MachineGames loves punching Nazis. The developer has had a few detours designing levels for iD classics like Quake and Doom, but for the majority of the company's existence, it has pumped out games in the revival of the Wolfenstein series, where you punch, stab, and shoot loads of Nazis. The games have all been good so far, and while MachineGames has confirmed that it's working on the next iteration of Wolfenstein, the developer has also taken on a different game involving one of cinema's most famous Nazi punchers with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

The game starts off with a re-creation of the opening moments from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Everything from the opening shot of Indiana's back to the idol swap and rolling boulder trap are all present and re-created nearly shot for shot. It's partially in-game cinematic and part playable tutorial, but it does a very good job of selling you on the idea that the team knows what it's doing.

The real story of the game begins after this moment, when it is revealed that this is a flashback and Indiana wakes up in his office after some late-night research on the lost Idol of Fertility. As he wanders the university grounds, he notices that it is a mess, and it doesn't take long before he finds that a literal giant has broken in and trashed the place. After a scuffle where he ends up on the losing side, Jones wakes up to find that the cat mummy statue he had recently uncovered was stolen — presumably by the messy giant who managed to leave behind an amulet that belongs to the Vatican. What starts off as a journey to Italy to find out what's going on quickly transforms into a worldwide adventure of world-saving proportions.

From the start, The Great Circle feels like a proper Indiana Jones adventure. Some of the more obvious signs are the various locations you'll visit for the globe-hopping adventure. There's also an old, yellowing world map that's complete with the period-appropriate names of regions, the active red dotted line denoting travel, and clips of various forms of transportation. The various side characters you meet along the way are all memorable thanks to their quirks, like the priest who loves American music or the old man in Thailand who can spin a good folk tale. You've got a spunky female sidekick, and the trademark Jones wit doesn't get overused to the point that the title becomes a comedy. More importantly, the game nails the pacing of a standard Indiana Jones film. There are moments of sadness and romance mixed in with the adventure, and it all naturally flows together. You can make an actual film adaptation of this game without changing too much.

The Great Circle is presented from a first-person viewpoint, which may initially seem odd, but it is in MachineGames' comfort zone, considering its portfolio. Keep in mind that prior to forming this company, the founders were part of Starbreeze, which is best known for The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, another adventure game with a first-person viewpoint that wasn't a typical shooter. Those hoping to see lots of Indiana won't be disappointed, as the game uses plenty of cut scenes, all of which are done in-game.

The game is structured as a linear adventure with some openness. There are three major areas to explore; there are a few smaller areas, but the large areas share a similar structure. There are a few quest-givers, at least one shopkeeper to give you one essential item and a few optional items. You'll need keys to unlock a few areas, but most places are accessible from the get-go, and each of the major spaces contain a good deal of neutral and enemy-occupied territories to explore for weapons, health and items of interest. The areas are sizable enough, and the good news is that you can always revisit the areas even if you get warned that you should wrap things up and move on. Since it's impossible to complete every task in one run, this also acts as your post-game activity after the end credits roll.

The game has a pretty unusual leveling system. Completing side-quests and finding documents in the world garners the equivalent of XP. Instead of automatically being converted to a general level for your character along with the expected stat upgrades, the XP is used as a currency that's only spent when you read books that are either obtained in the field or purchased with coins from vendors. These books unlock or upgrade very specific things, such as increased health, a partial health refill, the ability to carry more food, or a second chance to continue if you get knocked out. The system isn't revolutionary, but it is neat to see something different from a typical leveling-up system.

The gameplay mechanics can be broken down into several different categories. Traversal is obvious but still worth mentioning because it does things that can still be considered atypical for the first-person viewpoint. While most of the game takes place on relatively flat land, you will clamber up and down ledges quite often; the back half of the game contains a few areas where you'll do a good deal of jumping. None of these actions feel "off," so you'll have to try to intentionally miss a leap. You can run a great distance before your stamina meter runs out, but the depletion rate is slow enough that it'll take a while before you need to slow down. Your trusty whip is also used often for traversal, so you'll either latch on to limbs to swing over chasms or use it as a makeshift rope to climb up walls.

The only knock is in how the game handles traversal in conjunction with weapons. Some weapons are small enough to be stashed away for a while in your inventory, but most of the things you find are too large to realistically do that. Should you have a weapon like that in your hand and need to grab a ledge, climb a ladder, or use a whip to climb a wall, you'll automatically drop that weapon instead of it being carried with you. There are plenty of items lying around in the world, so you'll rarely be without a weapon, but it can be annoying to have a sturdy sledgehammer and be forced to drop it when you need to move forward.

Just like in the movies, a decent chunk of the game's playtime is dedicated to solving puzzles. The game contains a good deal of tricky puzzles involving the correct placement of switches, but that all happens later on. The first half is filled with puzzles that are a tad challenging but otherwise pretty easy to figure out. You can ferret out hints for some of these puzzles by taking pictures in certain areas, and there are a few cases where the solution will be listed in your notebook if you take enough pictures to exhaust all of the hints. Don't expect something on the level of the classic point-and-click adventure games, but what's present feels good, especially since everyone will talk their way through their actions as you go through the steps of solving each puzzle.

