Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Review

thesixthaxis.com:

You know a character is iconic when millions of people name their pets after them, but there’s something so satisfying about Indiana Bones… I mean Jones, being named after a dog in the first place. It’s just so pleasingly cyclical. Video games also move in circles, and where Indy’s mystical archeological adventures provided the inspiration for Tomb Raider and Uncharted, we’re now completing the loop in a way with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Well, kind of, because MachineGames has clearly sought to stand apart from those series in a number of ways, some of which really help make Indiana Jones and the Great Circle feel more like an Indiana Jones’ cinematic adventures than a video game romp.

Set after Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy gets that adventuring itch after a break in at Marshall College brings him into very close contact with a Latin-speaking giant – a now posthumous appearance from the late great Tony Todd. Figuring out that it’s one of his own recently unearthed finds that has gone missing, he decides to ditch all his marking and classes yet again and hare off around the world following the one clue that he has found, replete with the iconic red line inching its way across a world map to the Vatican.

MachineGames has absolutely captured the look and feel of Indiana Jones, both with the general graphical style, but most particularly in the game’s cutscenes. Troy Baker as Indy puts in a shift mimicking Harrison Ford’s gruff mumbling and mannerisms, and there’s only maybe a dozen instances where I can hear Baker’s natural accent coming through instead. His companion through most of the story is Gina, the Italian journalist, whose backstory is gradually unpeeled, while there’s friends old and new in surprising places that will lend a hand in the race against Nazi archeologist Emmerich Voss.

Add to this the classic 1930s serial style (by way of the 80s), the exact right kind of comedic fight choreography, and the story’s race against time to stop some