[COLUMN] Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Is a Hell of a Way to Cap Off 2024 | by Marty Sliva

I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. It wasn’t the warm blanket of a tutorial mission that recreated the legendary cold open of Raiders of the Lost Ark, right down to the line “Adios, Satipo.” It wasn’t hearing Troy Baker’s excellent take on the most famous archaeologist in movie history, causing me to frequently forget that I wasn’t listening to unearthed dialogue from Harrison Ford himself. And it wasn’t the first time the iconic map popped up, charting our course across the globe and pointing to the scope of the impending adventure.

No, the moment I fell for The Great Circle came during what Yahtzee would refer to as a simple cock-up cascade. I found myself deep inside the Vatican City, trying to untangle a knot of mysteries involving the titular macguffin. I was sneaking through a few tents occupied by Italian blackcoats. I was stealing anything I could get my hands on — bandages, notes hinting at the combo for a nearby safe, hella biscotti. Typical video game shit. 

But I pressed my luck a bit too far, and snagged some money within eyeshot of Fascist #1. He immediately became suspicious, and was soon joined by Fascist #s 2 and 3. I found myself in an extremely on-brand fight, using anything within reach as a weapon — candlesticks, fly swatters, loofahs. Soon more baddies showed up, and I realized that running was probably my best course of action.

I sprinted out of the tent, leapt over a fountain, and started zig zagging through alleyways. I didn’t know where I was going, but anything was better than what was behind me. I tried to glance down at my map, but running and reading don’t pair well. I found a locked door, and luckily I had a key to get in. I slammed it behind me, breathed a sigh of relief, and turned around, only to discover that I had stumbled my way into the Sistine Chapel, currently being renovated but still displayed in all of its beauty and grandeur. 

I had experienced my own Indiana Jones moment, not through something tightly scripted by the developers (thought there are plenty of those throughout the game), but something that I had created on my own using the wealth of systems and mechanics spread across some of the absolute best level design I’ve seen in a game from 2024. In short, the 10 hours I’ve put into Indiana Jones and the Great Circle have been wonderful, and if the game can keep up this level of quality, it’ll absolutely find a spot high on my impending games of the year list.

While I’m thrilled at just how good this game is, I’m not surprised. Its developer MachineGames delivered the modern Wolfenstein games, which are my favorite FPS campaigns of the past decade alongside Titanfall 2. It’s clear that the team A) are great storytellers, B) love history, and C) hate Nazis, so putting them in charge of an Indy game makes complete sense, in the same way that Insomniac bringing their penchant for excellent combat and traversal to Spider-Man did. 

I will admit, I was a bit hesitant when the first footage was released, pointing to an adventure that kept the same first-person perspective that MachineGames was known for. Maybe it’s the symbiotic relationship that Indy shares with the likes of Tomb Raider and Uncharted, but I was picturing a more traditional third-person experience like those of Lara and Nathan. If I’m playing as one of the most iconic fictional characters of the past 50 years, I want to be able to see them, right?

Thankfully, it only took a few minutes inside The Great Circle to have those worries dispelled. The intimacy that comes from the first-person perspective heightens everything in the game, from surveying a room for clues to a puzzle, to the incredibly fun and frantic melee combat that distills the essence of the messy and improvisational fights from throughout the movies. And the game wisely pulls the camera out at a consistent click – climbing up the side of a building, swinging across a bottomless pit, and the many well-directed cutscenes that pepper the story. At this point, the perspective isn’t even something I register, which means that it’s working as intended.

I was also initially taken aback by the December release date. After all, December has historically been a slower month for games that provided us a nice beat to catch up on our collective backlogs, and if something big happened to drop during the month, chances are the publisher wanted to send it off to die. I mean, if your game releases after the mid-November cutoff for Game Awards nominations, does it even exist?

But it feels like the past five or six years have shattered our preconceived notions of what a December game is or isn’t. Bangers or otherwise “important” games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Solar Ash, Halo Infinite (I know), Cyberpunk 2077 (I know, I know), Marvel’s Midnight Sons, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, Lil’ Gator Game, and A Highland Song have all come during the final month of their respective years. And this past weekend saw not only the new Indy game, but also the launch of Marvel Rivals and Path of Exile 2 in Early Access, both of which are lighting up the Steam charts. If December was ever considered a dry period, it’s certainly not anymore.

Xbox was adamant that the reason Indy released so late in the year wasn’t due to its quality or their sales expectations or anything like that. It’s because their portfolio has grown so much that they needed to spread out their major releases to help bolster the case for folks keeping their Game Pass subscriptions all year round, instead of only occasionally signing up when a big release drops.

It’s no big secret that Xbox has had a strange go of it these past few years…well, it’s been a bit strange since the reveal of the Xbox One back in 2013, so maybe more than a few years. Obviously they’ve lacked the first-party critical and commercial successes of PlayStation and Nintendo, and have attempted to right that ship by gobbling up individual studios and larger publishers like Bethesda and Activision.

And while it feels like we’re still on the precipice of seeing exactly what a “normal” Xbox year looks like, I genuinely feel like Indiana Jones is right up there with Gears 5: Hivebusters, Psychonauts 2, and Forza Horizon as the best things they’ve put out over the past five years. And depending on how the rest of the game shakes out, it might top that list. It’s just that good. 

For me, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle came around at a perfect time. There hasn’t really been anything else like it in 2024, so it feels refreshing compared to the rest of my favorites of the year. Its cinematic ambitions set it apart from the other indies like Animal Well, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, and Minishoot’ Adventures. And there’s way less number crunching than Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Metaphor ReFantazio, and Shadow of the Erdtree. In fact, its closest peers are the likes of Dishonored and Hitman 3, and it's been a minute since we’ve seen both of them. But in the case of Hitman, I’m stupidly excited to see what the fellow Scandinavians over at IO Interactive have cooking up for their James Bond project. 

The timing also works out, as I’m wrapping up the script for my next episode of the Archive set to drop early next year on Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (their title, not mine). And much like that adaptation, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a game that didn’t need to go nearly as hard as it does, but damn am I thankful for the love and care that MachineGames has put into giving life to a beloved franchise that’s had a rough past 30 years or so. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some more Fascist biscotti to steal.