Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review – Review
Because punching nazis shouldn’t be console exclusive.
Charting the confluence of Indiana Jones and video games is fascinating, in that the majority of its highest peaks don’t actually involve Indiana Jones. From Tomb Raider to Uncharted, the influence of Indiana Jones in gaming is difficult to ignore, yet his own video game adventures have rarely moved the needle. That’s part of what makes Indiana Jones and the Great Circle such a triumph. It is not only the best game to ever be directly based on this IP, it is also the best game to be inspired by it.
Set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, The Great Circle sees us joining the famed archeologist as he investigates a mysterious order of giants with ties to ancient christianity. What follows is a globe trotting adventure through a multitude of ancient civilizations. The specific object of your quest remains shrouded until late in the game, but the payoff is right up there with the best of the films. But this is just one element of what makes The Great Circle work so well. The Great Circle doesn’t feel like an adaptation of the IP. It just feels like Indiana Jones. And that goes beyond the story. No, what makes The Great Circle work, is that at every turn, every little element of game design is pulled directly from the source material. At no point does it feel like the game is taking a break to gamify something. It never turns to you and asks you to accept something because this is just a video game.
The adventure is split into a series of large locations. Most of these play out as miniaturized open-worlds. Within each one you’ll have a series of primary quests, alongside side quests, and smaller mysteries to be solved. Navigating these environments generally involves finding ways to blend in, which comes down to disguises and stealth. This is not a first person shooter, and hitting the point where guns are drawn will usually end poorly. Rather, combat is best resolved through creativity. Picking up improvised weapons and knocking out enemies before they see you, using your whip to quickly disarm opponents before engaging in hand to hand combat, causing a distraction and sneaking past, or simply stealing a uniform and walking right int.
Your primary questline through each of these areas generally plays out in an almost Zelda-like structure. You’ll take on objectives around the map before gaining access to a dungeon full of puzzles. While the main quest generally features the largest of these dungeons, some of the most challenging and interesting are found in optional side areas. One early map is set near the Great Pyramids in Egypt. The landscape is littered with collapsed ruins and tombs that all house unique challenges. While you can absolutely focus-down the main quest, it is hard not to get caught up in secondary points of interest as you naturally find them while crossing the map.
Punctuating these large exploration zones are smaller, more linear set piece moments. These generally place more of a focus on action with the occasional one-off mechanic. These nicely manage the pacing and serve as a fun reward for completing the more cerebral, puzzle-rich moments of the game.
When it initially released on PC and Xbox Series systems, The Great Circle made waves as a graphical showpiece. I went into the Switch 2 version ready for plenty of compromises in order to bring the game to a handheld hybrid system. I was familiar with how the game ran on Steam Deck and expected something similar for the Switch 2. I’m pleased to say that overall it has exceeded my expectations. Ray-traced global illumination is still in effect. I’ll also note that it resolves much more cleanly than a comparable implementation in Star Wars Outlaws. I had to actively go looking for artifacts and even then struggled to spot them despite knowing exactly what to look for. Likewise character rendering manages to be nearly indistinguishable from more powerful systems. Even the complex mesh displacement used for the snow in one segment remains in full effect on Switch 2. The main areas where we do see compromises are of course in frame-rate, rendering resolution, and secondary texture resolution.
When playing docked I found that image quality holds up surprisingly well. Handheld mode is noticeably softer but well within reasonable expectations. The frame rate has been cut from 60 frames-per-second down to 30. Unlike some last generation Machine Games ports such as Wolfenstein 2, The Great Circle is a very slow paced game the vast majority of the time. As such I didn’t notice the adjustment much unless I was directly flipping back and forth with the Xbox version. Secondary texture resolution is the one area where the adjustments do, now and then, go a little far. Occasionally the camera will show a close up on an object that is clearly intended to have writing or an image on it that merely resolves to a blurry mess. It isn’t common but it is jarring when one of these textures is displayed across the entire screen.
The Great Circle generally runs well in both handheld and docked mode. I only noticed a few select spots on maps where I was able to consistently cause significant frame-rate slow-down. The more annoying issue was a consistent stutter every time the game autosaved, which it does quite often. I initially assumed this might be traversal related but it does seem to be entirely based on when an autosave triggers. On the other hand, impressively, the areas of the game that you might actually expect to trigger significant frame rate problems, sail by smoothly.
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is the best cinematic to game adaptation I’ve ever played, one of the best stories the Indiana Jones IP has told, and one of the Switch 2’s most impressive third party ports thus far. The Switch 2 delivers this masterpiece nearly uncompromised. Its only the occasional stutter or low-resolution texture that gives away the game’s slimmed down form. Whether you’re delving into ancient ruins to solve puzzles, or introducing a nazi to the loving embrace of a sledgehammer, every moment of the Great Circle is absolute bliss.
