I really enjoy but don't necessarily love Indiana Jones. I loved Machine Games' work on The New Order, and utterly loathed The New Colossus. And now The Great Circle is one of the few games I've 100%'d on Steam.
Machine Games nailed the brief. An absolutely authentic and passionate labour of love to Indiana Jones, and total commitment to the tone, prose, ethos, and style of the first three films. It's shot, written, and presented like a secret fourth film we should have gotten. It's funny, exciting, and totally engaging, with a tremendously enjoyable cast, fantastic villain, and Baker delivering a mostly remarkable Ford impression.
There's Escape from Butchers Bay DNA throughout, which isn't surprising given Machine Games is made up of many ex-Starbreeze. The game affords adventuring and action in just the right balance, with puzzle solving and secrets that avoid handholding. It's maybe a little too simple in its stealth and action, and maybe a little janky at times, but this is the perfect example of where grievances with individual game systems are easy to ignore when you appreciate how they all come together to make a collective interactive whole. Everything intersects with each other, and the experience you have, just perfectly.
The DLC was a wet fart and particularly frustrating if trying to backtrack through and get all the notes. It's not awful, the story/tone/ideas are lovely, but it's very linear, offers little agency driven adventuring, and you spend way too much time underground. Not a single new game system or mechanic to experiment weakens it too.
I played through with path tracing and the game is outstandingly gorgeous. The major grievanecs I'll give the production are that the Thailand chapter, while still great in my opinion, feels a bit undercooked compared to some of the other hubs (maybe intentionally so, to ensure it moves a bit quicker). It also has absurdly high VRAM requirements compared to literally every other area in the game, which can easily result in VRAM ceiling bugs if you're using path tracing and a high resolution. Just a clumsy handling of memory that spikes in an unfortunate way in this specific chapter. Even some of the cutscenes (not all) in this chapter felt a bit under polished. But it's still great and picks up from there.
Overall, loved it. Huge winner for me and I couldnt' recommend it enough, especially if you just really want a long, committed single player adventure game that's a bit Wolfenstein, a bit Uncahrted, a bit Escape from Butchers Bay, and a whole lot of Indiana Jones love.
