‘Indiana Jones And The Great Circle’ review: tip your fedora to this unexpected action delight

You’d be forgiven for counting Indiana Jones dead and buried, much less ready for a return to video games. The modern films form a good enough reason on their own; the acclaim for the Indy-indebted Uncharted series suggests another. Yet, like a certain intrepid explorer braving a notoriously cursed tomb, developer MachineGames has performed the excavation. And remarkably their effort, Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, is a surprise triumph – after a painful few decades, the original tomb raider has found a new niche.

• READ MORE: How playing Indiana Jones nearly broke Troy Baker

Indy experts will recognise that jungle-coated mountain: sure enough, The Great Circle’s opening is an almost scene-for-scene recreation of the opening of 1981’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark. But here, in a defining strength of the medium, you play Indiana – notably viewing things through his eyes rather than over his shoulder like Uncharted’s Nathan Drake – tilting the joystick to replace the Golden Idol with a sandbag. It’s a conceit that never gets old: this feels like an entry in the original trilogy, aided by a remarkable imitation of the young Ford from the chameleonic Troy Baker (best-known for playing Joel in The Last Of Us video game franchise).

The Golden Idol was just a memory: Indy wakes in Marshall College, Connecticut, 1937, which aficionados will note places the game after Raiders and before The Last Crusade. Responding to a bump in the night Indy disturbs a robed giant of a man, on first appearances a kind of Latin-proficient Mr X from Resident Evil 2, who knocks him out and makes off with a cat mummy. To investigate – spoiler, the Nazis are at it again, with antagonist Emmerich Voss the wonderfully mad leader of Nazi occult research – Indiana checks his globe-spanning rolodex and you’re off to the first major area, Vatican City.

From the first break-in it’s clear there’s a deep focus here on stealthy exploration, echoing Hitman, Dishonored or developer Jens Andersson’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. Guns and ammo are scarce and shots bring enemies running. Fascists must instead be punched and pushed or whacked with bats, hammers, planks – whatever’s closest to hand.

Indy brawls and sneaks through some truly gorgeous locales, leaving the Vatican for the pyramids of Gizeh. Later you find yourself in the snowy Himalayas and the jungles of Siam. These locations form semi-open worlds to scale with Indy’s whip: players must devise the best routes to complete the missions including deeper ‘Field Work’ assignments that pile up in his journal. Curiosity is encouraged, whether snapping a Sphinx with your trusty camera or solving a religious puzzle to access a torchlit necropolis.

The Great Circle isn’t perfect. Skills like fitness and brawling are increased via a combination of adventure books and points, a slightly paint-by-numbers system for action-adventure games, but it works well enough, a literate take from the medium’s best. The game’s dopey AI is its biggest failing: patrolling guards can often struggle to see beyond arm’s length and occasionally, they can be found staring existentially at a wall.

But these are minor nitpicks in an increasingly rare thing for this industry: a surprise gem. Early on, Indy notes that comic books are a new menace on campus, a nod to the grip Ford’s character once held over the public’s imagination – now crowded out by superheroes. In games, he’s found a new home.

‘Indiana Jones And The Great Circle’ is out now on on Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass and PC. A PlayStation version is due later this year.