As expected, you play as the titular character: the world-famous archeologist Indiana Jones. Set after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom (but before The Last Crusade), the game sees our protagonist an already established and renowned figure in the world of archeology. Soon, for reasons better left undisclosed, Indy finds himself looking for clues about the fabled Golden Circle, a myth that, in true Indiana Jones fashion, is being sought after by Indy’s quintessential enemies: the Nazis. His bid to stop them will see our hero visit the Vatican, Egypt and Siam (Thailand) as major locations, with the Himalayas, Shanghai and Iraq serving as comparatively minor backdrops. Nothing says “Indiana Jones” as an epic spanning continents, biomes and cultures, and the Golden Circle understands this by delivering an experience unlike any other: for all of these locations are open worlds you can freely traverse and explore at your pace and leisure (and worry not if you happened to miss a collectible: all of these locations can be returned to during and after the events of the game!).

Quantity over quality, needless to say, would amount to little, were it not for the attention and dedication to detail that the developers have poured into this game. Seldom have I felt this transported to the 1930s like this; as someone who holds a master’s degree in History (and whose thesis was on Nazi propaganda), I know a thing or two about Nazi and Fascist political aesthetics. Take the Vatican in-game, for example: Fascist paraphernalia is ubiquitous: you can find posters exalting the German-Italian alliance, posters venerating Il Duce, and posters paying homage to the nation. In preparation for an upcoming speech a massive scenario is being built with Fasci littori at the sides; in front of its scaffoldings, there are soldiers standing at attention, while a captain inspects them. Beyond these parading troops, other soldiers are napping in their tents, while some others are fighting it out in brawling pits. Yet, in keeping faithful with history, there are many who resent the fascists and quietly whisper behind the Blackshirt’s backs, and none more so than the priests and nuns in the Vatican who find themselves at odds with the presence of Italian troops in their soil. Being there makes history feel organic and alive in a way that no game has ever accomplished. Even menial details, such as Wehrmacht helmets having the German tricolour distinctive on the sides is in line with their design in the late 1930s.

Moreover, as someone who speaks fluent German and Italian, I appreciate how much care has gone into language in this game. Take for example the use of the Italian Voi formal form in the game. Voi was preferred by Fascist Italy (and made mandatory in 1938) over Lei which was considered French and effeminate by the Fascist regime. Lei is standard Italian and commonplace in the peninsula today and virtually no contemporary Italian would think of formally addressing an individual as Voi instead of Lei. That the team behind historical accuracy carefully pointed this out and wrote dialogue accordingly once again speaks of the attention to quality and detail from the studio behind the game.

All of these details, however, would not amount for much if the gameplay were not to be on par with their quality, but in this game every feature seems to outdo the other in sheer brilliance. Take combat for instance; it is seamlessness incarnate. While Indy is remarkably adept at throwing punches, he is better off picking a random object from the wide assortment of items in the game to use as a makeshift weapon: from bottles and brooms, to candles, torches, guitars and even a violin (or its fiddle, for that matter!) Indy has a vast array of improvised weapons to choose from, and these are but a fraction of everything that you have at your disposal. Not only that, but the Great Circle is the first game I know of where you can actually switch to using your firearm’s butt as a melee weapon on the fly. I am not talking about some clumsy meleeing with your weapon, I am talking about grabbing it upside down and using its butt as a veritable hammer to smash open upon an enemy’s head.

Speaking of firearms, shooting makes for interesting encounters, although it is often best avoided: drawing a gun invariably ups the ante and many enemies that would have otherwise been content with solving things with some old-fashioned fist fighting will proceed to pull out their weapons if they see you draw yours. Moreover, a gunshot will attract enemies from greater distances than a fistfight would, which means that unless you would rather go for all-out war, it is often ill-advised to start a gunfight at whim.

