I like Indiana Jones as much as the next guy, well, the first three films at least. So, it was with some excitement that I started Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on Game Pass. In my first ten or so hours, I would say; it’s a pleasant surprise. It runs well enough, too, and looks good (for the most part). However, if I set the ray tracing to anything above low, or perhaps medium, the FPS tanks. Not too surprising, maybe, since I’m only on a 3070 GPU. All in all, the game feels like a modern 3D version of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
What intelligence?
Yet, as with everything, nothing can be purely good, if we go full cynical mode. The main problem, which to me is a great sin considering it’s a stealth game, is the dumb as bricks AI. I’m playing on hard, and while they can spot you relatively easily, everything beyond that and they fail miserable. I could live with the AI being subpar, if the game actually punished you for messing up. But it’s terribly easy, unfortunately. There is no permanent alert status. If they discover you, or even find a body, they just go back to what they were doing one or two minutes later. Am I to believe this is supposed to be WW2 military, being this lax?
At one point, I ran through an enemy checkpoint and antagonized every guard in the area so they followed me. They chased me for about a hundred meters or so, then gave up and slowly walked back to their posts in a line. Hilarious. What makes it even better, is that five minutes later when I had to go through the checkpoint again, nobody remembered me! It’s immersion shattering, to say the least.
Okay, before we finish this, I have two more issues. While the graphics look great in general, it’s incredibly muddy even on “high” if you look close enough. It reminds of the game Rage, and the whole megatexture debacle back in the day. From a distance, things look good, but text and finer details look smeared. Not a good look for a game requiring so much VRAM in the first place.
Girlboss?
The female sidekick character is annoying, and seems to go towards the usual girlboss type. She is not yet fully so in my game, but her quips and everything involving her dialogue just comes off as grating. I had much more fun when Indy was alone. I do realize that Indiana always had a love-interest, or just a tag-alone chick in his adventures, so it’s not something new. However, someone less modern style-of-writing would have been appreciated.
If I’m going to list some good stuff to balance this out, it would be:
- Fun first-person melee combat
- Enjoyable stealth (unfortunately undermined by the dumb AI)
- Nice 1930-40 atmosphere
- The Nazis feel evil enough (but kinda dumb – why must they be dumb?)
- Cool exploration with multiple paths in the hub-areas
- Story has some potential, even if it feels I have seen this before
- Spooky caverns and forgotten tombs
- Great voice acting, but you can hear it’s Troy Baker. He sounds the same in all games.
Well, that’s all from me now, folks! See you next time.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 