I've played just about every Indiana Jones game out there. All of them were either too action oriented (Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine) or too slow paced (Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis). But you can tell that the people making this game are fans of the films.
The films always start with a really cool action sequence, taking a play out of the James Bond universe. Then there's a sort of setup scene where you see Indy interacting with some of the side characters for the story. Then a McGuffin. Then Indy has some quiet reflection on his massive encyclopedia of a brain. Then an action sequence as he has to read something in some tomb. Reflection. Action. Reflection. Action. Explosion. Dead Nazis.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle nails this feel perfectly and stretches it out over 40 hours of fantastic gameplay. And like all good tomb raiding games, you get all the biomes (yuck, having typed that). Snow, desert, jungle, and city.
Not just any biomes though, they let you play in sandboxes of famous places you may never get to go. I spent probably 10 hours of the game, just traversing the Vatican, diving into all the tombs and secrets around there only to find myself locked into another 10 hours in Egypt, exploring the Sphinx and pyramids.
The action generally feels good. It actually reminds me a bit of Mirror's edge because you're doing a lot of platforming and hand to hand fighting in first person.
I feel like the developers gave you a lot of grace when it comes to the platforming. In some first person shooters, I'm staring at my feet when I jump so I can get an idea of where the target platform is. I never felt the need for that here, which let's you go on some really awesome runs where you jump from place to place, then swing on your rope, all in one action. It makes you feel cool, but it doesn't cheapen the platforming by making it too easy.
The fighting isn't bad either. It feels really good to hit a fascist with a broom or club. Melee weapons are definitely the way to go. But fist fighting also works pretty well, especially after you've gotten a few of the skill books. You can just dodge a punch and land a counter, or land a parry and then hit them with a devastating combo.
The only thing that doesn't feel great is the guns, but you honestly aren't using them much because if you get an entire area on you, you're probably not winning that fight. The guns feel good to hold and shoot, but the enemies barely react to them. There were too many times where I shot a guy at point blank range in the face and he kept coming.
And let's talk about voice acting, holy cow. I would've thought we had 1980s Harrison Ford reading lines. Troy Baker just knocking it completely out of the park again. Similarly Alessandra Mastronardi and Marios Gavrillis destroyed in their roles as well.
I wish I could see this game with full ray tracing. It already looks gorgeous on the PS5 hardware. I can only imagine if you have a badass rig to run it in full. The lighting especially shines in Egypt. You have that full sun in the desert shining through little holes here and there in the temples or torches lighting your way. They do some really cool stuff with just the lighting the PS5 can render.
I can't sing enough praises about this game. Really, other than the guns, and a couple of annoying temples to return to in order to get all of the notes and pictures in the game, this was flawless. I loved the story, the gameplay, the length, and the collectables.
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