Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is truly the Indiana Jones experience we've all been waiting for. It perfectly captures the essence of the original movies and, in my opinion, stands neck-and-neck with them as the definitive Indiana Jones experience.

The story being told here is mysterious and unique, taking you to cool locations around the world and introducing some truly fun characters. The presentation of it all is superb, with music so fitting you'd think John Williams himself came back for this game, and movie-like cutscenes and performances from the actors that are really entertaining to watch (Voss is a notable standout for me, and Troy Baker's Indy is truly a delight to listen to). Environments are gorgeous and crafted with painstaking detail. You can tell that this game really is a labour of love for the franchise.

In terms of the gameplay, I think Machine Games did the best job they could for this type of game, but it wasn't anything I was blown away by. Hand-to-hand combat is satisfying if a bit simple. Using firearms is serviceable but understandably not encouraged. Using your camera to take pictures to get adventure points to spend on skills, which are unlocked by books you pick up, is a neat way to progress. The linear dungeons are short and sweet, and the puzzles within are quite easy to solve. Hunting for collectibles can get a little bit tiring, retreading the same environments because you aren't able to view all collectible types at once on the map, but it does feel rewarding to find secret locations and access new areas with different disguises. It's all just pretty good.

However, while I respect the vision the devs had with the open world-ish structure and the freedom it affords the player, I feel like I would have enjoyed this game more if it was more of an Uncharted-like linear experience. So much of the side stuff is actually critical to the main story, and I can't imagine not doing it. But my main complaint with the open-world structure is that it just feels a bit too formulaic, in that you go to such different locations in the world, but they all have the same activities (e.g., each map has an underground boxing ring for which you need an enemy soldier disguise to get in, each map has the same type of collectibles and "vendors" which sell the same items, etc.). The way that these locations were structured dampened my curiosity and drive to explore, because there wasn't much left to surprise me with. On the flipside, this open world structure made me more excited to play the linear, set-piece stuff, which is admittedly pretty awesome.

While I enjoyed the game overall, there were a bunch of small quality of life issues that soured my experience a bit. I ran into a bug where I couldn't move at all, and I fixed it by dodging backwards until I could pick up an item, which made me able to move again (I shudder to think what I would have done if that item wasn't there). The checkpoint system is honestly a little baffling, as you can't manually save the game, but the times the game auto saves are unpredictable and you could easily lose a bunch of progress. Near the end of the game, I was unable to pick up a collectible, preventing me from getting 100% completion. There were also a bunch of instances of voice lines overlapping, cutting out, and the same ones repeating over and over again.

Still, I enjoyed my time with this game and I'm really happy it was made because it reminds us how video games can elevate movies like no other medium can.

I have played about 35 hours at launch with the Ubisoft + subscription. I acknowledge that there are a number of updates coming that would address a lot of the major complaints about the gameplay, some of which appear in my review below. However, in my opinion, this game is fundamentally flawed and extremely disappointing, and nothing would ever convince me to come back. Ubisoft should just move on.

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I am so tired of Ubisoft open world games.

I am a big fan of Star Wars, so the idea of playing as a scoundrel visiting iconic locations from the Star Wars franchise and interacting with legendary criminal syndicates seemed appealing to me. Also, given that Ubisoft Massive was making this game, I was expecting a bit of innovation when comparing to other Ubisoft open world games. This could not be further from the truth. EVERYTHING in this game could've been a lot better than it ended up being, and I was left extremely disappointed.

The open world stuff is what you'd expect from a Ubisoft game: question marks all around you, tons of useless gear/collectibles that is all designed to waste your time, and an overabundance of fetch quests. The single noteworthy thing I can mention about the exploration is that question marks now show up when you're near the location as opposed to always being on the map, but it's all still functionally the same to me when the content of those question marks is not significant or interesting. I have been clicking the right stick so much to pick up random gear lying around that my thumb began to hurt, and I still don't know if I ever used that gear to upgrade anything.

The gameplay itself is surprisingly bad for a game studio with a pedigree like Massive's: combat is reduced to shooting with one blaster pistol with various firing modes, but overheats every few shots so you have that cooldown mechanic. There is no snap to cover or anything like that, and the gun just doesn't feel great to shoot, with poor feedback when your shots hit enemies. Of course, there are other weapons you can pick up from enemies, but they become unusable after a few shots so you have to scrap them (yep, that makes sense in the Star Wars universe!). A lot of people complain about the forced nature of the stealth, and how getting caught would trigger a fail state. I personally didn't mind this much, because it was finally a case of this game taking an explicit and bold direction in how it should be played. Shame it sucks though, as it is very one-dimensional, providing you with very few tools to help you sneak around enemies.

The story is pretty much non-existent until the last hour of the game. My favourite YouTuber Skill Up summed it up perfectly when he said that this game prioritizes structure over storytelling. The narrative never has a chance to take off because Ubisoft wants you riding around performing menial tasks and collecting useless stuff on 4 different planets (only one of which appears in the original and prequel trilogies, btw). Aside from one character I liked, characters don't have any interesting depth to them (including the lead) and they barely interact with each other. The main villain barely appears in the whole game and I can't help but feel that the talented actors that gave these characters their performances were absolutely wasted with the classic Ubisoft writing.

And as always, nothing actually matters. A huge selling point of this game is the syndicates and the need to constantly balance your reputation between them all, but.... why? If I have a horrible reputation with the Hutts for example, I do a few contracts for them and I'm back up in the "Excellent" reputation, sometimes without even needing to affect the reputation of a rival syndicate. And what does that get me? An "exclusive" set of gear that looks like someone threw up on a jacket and some pants, and better prices from merchants so I can buy some random resource, of which I need 10 to upgrade the shields of a ship I rarely even fly around in? There's no incentive for me to stay in the "Excellent" range of any given syndicate, because I've already unlocked anything meaningful that they could ever give me, and there's very little of that in this game. This afterthought of a syndicate system is even more insulting when you consider that your allegiance affects literally only one cutscene near the end of the game, but the ending remains the same.

In terms of visuals and performance, I was at first stunned by how detailed the environments were, and how raytracing looks. Populated areas felt dense, lived in, and bustling with so many different NPCs. I really felt immersed and that I was finally living my Star Wars fantasy. Then I noticed how horrible the lipsync and facial animations were, how the same alien species kept reappearing despite the rich lore of the Star Wars franchise. Then the graphical glitches and bugs kicked in - this intense flickering that would appear in bright areas, and textures that would constantly pop in and alternate between different resolutions. I went from thinking that this game was one of the best looking this year, to barely managing to stomach it.

The only thing that kept me going was the next new area or story beat, but it all ended up being laughably boring and mediocre. Funny enough, the moment I abandoned all hope that this game would get good is when I finally got inside Jabba's Palace: there were about 5 NPCs in the main throne room all just awkwardly standing around waiting to be talked to, there was no music whatsoever, and there was a cheap easter egg of Han Solo in carbonite to appease the fans. This perfectly encapsulates what this game meant to me. The hollow tagline of this being the "first ever open world Star Wars game" prompted all sorts of red flags in my mind when I heard it back when this game was announced, and I was sad to see that I was right to be skeptical.