Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review(Playstation 5)

I'm not really a huge fan of Machine Games. Their Wolfenstein games outside of The Old Blood ranges from passable to almost insufferable. Their best title was Quake 2: Call of the Machine so when this Indiana Jones game was announced, I was skeptical. When the positive game reviews came in, I took them with a grain of salt. I did want this developer to win me over and after playing Great Circle, it was just so okay, it's average.

The story of the game is interesting in that if you are just looking for a play it safe Indiana Jones adventure with nothing new or interesting that the franchise or stories inspired by it haven't already explored then it did it's job. Troy Baker's Harrison Ford impersonation is impeccable and very on point. It almost felt like the former studied the latter down to the letter and really went out of his way to get his mannerisms and the way he speaks down to a science. Harrison Ford's trademark dramatic finger pointing is here as well as Indy's fear of snakes among other aspects related to the series. Machine Games really do love the movies and playing the game does show that.

The rest of the characters and performances are "fine". Voss is well acted and fun to hate villain in the moment. This is pretty much my issue with the story where I alluded to earlier. If you ignore the performances, cutscenes and production values, there isn't much to chew on themematically or anything to think about after the game is done.

It's your typical story of this style. The start of it is different but it plays out the same way. There is a macguffin(main difference now that he is getting the one stolen from him), Indy goes around the world meets people new and old to find clues on where it is, there is allusions to famous myths, an evil group is after the same macguffin, Indy does most of the legwork to find the macguffin to the point where is better off not even going after it since he doesn't get the thing and it ends with a climatic showdown where the villain dies by their own hubris instead of the protagonist himself.

For a game where you have quite a number of cutscenes and the story being one of if not it's biggest selling point. It never really goes past what I mentioned. You can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and get the same experience. Games like Terminator Resistance and Robocop Rogue City have more going on with their stories by comparison despite not being as rich in production values and presentation. Insomniac Spider-Man and the Middle Earth games provides more innovation to their respective franchises and have more going on themeatically than Great Circle does.

Great Circle's gameplay subverts the expectations of many. It wasn't their take on Wolfenstein, Uncharted or Survivor Tomb Raider. It's going back to the Starbreeze days of Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay. The 1st person perspective that cuts to 3rd during climbing or special actions, the first fighting and the stealth are all here.

Much like Butcher Bay, it's jack of all trades but master of none style of design. You have a stamina system now but it adds so little to the game that it might as well not be there since it's a cinematic action adventure game. You will never have to worry about falling off during a climbing section. During fist fights, it's a hinderance to have the player to avoid spamming the dash button since enemies wouldn't land a hit on the player if he did all though when I mean "enemies" its bosses since those are the mandatory fights. Without the stamina meter spamming punches and dashes would make them too easy. The hardest parts with these sequences is with certain attacks and especially when you get grabbed since depth perception of first person perspective as well the hit box for the animation to register is a 50-50 guessing game.

You can beat the game without using  Indy's revolver which is like a Star Wars game where you primarily play as a Jedi and never needing to use the Force.

This now leaves two pillars left. Tomb exploration and stealth.

The former is very scripted if almost on rails. You take pictures to get hints and most your time is spent figuring the puzzle out. When not doing that it's very automated platforming and environmental puzzles. It never goes above and beyond the kind of level design and exploration found in the Core Design Tomb Raider games.

Stealth is barebones and limited. It's a typical crouching line of sight based system during restricted area infiltrations and Hitman disguise stealth. Most the game gives you during these parts is improvised weapons to do takedowns with. AI is tolerable at best, borderline physic at worst. What doesn't help is that guards are littered almost all over the maps meaning you have to deal with the shoddy detection system and AI behaviours even more. Fine when they don't have guns, rage inducing when they do.

Overall, I wanted to be surprised but throughout my entire playthrough, the Great Circle never escapes the realm of average.