series X Review written byNick with a purchasedcopy.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

From the minds behind the Wolfenstein games, we have IndianaJones and the Great Circle helping to bring a younger, spryer version ofIndiana Jones than the last couple of movies provided us. It’s an interestingblend of genres that is sees our intrepid archaeologist embarking on an all-newadventure. The results are certainly better than not, though I couldn’t helpbut at times feel like the various excellent parts failed to come together tocreate a completely satisfying whole.

Right out of the games, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle comesout swinging as the adventure is set after Raiders of the Lost Ark. We knowthis, because the game starts off teaching us the basics while walking usthrough a rather fantastic recreation of that movie’s introduction. We see Indyworking his way through the jungle, dealing with treacherous guides, using hiswhip to swing over openings in the ground, thwarting ancient traps andrelieving the famous scene where he unsuccessfully tries to swap a bag of sandfor an ancient artifact.

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It’s a great way to start the game off, because it gives IndianaJones and the Great Circle a chance to show off its fantastic presentation. Ithas to be said that aside from a handful of semi-janky moments in animation,the majority of the visuals here were fantastic. I grew up on Raiders of theLast Ark. As a kid, it was one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen it more timesthan I could hope to count, and have watched The Temple of Doom and The LastCrusade numerous times as well. The development team deserves credit fornailing the look of not just the familiar characters (in particular IndianaJones), but the environments you traverse as well. The quality of thepresentation also extends to the music score and the voice acting throughout.Of particular note is the always reliable Troy Baker, whose efforts at replicatingHarrison Ford’s iconic Indiana Jones were often eerily spot-on. Many of thecharacter’s mannerisms and personality traits come through beautifully when thecombination of visuals and voice acting.

I am hard-pressed to think of a video game that made such agood impression on me out of the gates. The first few hours in, I found myselfthinking that in many ways, this Indiana Jones adventure was truer to thefranchise than the last two movies that came out.

Things start off simply enough as we move on from theRaiders of the Lost Ark flashback to a night spent between Iny and his friend Dr.Marcus Brody sharing a drink as the latter dozes off before Indy realizes there’sa break-in at the museum. This encounter leads him down the kind of rabbit holethat feels like an authentic jumping off point for one of Indy’s globetrottingadventures that begin at the Vatican but soon take us to other distant vistas.From there, Indy discovers yet another Nazi plot (apparently the devs atMachineGames are in a comfort spot here given their history of making gameswhere one shoots hordes of Nazis) with religious undertones throughout.

There’s a lot of heart and humor to be had in both the storyitself, but also Indy’s myriad interactions with people and his manyquick-hitting quips during his combat and explorations. While the game islargely presented in a first-person perspective - at least during combat andnon-platforming exploration. There are ample cutscenes where you get to seeIndiana Jones interacting with people and his environment, but when it comes totravel and combat, things settle into a more familiar perspective for fans ofWolfenstein or Fallout. However, I quickly learned that this was not an action-basedshooter, but more of an exploration and puzzle adventure that leans intostealth over action.

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That is where my personal enjoyment took a bit of a hit,even though it’s a completely reasonable design choice. When combat does takeplace, it feels a bit clumsy. There’s a lean into melee combat, with your fistsor Indy’s trusty bullwhip always readily available, but also melee weapons thatbreak after a few hits or guns that are sometimes of questionable accuracy andincredibly limited ammunition. In the earlier stages of Indiana Jones and theGreat Circle combat is relatively easy. Enemies are all melee-based, many don’tuse weapons, and there’s a lot of natural choke points for combat like doorwaysthat keep the odds from spiraling too far out of control.

However, as you get further into Indy’s adventures, enemyswarms seem to be more common, with wider environments that see you surroundedand beaten up on from a variety of angles. Their weaponry also gets an upgrade,especially in the firearms department. Many times these soldiers are perched atan elevated location, meaning they get free shots at you when the chaos breaksout. This is where I mean you need to be more invested in stealth. Boggingthings down even more, you have a stamina bar that gets depleted when runningand climbing, but also when fighting. Throw too many punches in rapidsuccession, and you’re next swing is going to be lame and slow and you need toturtle up as you wait for your stamina to recover The whip can be fun as it candisarm an opponent, or even sweep their legs out, but it also requires stamina which also doesn’t fair well when you’re in the middle of a gang of thugs beatingon you. It’s more of a deliberate weapon for 1-on-1 fights.

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It makes sense within the framework of the story andcharacter. Indiana Jones is a brilliant archaeologist who can hold his own in abar fight, but we’re not talking about Master Chief here. That left me feelingat least a little at odds with the game however, and it did diminish my enjoymentthe deeper I got. I had to call this out since it did take a decent amount ofthe shine off of the experience for me as stealth’s not my favorite approach ingames most of the time, and it made combat more of a chore than not. Maybe that’sintentional as the team perhaps wanted people to focus on the story and puzzleelements, and these areas really do shine.

The bullwhip is not just a combat tool, but an aid inexploration. There’s an element of verticality here not found in the Falloutseries, and the whip plays a major part in this. You can run and jump and sometimesclimb things in the environment - though the game would have benefited attimes from making these intractable parts of the element a bit more clear.There’s no indications for example, if you’re standing outside of a large buildingwith walls all around it that the only way to progress is to climb an ordinarybit of pipe hanging down near one corner of the building that in no way stoodout from anything else nearby. Thankfully these moments were the exception andnot the rule. The whip is fun for latching onto overhead beams to climb wallsor swing over chasms. It also gets leveraged in puzzles as a way to pull thingsthat are too high up or in some other way out of Indy’s reach.

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Puzzles were seldom all that hard, but they were interesting,and I thought generally well-implemented. Most of them felt like the kinds of mentalchallenges Indy would have been figuring out in the movies, generally bakedinto the environment in organic ways. There’s a camera you unlock early on aswell, and often times taking pictures will prompt Indy to say something thatcan range from humorous to interesting to outright helpful depending on thecontext of the moment.

Objectively Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a reallygood game. The presentation is fantastic, the environments and puzzles areinterwoven well and the story and characters genuinely feel like they belong inthe Indiana Jones universe. My primary quibble however, is that I personallyjust did not enjoy the combat and stealth elements very much. They are acompletely reasonable design choice, but one that did impact my overallexperience. Fans looking for a high octane action game will likely be leftdisappointed, though those who have an affection for stealth and exploration aswell as the Indiana Jones IP will likely enjoy their time with this game.

Score: 7 / 10

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - Xbox Review (2025)

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