Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has finally landed on PS5, after a brief period of Xbox, PC exclusivity. We’ve been keen to get our hands on the latest from MachineGames, the team behind the Wolfenstein series, and now with DualSense haptics and even a PS5 Pro enhanced version, PS5 is the best place to experience this whip-cracking treasure hunt.

Taking place after Raiders of the Lost Ark but before The Last Crusade, this latest Indy romp sees everyone’s favourite archaeologist venture off on another globe-trotting adventure, after an ancient Cat Mummy artefact is stolen from his college.

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It’s a globe-trotting tale that sees you explore the secrets of the Vatican City and tombs beneath the Pyramids of Giza. It’s an incredibly fun story that is in no way original, but fits snugly into the Indiana Jones mythos.

If you’re a fan of the Indy pentology, then you’ll find plenty of nods, references, and straight up replicas of scenes and locations from the main films. It’s clear that MachineGames has a lot of love and respect for this franchise, and it brings it to life fantastically through graphics, sound design, writing, and most importantly its tone and atmosphere.

At the heart of all that is Troy Baker’s performance as Indiana Jones. When we first heard the game would feature Harrison Ford’s likeness with Baker filling in for the vocal work, we were sceptical. However, it takes barely a few minutes before you'll be in complete awe of Baker’s performance here.

Whether it is the cheeky remarks, the wry smile in the performance capture, or the inflection in his vocals, Baker has that Ford impression locked down. Along with the writing and the pin-point facial capture — there’s no uncanny valley here — you’ll quickly forget that it isn’t Ford revisiting the role once more.

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It helps too that Baker has a fantastic support cast to back him up, with Alessandra Mastronardi as Indy’s companion Gina Lombardi and Marios Gavrilis as the nefarious Emmerich Voss. Everyone is evidently on the same page when it comes to nailing that old-school blockbuster feel.

That old-school blockbuster feel carries into the story too, which is fanatical about secret passageways, ancient myths, and expansive mysteries. It has an infectious sense of discovery as you're frequently exploring tombs that haven't been touched in thousands of years, and it really captures that in the visuals. It's central mystery kept us hooked the whole time and we think it takes the story to some really cool and unexpected places.

Speaking of unexpected, a lot of people were surprised that the game was donning a first-person perspective when it was first announced. No one is asking MachineGames to make a third-person game, but certainly Indiana Jones felt more suited to that perspective — perhaps we’ve just played too much Uncharted.

However, from its killer opener, MachineGames showcases exactly why the game works in first-person. The Great Circle revels in all the tiny little details of its environments, from the shadows cast on ancient tomb walls to the expansive vistas of its many settings. It’s incredibly cinematic, and there’s even a letterboxed aspect ratio available for the purists out there.

It wants you to get up close and personal, and that’s across exploration, puzzle solving, and even combat. Seeing the grimaces across the bruised faces of Nazis you’re punching is impressive all the way through from a visual perspective.

Interestingly the game briefly switches to third-person when you grab a ledge, swing from your bullwhip, or scurry though small spaces. Clearly the team still wanted to get that iconic look into the game as much as possible, although we don’t really think it was necessary.

The switches, more than anything, just stall the smooth feel to gameplay, which is brilliantly realised through simplistic control and stellar animations. The game even showcases that iconic silhouette regularly with cast shadows, so switching perspective just feels like a way to appease the first-person naysayers.

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Despite its fine tuning, we do think the gameplay is the most shallow aspect of The Great Circle. It’s deliberately approachable, and it’s often showing you enough cool stuff that the basic gameplay loop never ruins the experience, but it also never quite satisfies.

Enemy AI will take an age to spot you, and even when they do start to investigate, they’ll very quickly forget all about it. That being said, once the sneaky jig is up, it’ll be a swift grave for Indy. More than two enemies can become too much to handle in a fist fight, and when bullets start flying just a couple of hits will take you out.

However, especially towards the end of the game, we very rarely failed stealth encounters, as we silently smashed heads in. We would leave a trail of knocked out Nazis, and despite the ability to carry and effectively hide bodies, we stopped bothering because no one ever seemed to spot them. With a note of immersive sim about it, it’s a shame that The Great Circle’s stealth and primary gameplay loop feel so rudimentary.

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However, to offset its disappointing gameplay, what surprised us more than anything across its roughly 15 hour campaign, were the more open levels. There are a handful of fully explorable locations in the game like the aforementioned Vatican City or the dense Sukhothai jungle.

These can be the worst parts of a traditionally linear game, but The Great Circle’s open levels are so densely packed with secrets, collectibles, and even full on side missions, that you'll have a blast exploring them.

The side missions in particular are really worth your time. To us they felt like borderline mandatory additions to the main campaign, rather than pointless little side-adventures. They would often give more insight to the supporting cast, and fill in some of the blanks to the main story.

To quickly touch upon the PS5-ness of this edition of the game, the DualSense haptics are excellent, not just giving a heft to Indy’s crunchy punches and whip cracks, but even amplifying the cutscenes.

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The game runs at a locked 60fps on base PS5 and has ray-tracing on both PS5 and PS5 Pro versions. The Pro version in particular is especially impressive with native 4K and ray-tracing. During our time with the game we experienced no frame-rate drops, zero crashes, and only one brief visual bug, which we suspect will be ironed for launch.

It's a technical feat on both versions, and thankfully so, as it really brings the whole package together. Each of its levels are brought to life with stunning detail, and you'll have fun simply taking it all in, especially in the more open levels. The lighting — especially in the darker tombs — is especially impressive. It's a real looker on PS5, and even more so on PS5 Pro.

Conclusion

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is just good old fashioned fun. Its simplistic gameplay lets it down a little, but with vibrant environments brought to life with stunning detail, excellent writing and performances across the board, and a fun globe-trotting Indy adventure that nails the tone and feel of the film series, we had a blast from start to finish. If you’ve been holding off from playing The Great Circle, then now is the time. The PS5 takes an already brilliant adventure and makes it even better.

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