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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle |OT| Fortune and Glory, kid. Fortune and Glory.

DirtInUrEye

Member
I'm almost completely on maximum settings including PT and haven't noticed any LOD or texture streaming. If you have the horsepower it's quite easy to get a 60fps lock without FG in this game. Disable RT reflections (SSR and cube maps do a perfectly good job in this particular title) and turn down plant interactions to High is all it takes. All of the other PT effects will run well with these two changes.

If the lack of RT reflections really bothers you (it really shouldn't because they're essentially invisible in regular play), then simply turn them back on again after you have beaten the jungle prologue.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Z6T2uza.png
 

MacReady13

Member
Amazing news! - Hopefully the strong word of mouth turns this into a success for the studio.
A success in terms of what exactly? Wasn't this the most played game on gamepass? Is that not successful in today's gaming sphere? Since when was the last time sales meant fuck all to these companies??? Isn't Microsoft paying all their bills? They don't need sales, they just need subs to increase and apparently that is a metric of success...
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
It'll be woke! Wrong.

It'll be shit! Wrong.

It will be a sales disaster! Wrong.

Is there anything the bootlickers can get right about this game?

I miss when some were spamming that 'modern audiences' image and freaking out about Gina possibly being playable at some point in the game.

Good times. 🤭
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
unskippable cutscenes is ruining this for me
Normally I'd agree with you but other than the post-knockout "dragged away and now recover" loop in the prize-fighting ring I don't think I've had to sit through a cut scene twice. In a game like this, why would you want to skip learning about the Nephelim or a giant snake?

And BTW, FUCK THAT DAMNED SNAKE!!!
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I can't tell if this game is really great, or if I am so used to everything being complete shit lately that when a pretty good game comes out it feels like a breath of fresh air.

This and STALKER 2 both came as breaths of fresh air for me. Both a lot better than I anticipated going in.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
A success in terms of what exactly? Wasn't this the most played game on gamepass? Is that not successful in today's gaming sphere? Since when was the last time sales meant fuck all to these companies??? Isn't Microsoft paying all their bills? They don't need sales, they just need subs to increase and apparently that is a metric of success...
Girl Why Dont We Have Both GIF
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Like... I got to the last level of the game (probably) yesterday
Noah ark
And I didn't even launched the game today. Instead I am brainrotting twitch etc. 0 pull to finish this game. I will do it tomorrow... ah wait it's christmas... I was always finishing riddick on christmas eve as a teen. How fitting.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Finished it all up except the final relic puzzle which is gonna take a while. Loved it.

Some dodgy DEI 'woke' in there like Voss going on about "the insecure male" and at one point, right after you untie her from certain execution, she defiantly says "I don't need to be rescued!"....uh, dear, you DEFINITELY needed to be rescued!

But mostly it was all great stuff. I even watched all 30 min of credits and saw no Sweet Baby Inc, so either they contributed basically nothing or they were totally hidden in the depths of the credits and even the chef got a higher billing.

Can't wait for the DLC, not sure I really care for the giants much but we'll see.

My one BIG beef with the story, and it's with EVERY IJ movie pretty much (ToD aside i think) is
damned Indy was IRRELEVANT to the plot, yet again.Had he not bothered after Lucan took the cat mummy, Voss would have eventually gotten all the pieces, activated the Ark and....blasted himself into oblivion because he was not worthy? Im assuming the nephilim have an ability to harness the power in ways humans cant. Seems like the giants were overly cryptic as well, a little more candor and maybe indy would have hsmded over the stones?
 

raduque

Member
Its only pretty in static. Sadly the game has one of the worst popin/lod ive ever seen in my life. Its more distracting in the final hub where everything in front of you changes its lod. Its insane how the devs saw that and said yeah its fine. It drops the visuals of the game significantly. Ive never noticed this issue in doom games so machinegames fucked up.
I noticed that too when I'm looking for it. Don't really see it if i'm not looking for it, though.

Edit: my biggest problem with Indy is the same problems that almost every game suffers from - when you're walking with an NPC, you walk way faster than them. That bothers me more.
 
