Now Playing: Indiana Jones & The Great Circle

So you’re making an Indiana Jones game? What do you do? What kind of game should it be? The obvious choice and what many – myself included – expected was a linear, third person, action-adventure game in the style of Uncharted or the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. But, thankfully, that’s not what we got. Indiana Jones & The Great Circle delivers something entirely different and unique – a first person adventure/puzzle/action game that successfully combines linear levels with open-world hubs.

So let’s start with all the good stuff – Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is a fantastic Indiana Jones game. It really is like playing through an Indiana Jones film – one of the good ones, I mean. Troy Baker pulls off a near perfect (young) Harrison Ford, but the real credit should go to the writers because they absolutely nailed the character of Indiana Jones through both his dialogue and mannerisms.

They also nailed the tone of the (good) films – knowing when to keep things light, when to get a little more serious, and when to indulge in just a dash of slapstick comedy, even in the middle of a fight scene. They also nailed the supporting cast and most importantly – the villain – all of whom fit perfectly into this Indiana Jones adventure.

The story is also pretty good. There’s a nice sense of pace to the mystery as you and Indy put the pieces of the puzzle together but I do feel the ending is, sadly, a little rushed, and one major aspect of it isn’t as set-up to the degree that I would have liked. It’s a bit of a shame because I was fully invested in the mystery up until the very end, but the climax didn’t quite manage to stick the landing in the way that I’d hoped. I know I’m being annoyingly vague, but that’s because I don’t want to spoil anything – just trust me when I say the plot is better than any Indy film post Crusade.

The game opens with a recreation of the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark that also serves as a short tutorial. It’s a clever way to immediately set the tone and establish that The Great Circle is very much influenced by and imitating the style of the original films. From here we travel to Marshall College and set up an adventure that will take Indy to several locations across the globe.

In addition to some smaller, linear levels, there are also three fairly large open-world hubs – locations full of side quests (Fieldwork) small mysteries to solve and collectibles to find. You can ignore all of the additional content if you wish and blast through the core story in (I would estimate) around 10-15 hours depending upon your style of play, but if you do everything – like I did – you’re looking at around 30-35 hours.

There’s a fantastic variety to the locations in terms of setting, visuals and design and they all reward your exploration with some genuinely engaging and fun side content. If you really want to skip it you can – but I’d recommend at least doing the Fieldwork as it ties more directly into the main quest.

How you approach this content is really up to you as the game gives you a lot of different tools at your disposal. You can try to brute force things by shooting and punching your way through. You can play sneaky and use stealth to slip in unseen. You can find disguises that let you blend in with your local surroundings. Or you can do all three.

And you probably will, because just like the action in a good Indiana Jones film, The Great Circle builds its gameplay all around Indy’s ability to improvise. No disguise is infallible, Indy can’t tank a dozen bullets or beatings, and stealth will usually only get you so far – just like in the (good) films you need to adapt, improvise and switch tack on the fly. You also need to know when, if things get out of hand, to make a daring escape.

It’s quite amazing how well the gameplay of The Great Circle captures the chaotic, improvisational nature of Indiana Jones film action. This is a very melee focused game, one in which nearly every item within reach can be turned into a weapon and because these weapons all break after a certain number of hits, you’re often using not what you’d want, but whatever you have at hand – just like Indiana Jones.

The first person perspective – with occasional perspective shifts to third-person when climbing or swinging – really does put you into Indy’s shoes. You feel the weight of every punch and the crack of your whip as you disarm an enemy. You feel more involved in every puzzle as you scrutinise the clues before you. The puzzles are neither too hard nor too easy and there’s a nice variety between locations. I do wish the game wasn’t as reliant on the ‘find the code for this lock box’ type of puzzles for its smaller mysteries though.

Disguises, whilst a welcome addition – particularly if you want to find every collectible – do make traversing some areas a little too easy. Avoiding the officers that can rumble you isn’t too hard – and you can always lure them away and knock them out. Even if you are rumbled, it’s easy to just run off for a bit and within minutes everyone forgets you were there. I don’t think the risk/reward balance of using a disguise is quite right here.

