Indiana Jones and the Grand Circle is the best game of the year | review

There were 21 Indiana Jones games before this year Indiana Jones and the Grand Circle It debuted on December 9. I don’t remember any of those previous games, so you may forgive my early skepticism about the number 22.

But after playing this year’s game (released on PC and Xbox Series 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 an interesting cross-generational strategy, catering to older gamers, their children, or just new fans. This is also a very strategic game because it’s one of the biggest games of the year for Microsoft at a time when there aren’t any blockbuster adventure titles in Sony’s lineup, with the exception of Astro Bot, which is a completely different game.

As I mentioned before, there is a circular heritage to the Great Circle. when Raiders of the Lost Ark Released in 1981 as the first Indiana Jones adventure film, this game has inspired numerous games. It inspired Tomb Raider and its heroine Lara Croft (1996) and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Nathan Drake (2007). It is now clear that this game series is one of the inspirations for 2024’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Back to the beginning

When I first started playing the game, I wasn’t impressed that the first scene had you replaying the temple raid scene at the beginning Raiders of the Lost Ark. I assume that the developers only did this because they realized that most people among the potential players had not seen this movie. I thought this was a sign that the game developers hadn’t learned that players didn’t want to replay the movie; They want something new.

It turns out that Machine Games, which mastered the art of Nazi-slaying games with the Wolfenstein series, had a lot of new stuff. Of course, Machine Games had to tone down the violence to suit a mainstream Indiana Jones audience. Machine Games was the perfect game studio to put out a game directed by Nazis with some sense of humor.

The game – the first 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 introduction of Raiders of the Lost ArkThe Great Circle Game begins in 1937, before World War II, at Marshall College, the school where Jones teaches archeology when he’s not out raiding tombs. During this time, Jones left his fiancée, Marion Ravenwood, the main female character in the first Indie film. As his friend Marcus Brody says, Jones is trying to escape his problems.

Someone breaks into the school museum, which contains archaeological treasures (stolen or acquired). Jones confronts the thief, who turns out to be a giant. After a struggle, Jones is knocked out and the giant escapes with a cat mummy. He leaves behind an important piece of evidence: a medal from the Vatican.

Even though it’s midterm season, Jones takes a trip to the Vatican. We see the familiar plane moving along the map like in the Indiana Jones movies. It was a bit of magic from the movie. Upon his arrival, Jones must infiltrate Castel Sant’Angelo and then follow the secret path to the Vatican. Along the way, you’ll learn how to sneak past Italian army guards and beat them up.

Sometimes it is very difficult to catch them by surprise, and you have to engage in hand-to-hand combat with them. But usually, the other guards won’t notice the racket and you can eliminate them. The problem is that if they take a hit on you, you’ll have to use a precious bandage to heal yourself. Melee combat is the most used in the entire game. If you use your gun, you will attract a large crowd.

Once you get close enough, you can see the Vatican and the cardinals in the moral gray area before the war, allowing the Nazis into the Vatican while they search for unknown relics. It is disturbing to see the holy place crawling with soldiers of the Third Reich. Little do they know that Indiana Jones is involved in the case, he 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 develops over time in a way that doesn’t make Jenna a typical heroine in a sexist story.

The Vatican is actually a vast level where you can feel like you’re exploring an open world. While searching for clues, Jones stumbles upon some massive catacombs under the Vatican and encounters an enemy: Emmerich Vos (Marius Gavrilis), a rival archaeologist working with the Nazis to uncover ancient artifacts to help Hitler conquer the world. It turns out that important archaeological sites around the world form a perfect circle around the globe. When Vos arrives and takes off in the balloon, Jones takes a ride that leads them to the next great open world map, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

Anti-Nazi formula

These are familiar tropes and environments in Indy-land. But the developers did a good job with the formula of anti-Nazi movies and games: make them villains, make them interested in the occult, make them comically stupid and clumsy, and ultimately make it easier for them to be fooled. Although Voss is not an actual Nazi, he tries to outdo Jones with ferocity when it comes to raiding tombs and searching for lost artifacts.

Most of the time, you can eliminate enemies stealthily, or in one-on-one battles. You stun enemies with your whip and then hit them with your shovel or stick. If you draw your gun and shoot, it’s an invitation for a Nazi mob to descend on you. I only used my personal weapon – or one stolen from the Nazis – a few times in the game. And every time I did, I felt like a failure.

While the whip is fun to spice up a fight, it’s especially fun in motion. With the Tomb Raider and Uncharted games, you have to do a lot of climbing. But it’s easier to climb up with a whip and it’s fun to swing on the whip, like a rope, over huge gaps. It turns from a chore into magic.

Troy Baker (who voiced Joel in The Last of Us and several other games) does a great job voicing Indy, to the point where I could mistake him for a younger Harrison Ford. (Ford, who appeared at The Game Awards, joked that Baker did such a great job that Ford himself should have played the role instead.)

You can increase the difficulty level of both combat and puzzles to make the game more challenging for the tastes of hardcore players. In my rush to play the game, I decided to play it on “Moderate” difficulty for the combat and “Easy” difficulty for the puzzles. This allowed me to get hints using the very useful camera (which is part of a very good user interface for communicating with the player). This gave me a pointer to navigate to where I needed to go to accomplish my task, rather than spending hours searching for items or paths in a massive landscape. I liked how I could level up my character over time, using things I collected or experience I developed. This helped prepare me for more difficult enemies later on.

The missions are interesting and take you to exotic places like the Pyramids of Giza, the Vatican, Santangelo Castle, the ruins of Shanghai, Thailand, the jungles of South America, and more. But just when you think the game is about to end, it turns out you’re moving on to something that’s more of a grand adventure and a broader plot featuring more ancient mythology.

Here the game moves from a typical cinematic adventure to a much longer story that can be told in a video game that can last for 15 or 20 hours. It’s also where the narrative becomes a great story. Not just for a video game. It even looks better than Harrison Ford’s last movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. You travel the world to scratch your itch as a roaming player, and the environments are incredibly detailed. And then you find one clue after another in a great story.

The team spent time understanding the narrative rhythm when it came to capturing the comedy of the Indiana Jones series, from game designer Machine Games Jens Anderson told me in an interview. The tone should shift between scenes that contain a lot of action or suspense to those that contain a lot of humor.

“This time it’s more of an arcade adventure, not a arcade shooter. It’s still very much a arcade game,” Anderson said.

conclusion

This game is on a mission to create a mainstream action-adventure game that balances hardcore gameplay like fighting Nazis and solving challenging puzzles. But it’s also accessible with a good sense of humor and a sense of mystery and awe.

You come out of it with an appreciation for ancient secrets and moral dilemmas. There’s a love story with an unexpected ending and a familiar character who, after 21 mediocre games, finally comes out of the cold and into your living room with amazing entertainment. It’s an adventure that seems to last longer than expected and I didn’t want it to end.

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