When it comes to combat, The Great Circle is both familiar and different. You can use guns and the shooting feels great, but ammo is limited, few guards actually carry firearms, and the flood of enemies that appear when you open fire makes the action risky. You can use the whip, but it mostly acts as a way to stun and disarm enemies instead of as a means to defeat them. You'll rely on melee attacks almost anytime you fight, whether that means throwing objects, bludgeoning people, or using your fists. The weapon variety is vast, and you'll see some typical stuff like hammers and bottles that you can pick up and use. You'll also see some more atypical stuff like guitars, brooms and cast-iron skillets that are funny but effective. Guns can also be used as melee weapons, so finding one dropped by a guard doesn't necessarily mean that you have to shoot to be effective.

Just like it demonstrated on The Chronicles of Riddick, the development team knows how to make first-person melee combat feel right, but there are some unexpected tweaks to keep players on their toes. All of the usable objects have durability pips, so everything will break — including guns, which will shatter if you smack people with them enough times. You also have a stamina meter, so you can't relentlessly spam the attack button unless you want to leave yourself open and unable to block or dodge. The system works quite well to make fights less of a button-mashing exercise, but you will hate encountering a bunch of guards because they won't wait for their turn to throw a punch.

The last big mechanic is stealth, which can feel basic in some areas but advanced in others. You can duck behind objects to reduce the amount of noise you make, but you can also don disguises to not attract attention. There's no cone of light replacement to indicate an enemy's visual range, but you get indicators to see how suspicious they are of you. You have no way of delivering silent attacks, but you can hide the bodies of anyone you've killed or knocked out, and you can push people off ledges without alerting others, no matter how loud they scream.

The presence of stealth is great, but its implementation is the weakest game mechanic. Guards will go on alert when seeing a knocked-out body, but it's a crapshoot whether that results in everyone knowing about the incident. Guards will also give up on searching for you pretty quickly if you aren't actively engaged in a fight. Being in a disguise helps, but the officers will sometimes recognize you from a good distance away, so the opportunity to go stealthy is sabotaged through no fault of your own. The game doesn't immediately end when stealth is compromised, and you'll rarely feel like the stealth mechanics block you from progressing, but this could've been done better when you consider the developer's previous output at Starbreeze.

You may be able to live with the broken stealth mechanics, but the game also suffers from some technical stability issues. Throughout the playthrough of the game, it crashed four times, but the frequent saving meant that each crash didn't result in a large loss of progress. The game also experienced a corrupted save file, but the frequent saving meant that there was a backup, so again, not much progress was lost. The crashes are bad, and the corrupted save is horrid, but the interesting thing is that all of this only occurred in the Vatican level. Beyond this point, the game was absolutely stable with no crashes or other errors. The bugs need to be fixed ASAP before people drop the game due to the crashes and/or corrupted save file.

The audio is absolutely fantastic. The voice acting is superb, with Troy Baker nailing the Harrison Ford impression; there are very few instances when you'll be able to discern that it isn't actually Ford's voice. The music hits all of the expected Indiana Jones themes but adds enough of its own flavor to feel distinct. It complements the original John Williams score well. The sound effects are also very good; the whip cracks and gunshots sound crisp, but it is funny that the impact of punches in the game also sound loud enough that they can be mistaken for gunshots.

Graphically, The Great Circle is almost excellent. The character models look great, with the bigger names like Tony Todd looking menacing and the younger version of Harrison Ford looking as good as ever, especially the facial animations. We're at the point where we can accurately tell which emotion should be conveyed based on subtle clues in the face. The environments also look wonderful with rarely a hint of low-resolution textures, and the lighting also makes the environments pop more, even though the full path-tracing effects haven't been implemented yet. The frame rate is also solid no matter what's happening on-screen, and the game supports ultrawide resolutions without compromising anything in the process.

Where the graphics falter is in the effects, but it only occurs in certain situations. Fire effects, especially from torches, look good during gameplay, but there's a tendency for the flames to flicker unnaturally during cut scenes. The same thing can be said for some rubble. Breaking down a wall with a sledgehammer looks fine, but when you see a temple collapse all around you, there's a good chance it'll do so at such a low frame rate that it looks like the stop-motion special effects. When you consider how good everything else looks in the game before the full path tracing is implemented in a later patch, these things stick out quite poorly.

For those wanting to play the game on the Steam Deck, the good news is that it does boot up. You'll get to see the company logo movies play, and you'll also reach the game's menus. However, none of this matters, since nothing is ever rendered. You may see some things like flames or hair, but that's it. You'll get nothing else but a void of varying shades of one color, and while things are still interactive, it isn't playable when using any version of Proton or Proton-GE. Keep in mind that this was done before the game's official launch, so it may be possible that the title will be made playable in the near future with a new version of Proton, but for now, this is a Windows-only title.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is an absolutely fun but flawed experience. The full Indiana Jones vibe is present from a story and pacing perspective. The stealth is laughable, but all of the other gameplay elements make up for it. The graphics are good except for an issue or two, while the sound is good enough to elevate the overall experience. Some work needs to be done to make the game run smoothly without the fear that your experience will be abruptly cut due to instability issues. As it stands now, it's a good game and a fine way to cap off a year of big releases before the impending storm of next year's games begins.

Score: 8.0/10