Game of the Month: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

2024 was a fantastic year in gaming, and December is closing up with a bang.  There are few big releases that I feel could have been a contender for our MegaDads Game of the Month, but most of the hype is coming down to a clear winner:  Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.  

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first-person action-adventure game developed by MachineGames and published by Bethesda.  It brings the archaeologist Indiana Jones back to 1937 (within the timeline of the original trilogy) where he is trying to recover a stolen artifact and fight against various groups that are attempting to claim a power related to the Great Circle.  The Great Circle is a series of locations that form a perfect circle around the globe and hold some kind of unknown power, which means the adventure will take Indy to locations such as Egypt, Thailand, and the Himalayas. The casting, the development team and the story all show this to be an adventure on par with the movies.

Much like many other people out there, when Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was announced, I had expected that this game would be a third person action-adventure game much like Uncharted or Tomb Raider.  I had some reservations when seeing the initial coverage of the first-person aspect of the game, mostly: How is using the whip going to work in first-person?  Will it be gimmicky and clunky, or will it be the star of the arsenal?  Knowing that Bethesda and MachineGames are behind this game gives me some comfort, since they are masters of the art of immersive first-person games. 

Personally, I’m looking forward to this gaming experience of becoming Indiana Jones: exploring archaeological sites and digging up clues to the overarching story of the Great Circle, writing them down in his journal so that he can reference them after the bad guys have supposedly trapped him in a bad situation, and then knocking a few heads with his fists on his way out with those trademark punch sound effects.  …You just made them in your head after reading that, didn’t you?  I have great expectations that the first-person aspect is going to enhance that feeling, instead of making me feel like I’m playing an Uncharted clone.  

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle launches on Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass and PC on December 9.