So far this year, Indiana Jones has had 21 games Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Debuted on December 9. I don't remember any of the previous games, so excuse my early doubts about #22.

But after playing through this year's game (which was released on PC and Xbox Series X/S consoles), I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. In fact, it's easily my pick for Game of the Year. It is a game full of stealth, action, story and exploration.

Microsoft and Bethesda's Todd Howard have come up with a fun cross-generational strategy for older gamers and their offspring, or just new fans. It's also a very strategic game, as it's one of Microsoft's biggest games of the year, while Sony doesn't have any blockbuster adventures in its line-up other than Astro Bot.

As I mentioned earlier, the Great Circle has a circular legacy. When Raiders of the Lost Ark Released in 1981 as the first movie adventure for Indiana Jones, it inspired many games. It inspired Tomb Raider and its character Lara Croft (1996) and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Nathan Drake (2007). Now, this game series is undoubtedly one of the inspirations for 2024's Indiana Jones and the Great Four.

Back to the beginning

When I first started playing the game, it didn't surprise me that you replayed the temple attack in the first scene. Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think the developers did this because they realized that most of the prospective players haven't seen this movie. I thought it was a sign that the game developers didn't know that gamers didn't want to replay the movie anymore; they want something new.

It turns out that Machine Games, the mastermind behind the Nazi-killing game from the Wolfenstein series, has a lot of new stuff. Of course, Machine Games had to tone down the level of violence to suit Indiana Jones' audience. Machine Games was the perfect game studio to make a Nazi take out game with some sense of humor.

The game - the first game since 2003's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - takes place between events. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). After the prologue Raiders of the Lost ArkGreat Circle begins in 1937, before World War II, at Marshall College, where Jones taught archeology when he wasn't raiding tombs. During this time, Jones left his fiancée, Marion Ravenwood, to become the female lead in the first Indy film. According to his friend Marcus Brody, Jones tries to avoid his problems.

Someone breaks into the school's museum of archaeological treasures (stolen or bought). Jones confronts a thief who turns out to be a giant. After the fight, Jones is knocked out and escapes with a giant cat mummy. And he leaves behind an important secret: a medallion in the Vatican.

Even though it's midseason, Jones takes a trip to the Vatican. We see a familiar plane moving along the map like in the Indiana Jones movies. It was a bit more enjoyable than the movie. Upon arrival, Jones must enter Castel Sant'Angelo and then sneak into the Vatican. Along the way, you'll learn how to sneak up behind Italian army guards and take them down.

Sometimes they are a bit annoyingly difficult to catch and you have to fight them. But usually the other guards won't notice the racket and you can take them down. The problem is, if they hit you, you'll need to use a precious bandage to heal yourself. The most used melee in the entire game; If you use a revolver, you will attract a large crowd.

Once you get close enough, you can see that the Vatican and the Cardinals are in a pre-war moral gray zone, letting the Nazis into the Vatican as they search for unknown relics. Seeing a holy place crawling with soldiers of the Third Reich is very disturbing. Little do they know that Indiana Jones is on the case and is joined by investigative journalist Gina Lombardi (voiced by Alessandra Mastronardi), who is also searching for her missing sister. Their relationship starts out frosty, but it develops over time without leaving Gina as your typical character in a sexist story.

The Vatican is one huge level where you can really feel like you're exploring an open world. In search of research, Jones stumbles into the vast catacombs beneath the Vatican and meets an enemy: rival archaeologist Emmerich Voss (Marios Gavrilis), who is working with the Nazis to unearth ancient artifacts to help Hitler take over the world. It turns out that interesting archaeological sites around the world form a perfect circle around the globe. As Voss arrives and takes off in an airliner, Jones rides off and it takes them to the next great open world map, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

Formula against Nazism

These are familiar tropes and tropes in Indy land. But the developers did a good job with the anti-Nazi movie and game formula: Make them evil, get them interested in the occult, make them ridiculously stupid and clumsy, and make them easy to outwit in the end. Although Voss is not a true Nazi, he tries to outdo Jones in his fierce competition in searching tombs and disposing of lost artifacts.

Most of the time, you fight enemies stealthily or one-on-one. You hit your enemies with your whip and then hit them with a shovel or club. If you pull out your gun and fire, it's an invitation for the fascist troops to descend on you. I only used my sidearm or the weapon stolen from the Nazis a few times in the game. Every time I did, I felt like a failure.

While the whip is fun in combat, it's especially fun in motion. With Tomb Raider and Uncharted, you have a ton of climbing to do. On the other hand, it's easier to climb up with a whip and it's fun to jump off big cliffs like a rope on a whip. It turns from work to charm.

Troy Baker (voice of Joel in The Last of Us and many other games) does a great voice job for Indy, so much so that I could easily mistake him for Harrison Ford Jr. (At The Game Awards, Ford joked that Baker's performance was so good that Ford should have played the part himself).

To make the game harder for hardcore gamers, you can increase the difficulty of the combat and puzzles. Rushing to play the game, I decided to play it on "medium" difficulty for the combat, but on "easy" for the puzzles. This allowed me to use the very useful camera (part of a very nice user interface to interact with the player) and get hints. This gave me a navigation indicator of where I needed to go to complete my mission, rather than spending hours searching for items or paths in a large landscape. I liked that I could level up my character over time using items I had collected or experience. This helped me prepare for more difficult enemies later on.

The missions are fun and take you to exotic locations like the Pyramids of Giza, the Vatican and Castel Santangelo, the ruins of Shanghai, Thailand, the jungles of South America, and more. But just when you think the game is over, it turns out that you're just moving into an even bigger part of the grand adventure and a wider plot involving ancient legends.

And that's where the game goes from a typical movie adventure to a much longer tale to be told in a video game that could last 15 or 20 hours. This is where the narrative becomes a grand story. Not just for video games. It even feels better than Harrison Ford's recent Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. You travel around the world to scratch your itch as a roaming player, and the environments are incredibly detailed. And you find one after another in the great tale.

The team spent time figuring out the rhythm of the narrative when it came to making the comedy Indiana Jones series, said game designer Machine Games Jens Andersson told me in an interview. The tone should transition to funny stories between scenes that involve a lot of action or suspense.

“This time it's more of a Machine Games adventure than a Machine Games shooter. It's still a Machine Games game," Andersson said.

Conclusion

The game aims to create a basic action-adventure game that balances hardcore gameplay with fighting Nazis and solving challenging puzzles. But it's also accessible with a good sense of humor and a sense of mystery and horror.

You will come away with an appreciation of ancient mysteries and moral dilemmas. After an unexpected ending and 21 so many games, there's a love story with a familiar character that finally comes from the cold to your living room with some great fun. It was an adventure that took longer than expected and I didn't want it to end.

That's why I'm giving it five out of five stars. (Disclosure: Microsoft provided me with the game for the purpose of this review).