Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks authentic and awesome | Hands-off preview
Before Lara Croft and Nathan Drake, there was one relic hunter and archaeologist who did it better than anyone. Indiana Jones is an iconic character who’s had his own video games before, but nothing has looked half as good as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. I longed to jump into his shoes while watching a good chunk of the gameplay at a recent press event, and while I can’t say if it plays well, it certainly looks like MachineGames is the right studio for the job.
You’ll have seen some footage from tonight’s Gamescom presentation, so I won’t spend much time talking about that as you’ll have already seen a taste of what to expect. What I do want to dive into is what wasn’t shown tonight. I got to see a chunk of gameplay where Indiana Jones dives into an underground tomb under a Sphinx in Giza. It seems like you’re given plenty of freedom to take out enemies however you want, and I love that aspect of it. I witnessed Indy take out an enemy with his bullwhip, shoot another with his sidearm, and punch the holy hell out of another in up-close and personal melee fisticuffs.
When he got into the tomb, it started like many of the typical Indy scenarios whereby he grabbed a relic from a plinth which caused the temple to shake and fill up with sand. After getting out of the room, he then had to use his brains to try and escape across a pit filled with spikes. The bullwhip can be used to take out enemies, but it can also be used to swing across gaps and traverse downwards like a rope in gym class. It can pull parts of the environment out of place to use as a connecting point to swing from, and more.
Traversal looks fantastic, but so does the combat. Indy is an archaeologist at heart. He’s not a trained mercenary so those moments where you’re faced with an enemy one-on-one never feels like victory is guaranteed. You can use your fists to block punches and throw them, where strength is evenly matched. It looked exciting, but using your weapons seemed like the more natural solution for an easy knockout. Under the sphinx, there was a puzzle that required a golden emblem to open a door as well. It wasn’t close by either. Instead, Indy had to find a disguise and become a servant for some assholes playing a round of cards in a nearby tent.
After finding their wine, he located it on a table next to the bottle and stole it, headed outside calmly as to not alert anyone, then headed back to the door to embark on his mini-adventure inside the temple underground. With this short gameplay presentation and the footage from Gamescom, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks fantastic. The visuals are excellent from the environments to the character animations, and the voice acting is ridiculously good. Troy Baker is a chameleon and an exceptional talent, but even I had to listen twice to make sure that it wasn’t actually Harrison Ford doing the voice-over.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks like an authentic entry into the saga of the franchise, with some excellent gameplay and stunning visuals. It seems to have all the charm the character is known for, but it also looks like it’s got the supporting cast right, specifically Gina, the Italian journalist who has her own personal mission. While at the event, the developers were confident they were sticking to the release date, so thankfully we won’t have to wait too long until we can all enjoy the exciting new adventure of one of the greatest movie characters of all time through our Xbox consoles.
