So, last month I really wanted to get the new Genshin Impact cosmetics that you could only get if you launched the game on an Xbox, but I had just sold my Series X out of a desire to cut down on the number of plastic boxes under the TV.  So, I subscribed to GamePass Ultimate for a month which gave me the ability to launch Genshin via their cloud servers, and all was well.

Of course, paying Microsoft for a month of GPU JUST for this seemed kinda dumb.  So, I looked through their catalog of PC games and knocked out “Little Kitty, Big City” which had been on my radar for a little while.  It was pretty good, but I still felt like I needed to get a little more value for money.

Enter “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle”, a rare instance of a high-budget triple-A title that eschews the seemingly-mandatory online multiplayer and tacked-on GaaS elements of modern gaming in favor of giving you a solid single-player experience.

And it is, by the way, a very good experience and I firmly recommend it to any long-time fans of the movies.  Who are mostly, let’s face it, getting up in years and probably not super  likely to spend well upwards of 20 hours playing a game.

Like, the last decent “Indy” movie was 35 years ago.  If you’re reading this and just cringed, I’m sorry.  We’re old.

Self-pity aside, while I’m not sure whether Microsoft will ever make their money back on this, I have to give them some serious credit for the level of digital necromancy* on display here.  Digital Indy looks and SOUNDS like Harrison Ford in his prime, down to subtle mannerisms and intonations.

* Technically I realize Harrison Ford is still very much with us, and thus “necromancy” probably isn’t the right word.  I’m sticking with it.

Also, the plot – which starts with the theft of a seemingly minor object from a college museum, and naturally winds up dragging you all over the world – has all the pulp nonsense you would expect.  Like, of course you are going to be going from Rome to Egypt to the Himalayas and so on, and of course you are going to be fighting Italian Fascists and German Nazis the entire time and of course there is going to be some serious mystical stuff going down.  I fully expect any ’80s kid to be grinning like a madman through all of this.

The game’s structure works against it a little, in this regard.  While there are three levels that flow in a sort of linear rollercoaster  way, there are also three large and very open levels with subtests and exploration scattered all over.  The first couple of these were great, and I happily spent some hours really digging into them… but by the time I hit the third one I really wanted the story to be moving forward with a little more urgency.  Fortunately for anyone who, like me, started ignoring the side stuff at that point, you can always return to these levels after the end credits roll if you feel like cleaning them up.

Another thing that works against it, a bit, is the game’s combat.  This is very much a stealth and exploration game with lots of puzzles in it, and you can simply avoid most of the punchy punchy bits by finding the right disguise or dodging guards… but there are times where you’re going to be forced to bruise your knuckles a bit, and where it turns out that Indy has a bit of a glass jaw and the Other Guys have been hitting the gym, eating right and getting lots of sleep.  I did not do particularly well with these, but still managed to get through to the last boss with the combat difficulty pegged at “moderate”.

The last boss fight came very close to ruining most of the goodwill the game had built up to that point, and I was grateful for the option, after a dozen or so miserable failures, to go into the game options and turn on “auto parry on block” which allowed me to get through it .

I’ll probably feel much more forgiving about this after time has dulled the memory a bit.

Oh, there are firearms in the game as well.  Generally these are best avoided because the otherwise-fairly-lazy enemy AI is amazingly good at honing in on you as soon as you use one.

Besides, you’re not strictly limited to using your fists.  The game’s environments are littered with all sorts of things you can pick up and swing, and the bonk sound of whacking a Nazi with a frying pan is Deeply Satisfying.

I will say, however, that some of the media I’ve seen online where people take it upon themselves to kill Every Last Nazi in a level are… well, honestly they give moderately-serial-killer vibes.  Like, bro, I get it but at the same time like uh maybe take your murder down a notch.

Not like, too much.  Just a notch.

After that spate of complaining, I feel the need to also rave a bit about your companion in the game, because of course there is going to be a damsel in… well, generally not in distress, or at least not for very long at any given time.  I won’t spoil it too much but she’s 100% in the spirit of the best Indy companions and the banter between the two of them is, as they say, peak.

So to sum up.  Amazing game, combat a little frustrating at times, no idea how anyone thought spending probably a hundred million or more bucks on a masterpiece of Gen X nostalgia could ever be recouped but hopefully they make their money back somehow because I certainly appreciate their effort.

I think I have a week or so left on my GPU sub.  Maybe I’ll find another game to try.