There is also the absolutely optional (albeit devishly enjoyable) stealth component of the game: sure enough, you can skulk in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike and incapacitate an enemy from behind, but you can also disguise yourself as a priest, a blackshirt, a digger in Egypt, a Wehrmacht soldier or a soldier of the Regio esercito, infiltrating enemy lines with ease, much as Indy did in the movies. Funnily enough, the interactions with random NPCs loittering about change significantly depending on what disguise you are donning, further contributing to the immersion factor of the game.

Needless to say, it would not be an Indiana Jones game if we did not spend a significant portion of the game in abandoned caves, tombs and temples looking for forgotten artifacts. Virtually all of these locations (save for an optional temple in the last portion of the game) are just the perfect size: not short enough that you feel disappointed, nor too large and overstretched that you feel overwhelmed. Exploration invariably entails puzzles, which are, inevitably, a vital part of an Indiana Jones game, and MachineGames got them right to the last one: they are difficult enough for you to spend some minutes figuring them out, but not hard enough that you have to resort to online help to advance the story. Devs, essentially, got difficulty absolutely right.

For all the brilliance of its gameplay, the game would not be the masterpiece it is were it not for the marvellous story and the actors impersonating the characters. Every dialogue, from Indy’s characteristic defiant bravado, to Gina Lombardi’s cheerfully witty quips and Emmerich Voss’ sadistic remarks make this an unforgettable journey unlike any other.

Finally, there is something I cannot put into words which is the fun factor. I am in my 30s so rarely do I experience fun in videogames anymore, yet for the first time in years, I felt playing a game was fun. Fighting is fun, exploring is fun, stealth is fun, literally everything is fun! And that is something to be commended. Moreover, as a die-hard Indy fan, I grew up with Fate of Atlantis and The Last Crusade, having played Infernal Machine and Emperor's Tomb afterwards, and I can say without a doubt this game is not only better than any of those, but its story is on par with Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade films, outclassing the other three with ease.

It has been five years since I last bestowed a 10/10 upon a game, but this game more than deserves it. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not only a magnificent game; it is one of those games that, without so much of a warning, unapologetically and unabashedly come and redefine a generation. This is one of gaming’s finest hours and you would do yourself a favour in grabbing this gem.

10/10

TL;DR: Pros: Majestic in every respect. Cons: it actually ends.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a heart-wrenching tale of man and its humanity like none other. Yet while its story is undoubtedly beautiful, its deliverance is marred by some serious narrative pacing. Moreover, it is the least friendly game for completionists.

Set in 1899, you play as Arthur Morgan, a member of the infamous Van der Linde gang, a group of outlaws on the run from the law after having tried and failed to execute a raid somewhere called Blackwater. The group is picking up the pieces from this botched enterprise and are struggling to regroup and survive in the aftermath of this debacle. From there, our (anti)hero helps the group pick up the pieces whilst making sure that they always stay one step ahead of the unflinching pursuit of the Pinkertons, the United States' foremost private detective agency in the waning years of the 19th Century.

And boy, is the timeframe important: never will you feel late 19th century America come to life in such vibrant, believable fashion: rural pastures give way to iron trains traversing the landscape as horses rush from the hooting and whistling of the machine while at the station a kid standing on an overturned crate tries to sell the morning news. It is a tale of tradition clashing with modernity, of the old meeting the new and the reckoning of men whose era is brought to an end and must either come to terms with it or be swallowed by the incoming tide of change. While the states in the game are but fictionalised renditions of the American Midwest and the American South – portraying their very own Louisiana, New Mexico, Kansas, etc. – the game feels alive as if it were drawing upon real life places and material by going the extra mile in depicting what turn of the century America must have looked like. Thus, you come across of homeless Civil War veterans asking for money, an eugenics bigot pushing his racist agenda in the streets of Saint Denis (the game’s New Orleans), women struggling for the right to vote and even the Ku Klux Klan championing the Lost Cause in the woods at night. The game world feels so much alive that rather than feeling that you steer it, you feel as if you are tagging along on a ride over which you do not exert real control over. It is beautiful because it feels real. That all of this is conveyed through beautiful graphics and a masterful score – not to speak of the best voice acting in arguably a decade – makes the experience absolutely wholesome.

