Indiana Jones And The Great Circle – better than Dial of Destiny (Bethesda)
Bethesda and MachineGames seek fortune and glory in a big budget adaptation of Indiana Jones that plays as good as it looks.
It might not be Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, but Indiana Jones has had a fairly profound influence on video game history. Even beyond Tomb Raider and Uncharted, any game with stolen idols and ancient temples will inevitably tip its fedora to Dr Henry Jones, Jr.
Unless you count the Lego games, there’s never been a genuinely good action title based on his adventures but the two point ‘n’ click LucasArts games from the early 90s were both excellent. A little too good, you might say, since 1992’s Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis is considerably more entertaining than either of the two most recent movies.
In fact, it’s easy to argue that nothing Indiana Jones related has been any good for at least 30 years now. After playing around three hours of MachineGames’ latest game though we can happily confirm that that curse has been broken and The Great Circle is both a loving adaptation of the film series and a great game in its own right.
As has been increasingly obvious from the trailers so far, The Great Circle works very much in the same mould as all of MachineGames’ other work. Even back when most of the team worked at Starbreeze, making The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and The Darkness, they’ve always specialised in first person shooters with a strong narrative element and peppered with small open world areas where you can talk to characters and pick up side quests between main missions.
Their two Wolfenstein games worked like that too and The Great Circle is no different. We played three separate sections, starting right at the beginning where Indy interrupts a nighttime intruder who steals a seemingly worthless artefact. Marshall College looks exactly like it does in the film and while the impersonation of Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott died some years ago) is merely okay we’re still hugely impressed by Troy Baker’s version of Indiana Jones.
It’s not that it’s a perfect impression but Harrison Ford has such a distinctive voice, and Baker has so much dialogue to perform, that it’s amazing how quickly you accept them as one and the same. Many have balked at the idea that the game is first person but that’s MachineGames’ shtick and we’re not going to fault them for it. The game does switch to third person when doing things like climbing ladders though and there are a lot of cut scenes… a lot. But that’s essential to ensuring The Great Circle doesn’t become a mindless arcade game.
Naturally, the college section is a simple tutorial, introducing you to the basics of combat. They’re very basic indeed, if you forget to use your whip – which we constantly did – but hearing the ground-shaking thump of the …read more
Source:: Metro