And I guess this is where I start to get into the few more negative aspects of The Great Circle. Whilst the first two open-world areas are incredibly polished, the third feels a little rough. There’s a noticeable number of lighting bugs, frequent pop-in, false map markers and some weird audio de-syncs.

This area is also not as well designed in terms of map layout. If you do want to find everything, be prepared for a bit of a slog back and forth throughout this location. It’s the one place in the game where The Great Circle started to feel like a real chore to play. This issue is made worse by the inability to track multiple collectibles at once – even if you’ve unlocked the map for them.

 

I suppose it’s done so you can’t clutter your screen with waypoints, but if I want to track say Notes and Relics in a single location, I don’t see why I can’t have the option to track both at once rather than have to continually go into my journal and set the active quest back and forth.

I’m also not sold on the Skill Book system. The idea is that you earn ‘adventure points’ by completing content and then use these points to unlock skills or upgrades via books you can find or purchase throughout the game. But at some point I just stopped caring about what these books did and unlocked them just because I could. Visually, The Great Circle looks fantastic. I was playing with path tracing enabled and the game makes great use of it – at least until that somewhat rough final open-world hub.

Overall, Indiana Jones & The Great Circle is a great Indiana Jones game and easily one of the best licensed games ever made. It really does capture the spirit of the original films. But I certainly think there’s room for improvement here. It feels like a great foundation to build upon, to refine and then improve in a potential sequel. I don’t know if we’ll get one, but if we do, I think the license is in very good hands.

8/10

Steam Winter Sale: Damage Report

I played and reviewed every Command & Conquer game a few years ago, but when I saw this Remastered Collection on sale for under £2, how could I not pick it up? I also picked up State of Decay 2 for under £2. I enjoyed the first game quite a bit, reviewing it way back in 2013, but it felt like a game that would serve as a strong foundation to a more refined sequel. I guess it’s finally time to find out.

Frostpunk 2 was a game I wanted to get at release, but I just didn’t have the time to play it. I’m a big fan of the original but I was always concerned about how they’d handle a sequel. From what I’ve seen, I think I might like the direction Frostpunk 2 takes because I certainly didn’t want just more of the same.

I was a little on the fence about Ghost of Tsushima because I got rather sick of open world map clutter games years ago, but I’ve heard such positive things about this one and it’s a setting I like so it’s worth giving a go.

And finally we have the Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection which I’d have happily bought just for Marvel vs Capcom 2 – one of my favourite fighting games – but it also includes some other games I’ve played and loved in the past like Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes. It also includes X-Men vs Street Fighter which is a game I really wanted to play back in the day but never had the chance to. I’m excited to get stuck into this one.

Other games I picked up though not on Steam were SIFU, Ghostrunner 2 and Dredge which I claimed for free on Epic. I also got Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the Switch – and I’ll be talking about the original Fire Emblem here soon.

Now Playing: The Callisto Protocol

The Callisto Protocol is a sci-fi survival horror that released in 2022. I recall seeing it get somewhat mixed reviews, but when it was recently given away for free on Epic I saw no reason not to give it a spin. You play as Jacob Lee, a space trucker hauling cargo to Callisto on behalf of the United Jupiter Company.

But when your ship is attacked and you crash on the surface, you find yourself tossed without charge into Black Iron Prison. Things quickly go to shit as a virus spreads throughout the prison population, transforming them into monsters. As Jacob, your goal is simple: get the f**k out of the prison and off Callisto alive.

What follows is a very linear, eight or so hour adventure, around half of which I would estimate is spent slowly crawling in vents or squeezing around pipes and through narrow gaps. So much squeezing. So, so much. Your progress through Black Iron is broken down into several chapters and I’m sad to say from a gameplay point of view, the game doesn’t really mix things up as you go.

Every area is just a handful of linear corridors, with several crawls and squeezes to divide sections. Paths may branch on occasion, but they rarely lead to anything more exciting than a few extra supplies and a dead end. Or a fuse and a dead end. So, so many fuses. All throughout the game your progress will be impeded by yet another door with a blown fuse that requires you to backtrack to locate a new one.

