I love Indiana Jones and The Great Circle but I’m sick of it acting like I’m stupid

INDIANA Jones is Xbox’s killer app of 2024, and people are rushing to play the part of the adventuring archaeologist.

While it’s only been out a few days, people are already digging in, and a few people have already finished it.

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The feedback is promising. People love flicking their whip and punching the bad guys while they explore various historic monuments.

While the overall experience is very fun, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t without its issues.

Allow me to go on a tangent for a minute about how people’s relationships with technology have evolved over the past decade.

Smartphones have changed the way society functions for better and for worse. People are always reachable and they are always entertained.

There are the obvious impacts, like people are often multitasking, scrolling their phones while they watch TV or movies.

But there are smaller changes to our behaviour that phones have caused that people may not have noticed.

Thanks to social media and short videos, people have become used to instant gratification and multiple simultaneous options to keep themselves entertained.

While people used to be happy to think puzzles through on their own, or grind and backtrack, modern gamers won’t put up with this ‘time-wasting’.

We want it all and we want it now, and that means that games have had to change to adjust to these modern tastes.

This is usually a good thing. It’s what has made features like auto-save standard, and added accessibility and quality-of-life options to games.

But some games take pleasing our dopamine-soaked brains too far, and I end up feeling disrespected.

Indiana Jones tips the scale from engaging to pandering, and there are two main things that frustrated me as I played.

The first is that the bad guys are savage, and even when you are trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, they chase you relentlessly.

They are easily dispatched thanks to Indy’s iron fists, and empty bottles left by the Vatican’s obvious drinking problem, but I don’t want to brawl every time I walk outside.

I think these moments are so frequent to make sure that you are never too far from an action sequence, but I’d rather be left in peace.

Personally, the far more damning problem is Gina, the companion you pick up a few hours into the game.

During cutscenes she is a fun and well-written character, but she notices as soon as you invade Indy’s head as she suddenly starts talking to you like you’re an idiot.

“Oh the gate just opened”, Gina cries out after you pull the lever and are already walking through the gate.

“It’s getting really hot in here”, Gina points out as you stand in a room engulfed in flames.

If you look at a puzzle for more than one second before you start working on it, she helpfully shouts out that it’s a puzzle and how to complete it.

The first few examples make her seem stupid but her puzzle-solving prowess shows she’s not. 

Instead, she points things out to you like a mother who wants her toddler to think he’s doing things himself.

But I’m not doing things myself. I’m not allowed to. Gina has blurted all the fun out of exploring before I get my chance.

I think the developers did this to cater to a modern gaming audience that can’t concentrate long enough to finish a TikTok.

MachineGames have oversteered directly into the ball pit and it’s a dampener on an otherwise excellent game.

If you want to read more about the game, check out our Indiana Jones and The Great Circle review.

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