Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks like the best series adaptation since Temple of Doom on the Atari ST over 30 years ago
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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. As far as addendums to silver screen dynasties go, you’ve likely heard better. The Great Circle doesn’t have the same oomph as The Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, or even The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But when it comes to MachineGames and Bethesda’s long-awaited video game adaptation, even a whimsical strapline wasa lotmore information than we had before the latestXbox Developer Direct.
More than that, though, we got to see the upcoming first-person single-player adventure game in motion, and, wow, does it look good. I say this as an unabashed Indy fan who spent their formative years watching the original Raiders of the Lost Ark trilogy over and over and over again, but I was totally taken by all three minutes and six seconds of theIndiana Jones and the Great Circlegameplaytrailer– so much so, that I already reckon it’s the best adaptation of the whip-lashing looter’s long lineage in over 30 years.
Whip it good
Through all of this, it feels like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle understands the essence of its source material, leaning into the sense of adventure that brought this character to life 40-odd years ago, and has retained his place as a household name ever since. The likes of Tomb Raider and Uncharted have long aped the formula with great success, but it feels like the Great Circle stands tofinallydo the wise-cracking, crypt-plundering protagonist justice.
His Lego ventures aside, I’d argue that there hasn’t been a decent Indiana Jones game since the 1989 Temple of Doom MS-DOS incarnation, which was itself a desktop port of Atari’s 1985 arcade game. Despite its crude eight-directional controls and a plot that barely reflected any of its cinematic inspiration, Temple of Doom had some of the most satisfying platforming mechanics of its time. I played on the Atari ST in the early ’90s, and can still recall the joy of lashing Indy’s whip at bats, snakes and ghouls, throwing myself over chasms, and battering down mine shafts in the back of a cart less reliable than a wonky shopping trolley.
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