When I found out about the Indiana Jones game, like many others, I was skeptical. I mean, can you blame me? Most, if not all of the mainstream AAA games to come out in the year previous have been trash. The indie devs and foreign studios were the only ones who seemed to believe in making quality products anymore.
For those paying attention, much hope was lost when we saw that Bethesda was putting this out. Look at Starfield and its DLC. Look at the downgrade that was the Fallout 4 Next-Gen “update”. Suffice to say, we were expecting another slow-motion train wreck.
That’s why I was surprised, after 10 hours of playing Indiana Jones in story mode, that it wasn’t trash. Now, mind, it wasn’t the best game ever. The game devs (more on them later) didn’t seem to know how to give players what they needed to complete quests without going to online game guides. And, really, that’s my only major complaint.
To be fair, it’s been a long time since I’ve tried to play any games without a game guide. So the lack of instruction in Indiana Jones for completing quests is more annoying to me than it might be to others. But, to be fair again, I’ve seen how other games–from Bethesda, in fact–give means for the player to find the hidden thing, or an idea that some aspect of the quest they’ve just been given can’t be completed yet.
I was also surprised to find myself enjoying the story. It actually felt like an Indiana Jones adventure and didn’t resort to using member-berries. It had the same humor, the same style of story telling beats, the same imbecilic miscreants Indiana Jones fights in the movies.
You start out the game with a semi-accurate re-creation of the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s meant to introduce you to the important game mechanics so I didn’t mind the call back. You then interact with Marcus Brody before taking off for the Vatican. The motivation for leaving is a bit forced, but it’s alright. Exploring the 1930s Vatican is interesting. The game introduces the classic Nazi villain there. And most of the other characters you interact with have enough depth so as not to be boring
I feel like the game would have been better had it been in third-person instead of first. I always enjoyed watching the fights Indie gets into, because it was fun watching him get beat up. Being in first person for combat takes that away.
Going back to the game devs, I do want to point out that while Bethesda slapped their name on it as the publisher, it was actually MachineGames who built this game. I can still, however, see Bethesda’s influence on this game. There’s the main story of the game, but there’s also side quests called “Field Work,” collections quests, called “Discoveries”, and puzzle quests called “Mysteries.” There’s also a lot of going back and forth and back and forth as you are given tasks by Father Antonio.
It was the discovery and mystery quests that got me all flustered due to the lack of instruction. A simple comment in dialogue or a note in the journal to indicate that we hadn’t done the requisite step was all that was needed to save me hours of wandering around the map needlessly.
…sigh…
Well, as I was saying, Bethesda’s fingerprints are all over this game, but thankfully not where it counts. It seems at least one game studio knows how to make a game bug-free. In the 10 hours I played (agreed, it’s not a lot), I didn’t run into any bugs…at least, none I recognized as such. But that’s not to say this game is not without its frustrations. I already mentioned one major annoyance, but here’s another.
The menu interface is a bit of a mess. It’s hard to navigate because they’ve split everything to the left and right, leaving you stuck staring at a page in your journal that’s stuffed full of things you’ve found related to the quest you’re looking at. The left side allows you to switch between quests, but then you have to look to the right to see the individual entries or clues you’ve found. The entries aren’t in the order you found them, so you have to dig through them. There’s no log to say, done this, done that, meaning that it’s impossible to determine what the next phase of your quest is supposed to be without the mission markers.
The maps are only semi useful. They look nice and accurate for Indiana Jones in the 1930s; you can even move around while looking at them to help orient yourself. Problem is, they don’t help you actually navigate to the mission marker that shows on your HUD. And that marker isn’t that useful either…at least, not when navigating across large areas with multiple routes. I’ve been led “around my elbow to get to my thumb” a couple of times.
Basic movement and interactions with the environment are fine, I guess. You get nice visual prompts that there’s something to interact with. But like I was saying before, fighting as Indiana Jones isn’t that fun. The controls are confusing, and the combat timing is a bit weird. You get the nice Indiana Jones sharp punching sounds, the whip crack is accurate, but action sequences just feel off. By the way, I hope you like those sounds, cause you hear them…a lot.
My overall opinion of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is that it’s very middle of the road. It’s not the best game I’ve ever played, but it’s also not the worst. It’s not boring, like Starfield, but it’ll never be as popular as Fallout. If you like Indiana Jones, there’s enough here to satisfy you.
I also recommend you wait for it to go on sale. A lot would have to be improved to make it worth the full price.
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- Mariner’s Review: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle(edited)
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