Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review

For as much as Indiana Jones has influenced video games, the franchise doesn’t have many standout games to its name. Wolfenstein: The New Order developer Machine Games rectifies this by not only giving Indy the video game he’s long deserved but in many ways the film sequel fans have wanted since The Last Crusade. The Great Circle is an authentic, yet fresh adventure for the famed archeologist that makes a real case for belonging in a museum. 

Set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, Indy embarks on a globe-trotting chase to recover a stolen museum artifact tied to an ancient mystery. It’s great to watch an in-game likeness of a young Harrison Ford, but hearing famed voice actor Troy Baker’s fantastic performance faithfully brings him to life. Baker sounds near-indistinguishable from a prime Ford to the point that if I didn’t know it was him I might’ve assumed AI trickery. From capturing Indy’s grumpy charm to his near-crippling fear of snakes, Baker’s portrayal makes the adventure feel even more like a long-lost sequel from the franchise’s golden era.

Indy’s journey, from the hallowed halls of the Vatican to the sweltering sands of Giza and beyond, is filled with great story moments. Like the films, The Great Circle balances zany popcorn action (including an incredible setpiece sequence in the Himalayas mid-adventure) with lighthearted comedy. Some of my favorite exchanges occur between Indy and his fun new companion Gina, a charismatic and strong-willed journalist. She’s a welcomed presence that’s easily Jones’ best sidekick/vague love interest since Marian. Gina fits right at home in the series, to the point that I’m bummed we’ll likely never see her portrayed in a proper film. The same praise can be sung for the big bad, Emmerich Voss, a genuinely despicable and unhinged threat that serves as a great foil. 

My initial skepticism of placing players behind the eyes of Indy in first-person evaporated the moment I socked a nazi in the face. Melee combat packs a nice wallop, and incorporating blocks, counters, and grabs adds a satisfying flow to brawling. Using memorable sound effects from the films is an effective cherry on top. Machine Games also creates a multitude of opportunities to take out foes in hilarious fashion, such as grabbing nearly any object to smash over their skulls. Taking on foes in cluttered rooms made me feel as much Jackie Chan as Indiana Jones, and I love taking out opponents with the wackiest things I can find. Sneaking up behind oblivious fascists to push them off cliffs or down tomb shafts never failed to make me chuckle.

Indy also has a pistol, but I rarely used guns outside of required shooting sequences, such as an on-rails boat chase. The gunplay is adequate, but I appreciate that so much of The Great Circle can be played without firing a single shot; I’ve always associated Jones with daring fisticuffs rather than intense shootouts. Of course, Indy’s signature whip is put to good use, whether it’s yanking targets toward him, whipping weapons out of hands, or even scaring hostile hounds into submission. 

Enemies are rather dumb, but this winds up being fun since it manages to play into the series’ (and Machine Games’) penchant for portraying fascists and nazis as boneheads. I once cleared an enemy outpost by scaling a watch tower, waited for enemies to climb one at a time on the single ladder to reach my platform, and then whipped them off the ladder, causing them to fall to their deaths. Despite the growing pile of bodies, another soldier would try his luck on the ladder instead of just shooting me from below. Stealth is very forgiving; sneaking up on soldiers is easy since peripheral vision is the biggest myth in this game. A fully alert camp will forget your existence just by laying low for a few minutes and I prefer this. Indiana Jones films are generally check-your-brain-at-the-door popcorn flicks, and I was happy to approach this adventure with the same mindset.  

While it’s easy to take liberties in combat, an array of largely clever puzzle-solving offers meatier tests of your wits. Some are dressed-up, well-executed iterations of typical exercises like bouncing light off aligned mirrors, but others are more creative, like deciphering tricky nazi cipher codes or directing human pawns atop an ancient board game. More impressively, the substantial and entertaining story-driven sidequests include bespoke riddles as elaborate and inventive as the campaign puzzles. Indy is a scholar at heart, and I’m glad Machine Games understood this important trait by designing so many enjoyable brain teasers that genuinely made me feel smart when I solved them. 

Traveling the world brings players to large open hubs filled with things to do. Everything looks fantastic, from immaculately detailed sights such as a jaw-dropping recreation of the famed Sistine Chapel ceiling to the myriad eerie temples and tombs. In addition to sidequests, I enjoyed unearthing ancient artifacts, eavesdropping on citizens to fulfill smaller requests, competing in underground fighting rings, and more. You can spend as much or as little time engaging with this optional content as you’d like (and, thankfully, you can revisit previous destinations to finish incomplete tasks), but the story pacing takes a hit in the early hours due to the lengthy time spent exploring the first big section, the Vatican. I enjoyed the narrative overall, but its momentum dips and rises in ways that can feel jarring at points. Fortunately, it concludes on one hell of a high note that feels like the perfect final act to an Indiana Jones film. 

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle doesn’t reinvent the action-adventure wheel. In a weird backward way, it’s more or less a first-person version of an Uncharted or Tomb Raider game – franchises that probably wouldn’t exist without Indiana Jones in the first place. The excursion is familiar but well-crafted and succeeds because it absolutely nails its license. I walked away feeling more excited about Indiana Jones than I did leaving the theater for the last two films. The Great Circle reminds me of why I fell in love with Indy in the first place and should be a template for how to craft new interactive stories in this legendary series. 

This 2025 review reflects our thoughts on the game’s current state at publishing. As such, post-launch updates were factored into the final score.