Indiana Jones and the Great Circle really puts you in Indy's shoes ...

INDIANA Jones and the Great Circle is a brand-new adventure game where you take up the iconic whip and hat for yourself.

In many ways, this first-person globe-trotting adventure is a lot like one of the classic Indiana Jones films, as it ticks all the boxes of fun puzzles, strange characters, and grand mysteries.

The lack of blood gives a slapstick quality to what would have been some gory fightsCredit: MachineGamesAs in any other Indy adventure, you will do a lot of travelling around the globe, to the pyramids in Egypt, Rome, and moreCredit: MachineGames

You’re given free rein to explore regions like Vatican City or dig sites around Cairo that are absolutely full of stuff to discover.

While these maps appear small on the surface, they are densely packed with stuff to find. 

Around every corner, there’s a safe with a code hidden behind a puzzle,  or a unique mystery that requires turning statues or pulling the right lever in a bookshelf to uncover treasure.

It gives you the same thrill of being an explorer as the original Tomb Raider trilogy, where you’re rewarded for digging deeper with more puzzles, which is by far the most enjoyable part of the gameplay.

That’s not all there is to it, though, as there is a fair amount of stealth action. 

You can get around most areas of a map with the right disguises, but occasionally, you’ll need to sneak your way through, grabbing nearby objects to knock out guards and remain undetected.

These stealth sections are a lot of fun.

The lack of blood means that knocking out a Nazi with a wrench has a fun slapstick quality to it rather than anything too gory.

It looks surprisingly brutal when you smash someone in the face with a sledgehammer, but without gore, it feels cartoony, like that guard is going to wake up in half an hour with a Looney Tunes-style bump on his head, which matches Indy’s tone perfectly.

However, when things go wrong in these stealth sections, and you have to enter combat, the game starts to show some flaws.

The main problem is that melee combat is so easy that getting caught rarely has any consequences.

It’s no trouble to take out the two or three guards in your immediate area and go back to being fully hidden.

Conversely, if you get detected in an area with more than a few guards, you get overwhelmed and killed so quickly that you may as well not bother trying, there’s no middle ground where it’s a fun challenge.

However, this is an issue that doesn’t pop up much if you’re playing the game as intended.

The same goes for the lackluster gunplay, it’s fine because you’re not really supposed to use it.

What it does do is make the most of Indy’s fighting style.

You can perform quick blocks and counters that feel satisfying when the game puts you in a one-on-one boss fight.

Plus, you can pull classic tricks like using your whip to disarm or stun opponents.

Still, it’s the exploration where I think the game shines most.

Like the films, its sense of adventure is unmatched, only now I’m the one diving into ancient burial sites and solving long-forgotten riddles.

It strikes that perfect balance of careful thinking and reactive action that puts you in the mindset of the titular character better than any Indy game has managed before.

Score: 4/5