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RPS37

Member
I have to take back my statement.
I’m on Gizeh and I can see why its a solid 8.
A solid, AAA, 8.
I don’t even know why they let you have a gun.
I don’t feel comfortable using it like, ever.
Graphics are fantastic. Knocking fools out with random items is very entertaining.
Puzzles are good difficulty for me. I’ve had to cheat a little.
I love taking pictures of everything and getting paid.
It’s definitely got its hooks in me, all said.
 

The Cockatrice

I'm retarded?
lSGpsWe.jpeg


Finally done with it and everything in it. The gist is, it's a jack of all trades master of none type of game. The story was accurate to the movies, but not amazingly fantastic, it's a fine game based on a movie franchise which is rare. The gameplay is a mixed bag, the puzzles werre dogshit, as in they were made for babies, except for the final one which isnt difficult, but extremely boring and tedious. Stealth mechanics are sub-par and not worth going for it, instead its focus is getting a disguise and just walking the entire game mostly peacefully unless you get bored and decide to cause mayhem. Exploration was ok, but yeah, it's Ubisoft levels of collect-a-thon. Level design was fine for the most part, though it takes a nose dive in the final hub which i hated. Voice acting is fantastic for the male cast, shit for the female ones, great soundtrack. Visuals are a huge mixed bag, in cutscenes and some of the vistas and texture quality are amazing, however, the LOD is one of the worst things I've ever seen, character models outside the main ones are pretty average, overall a mixed bag. Honestly outside of a few highs, the game is another AAA safe product that doesnt take risks and the few moments which did, were way too short. Shame. Think I'll give it a 7.5ish or something.
 
The main menu changing to the current save you have is cool.

A tiny thing i don't like is that the map locations are written in cursive english which makes it almost unreadable for me.
 
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cormack12

Gold Member
Rolled credits last night. It's OK, I think it's slightly overlong and the cracks become really evident as you go on. Vatican and Gizeh were the only required hub areas in my opinion. The real highlight being Himalayas and Shanghai.

The last area is plain horrific to me as a player. And Gizeh was just annoying to traverse. Stamina gauge for sprinting, water everywhere, poor turning controls for the boat, invisible collision boxes on trees and rocks in water, mud slowing banks near every place you try and get to. Really, really got tedious. That last boss fight was awful, wtf were the animations on those kicks?

Overall probably give it a 7.5-8 after a really strong start. The scenery, lighting and environments were top tier though. Really good. The models and NPCs really inconsistent and up and down. The amount of bugs and glitches with quests as you get later into the game are something as well. The bizarre save points when unlocking books and collectibles can trip you up and right now, I can't even muster the energy to go and complete the extra's in Gizeh and Sokothai. I feel Sokothai being another hub and the makeup of the level killed all momentum - and I think Gizeh did the same. They should have stayed with more tighter hubs with less width e.g. The Vatican. The Fast Travel is OK but I dont think the immersion of finding signposts was worth omitting fast travel from map.

I've been playing Borderlands: TPS on PS5 Pro, so pop in was not really noticeable in this game lol.

I'm glad it seems to be doing well though. A lot of care, attention and love was put into the game and I respect the devs doing what they did. If they're going to franchise this out, then a few things to learn from but the 'Indi' formula is solid enough.
 
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Phobos Base

Member
Have to admit, on the final section and some of the irritations are showing through a bit. On three occasions I've had a stealth section ruined because an enemy blocks a doorway and simply refuses to move, the officer mechanic is annoying as well since from a distance they look the same as anyone else. I also seem to have an issue where skills are reset when travelling between areas. Rather nitpicky but the scene where they make him feed the snake felt a bit off to me - making someone confront their phobia whilst laughing about it makes you a pretty bad person.

Still a good game, but not sure where this showering of 10/10s has come from.
 

Fess

Member
About 35 hours played. No doubt my #1 this year, Machinegames has hit it out the park this time.

Oh and I can’t believe they hid one of the coolest segments in the game in a side mission
Lost in the Past
 
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DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I finished it and really liked it. Wasn't my GOTY, but is in my top 10. I liked Sukhothai a lot less than Gizeh and the Vatican. But still enjoyed it. Collected mostly everything, but not everything.
 
26 hrs in, going for final puzzle/story section in Giza.

Doing everything except collectables. Got achievements for doing all mysteries in both Giza and Vatican. Also all murals/steles.

I think the game works best when I play it like exploration game. Did about 80% of stuff by random exploration. Remaining stuff cleaned up using map. Stumbling upon side quests, steles etc, learning story about location is quite interesting.