Crawling, squeezing and fuses – that’s the holy trinity of progression and exploration in The Callisto Protocol. Yes, it’s about as exciting as it sounds. Which is a shame, because I feel like there’s a potentially really good game buried in here beneath all this tedious and bland game design. The Callisto Protocol is clearly going for that Dead Space vibe – slow, sci-fi horror that’s brutal, relentless and dark.

And I think it does a great job of capturing that spirit – which is why it’s a shame that everything else about the game is so damn flawed. I did like Jacob as a protagonist, but the plot doesn’t really seem to progress for much of the game, not unless you take time out to track down and listen to the obligatory audio logs.

By ‘plot’ I mean the story beyond the simple objective of getting out of the prison alive. I’m talking about where the virus came from, who released it and why. But most of these questions seem totally irrelevant as you progress, at least until towards the very end when the game dumps all the exposition on you at once.

There’s no real ‘antagonist’ as such, but then the game suddenly tries to make one out of a prison officer (Ferris) you met very briefly at the beginning of the game. So . . . he’s my nemesis now? But why? There’s also an odd ‘boss’ monster with two heads that just shows up out of nowhere once and then the game makes you fight it two more times before the end.

It’s not a bad fight, but surely the game could have set it up a little? Teased it a little? Couldn’t it have made Ferris a more constant presence throughout your experience? He disappears near the start of the game, makes a couple of brief appearances as you go and then becomes the final boss fight like you have some kind of history or grudge to settle or . . . I don’t f**king know.

What do you want from me, Callisto Protocol? What do you want me to care about? I did care about getting Jacob out alive, I guess, but beyond that I can’t say the game gave me a reason to care about much else. Everything is so damn predictable. Did the creepy hologram man release the virus? Of course he f**king did. Is the prison experimenting on its inmates? Of course it f**king is. If you’re looking for a story that might surprise you, or take an unexpected twist then you won’t find that here.

The combat has a nice weight and crunch to it. You get a decent selection of weapons, all of which can be upgraded. You also get a limited ‘gravity glove’ type ability that lets you pick up and toss monsters into grinding machinery. So much grinding machinery. So, so much. Black Iron Prison doesn’t seem to have much in the way of Health and Safety regulations given how so many of its rooms have massive grinding machines that can reduce you to a red mist, operating without any kind of safety barrier.

It’s actually kind of ridiculous, even if it is always fun to toss monsters into the machinery and watch them explode. There’s one part where you’re warned that the prison set a trap for prisoners trying to escape a particular way and whilst a simple locked gate would have sufficed, instead they installed a revolving, deadly drill machine that slowly trundles up and down a narrow corridor with very helpful safe alcoves provided at regular intervals.

Wait, what? I guess that’s not as weird as the water slide system that runs for miles beneath the prison and has pillars covered in spikes placed randomly along it to stop anyone from . . . surfing their way to freedom? Who the f**k designed this prison? I guess you could just say ‘video game’ by way of explanation but for me, I like to think the environments of a very serious game like this would make at least some kind of logical sense.

Enemy variety ain’t great. Not terrible, but not great. There’s one part where you encounter a new enemy that hunts by sound. No exactly original, but it’s a nice change of pace to the bum-rush brutes and acid spitters you’ve spent the last 5 hours smashing and blasting. Of course the game then ruins it by making you sneak around these f**ks for way too long. I lost patience and just started shooting my way through.

Enemies nearly always attack you in a repetitive pattern too – left swing, right swing – which you can easily dodge and then counter. Sometimes they mix it up a little, but not much. It means it’s pretty easy to avoid taking any hits even when you’re surrounded.

Visually, The Callisto Protocol looks very nice, but not nice enough to run as poorly as it does. Optimisation isn’t great. I can’t really complain about the cast because they do a good job with what they’ve got but what they’re got isn’t worth much.

Overall, The Callisto Protocol, despite my many gripes, certainly isn’t a bad game. It’s an okay game that if you see it given away for free or on a heavy sale and you like your sci-fi or survival horror then it might just be worth giving a go. But otherwise it’s pretty hard to recommend. It’s like playing a worse version of Dead Space . . . and if that’s all it is, why not just play Dead Space again?

6/10