For all its merits, the game is not without its flaws: while its story telling capacities are top-notch, the game, simply put, can be excruciatingly boring at times, and it could seriously use some fine tuning of its pace. The length of the game is - simply put - ridiculous, bordering on the egregious. I clocked nearly 150 hours upon finishing the epilogue, and that without seeking to 100% the game. There are heaps of collectibles missing, so it is mostly the main story plus side quests. Furthermore, I think the story could have been better conveyed had the game done away with some of the subplots.

Yet for me, the worst flaw in the entire game is the game's random encounters. The game boasts arguably dozens, if not hundreds of random encounters that pop up in your travels, which range from scary assailants in the swamps, kidnappers on the highway, bounty hunters and fleeing prisoners to all kinds of things that will require your intervention. The problem is that they usually happen out of nowhere and how they do not give you enough time to react, meaning that you often make the wrong choice, forcing yourself to either live with the consequences of your (in)action or boot up a previous savegame from who knows when. I am one of those gamers who wants to have complete and absolute control over what happens in the game, and I just cannot stand when things escape my control. Thus, I wasted hours upon hours of my time reloading older savegames because of things like coming across some train robbers killing some hapless hostages despite my best efforts to save them. At least Rockstar should give us an autosave option before each encoutner or the option to disable them entirely. There is also the fact that some missions are missable and the game does not tell you about it, with some of these even showing up at certain times of day. All of these detract from the game's overall pacing. These things combined make this game an utter nightmare for completionists and especially for perfectionists.

Moreover, while the gunplay is arguably the best you will see in a long while, the healing and replenishment dynamics feel awkward, and the game’s tutorial is not friendly enough to explain these. Simply put, you have three different stats: health, stamina and dead eye. Health, as expected, is how much punishment you can take before going out; stamina measures how much you can run before needing to rest and dead eye reflects how long can you trigger the eponymous shooting mode that lets you gun down your opponents in a slow-motion volley. These stats are themselves divided in two layers: the “normal” bar, if you will, and the core: the normal bar is in a way the first to get depleted, representing menial wounds and tiredness, for example, while the core represents your overall fitness in said stat. If your health core is full, it means you have been eating well, which in turn means that if you take hits, your bar will replenish over time at the expense of your core. Now, if your core is low and your bar is depleted in a fight, your core will bear the burden of the hits your take, and if the health core is depleted, you die. The same applies for stamina: you have to watch out that the core is routinely filled, otherwise you might find yourself in a tight spot where your stamina will not replenish because your core is depleted.

Now, this mechanic seems straightforward enough, but the game has you balance all of these by providing you with items that boost some of these while draining some of the other, meaning that in order for you to replenish your dead eye you have to smoke some cigars, which in turn lower your stamina core (but not your bar!), so now you have to eat something that specifically restores your stamina core - remember, it has to be something that restores the core; if it just fortifies the stat, it will not replenish it- such as baked beans, to restore it. There is nothing as mood-killing as having to do an on-the-fly math on what should you eat and in which order just to fill a slow-motion gauge. Furthermore, nothing kills immersion as smoking two packets of cigarettes, downing a bottle of bourbon and eating two croissants in the middle of a fight, as bullets wheeze by. Having a generic category for each stat and some straightforward medicine would have been better, instead of this half-baked system that never ends up feeling right.

All in all, this is a tough game to rate. If you are a casual player, then this is a must; arguably an 8.5/10 (the healing mechanics and the story's pacing barring it from a 10/10). If, however, you are a completionist (or worse, a perfectionist like me), then this game is tantamount to excruciating pain. Probably something along the lines of a 3/10 because of the missable content and the random encounters about which you often have little warning beforehand.

TL;DR: Game is great, but not for everyone. Casual gamers will rejoice at the graphics, music, and the beautiful story, even if it could have used being shorter and with more straightforward combat mechanics. Completionists, however, will find this game to be a headache like no other. I rate this game 8.5/10 for the former group, 3/10 for the latter.