I am finding game to be closer to something like Skyrim rather than Uncharted like this. Of course if anyone doing just the story sections can have Uncharted like experience as well.
 

Fess

Member
26 hrs in, going for final puzzle/story section in Giza.

Doing everything except collectables. Got achievements for doing all mysteries in both Giza and Vatican. Also all murals/steles.

I think the game works best when I play it like exploration game. Did about 80% of stuff by random exploration. Remaining stuff cleaned up using map. Stumbling upon side quests, steles etc, learning story about location is quite interesting.

I am finding game to be closer to something like Skyrim rather than Uncharted like this. Of course if anyone doing just the story sections can have Uncharted like experience as well.
Finished it last night. It took me 43 hours, nowhere near 100% but I did all mysteries and fieldwork I found at least.

Yeah I would agree that it plays almost like a Skyrim game, especially playing as a thief since it’s pushing you to use lots of stealth. Playing offensively with guns is super stressful so about half of it I deliberately chose to not use guns, even when picking up a gun I just flipped it and used as a melee weapon instead. But eventually I used guns in select locations where it didn’t pull in every soldier in the area.

The exploration is fantastic. Bethesda should totally consult Machinegames for both exploration (and puzzles!) for TESVI because I think the maps here are about as great as they can be, at least for a more densely stacked area. The way they do vertical maps with lots of underground areas with mysteries is like top 5 all time. Could even let Machinegames do their own fantasy The Elder Scrolls spin-off title. But making games takes time and I also wouldn’t mind more Indiana Jones titles, so maybe it’s better if they just keep on doing their thing with this IP, assuming they liked working in it.

Anyway as an Indiana Jones fan I couldn’t be happier over how this game turned out. It’s not perfect, no game is, but it’s so great where it matters that I chose to ignore the little I can find to complain about, like some minor jank. And for me as an Indy fan it’s pure fan service like how Astro Bot is for a PlayStation fan, it was just a total joy to play through from start to finish.

Oh and I can’t believe how great the voice acting was as well! I don’t get how they did it. Must’ve been tweaked with AI or something, no way that is only Troy Baker himself.

Visually this also goes up there to the top for me. About half of it I played without RT, looked so good even then. Then they did the path tracing update and fixed Frame Generation and I played the rest with path tracing at max. Just amazing! A technical marvel plus amazing art design. Can’t believe how great it looks when every bit fall in place with RT and lighting and art design. The way they add life and vegetation to every little corner of the game world is top of the industry quality.

I don’t know what more to add, besides this:

🔟

Game of the Year 2024
 
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Finished it last night. It took me 43 hours, nowhere near 100% but I did all mysteries and fieldwork I found at least.

Yeah I would agree that it plays almost like a Skyrim game, especially playing as a thief since it’s pushing you to use lots of stealth. Playing offensively with guns is super stressful so about half of it I deliberately chose to not use guns, even when picking up a gun I just flipped it and used as a melee weapon instead. But eventually I used guns in select locations where it didn’t pull in every soldier in the area.

The exploration is fantastic. Bethesda should totally consult Machinegames for both exploration (and puzzles!) for TESVI because I think the maps here are about as great as they can be, at least for a more densely stacked area. The way they do vertical maps with lots of underground areas with mysteries is like top 5 all time. Could even let Machinegames do their own fantasy The Elder Scrolls spin-off title. But making games takes time and I also wouldn’t mind more Indiana Jones titles, so maybe it’s better if they just keep on doing their thing with this IP, assuming they liked working in it.

Anyway as an Indiana Jones fan I couldn’t be happier over how this game turned out. It’s not perfect, no game is, but it’s so great where it matters that I chose to ignore the little I can find to complain about, like some minor jank. And for me as an Indy fan it’s pure fan service like how Astro Bot is for a PlayStation fan, it was just a total joy to play through from start to finish.

Oh and I can’t believe how great the voice acting was as well! I don’t get how they did it. Must’ve been tweaked with AI or something, no way that is only Troy Baker himself.

Visually this also goes up there to the top for me. About half of it I played without RT, looked so good even then. Then they did the path tracing update and fixed Frame Generation and I played the rest with path tracing at max. Just amazing! A technical marvel plus amazing art design. Can’t believe how great it looks when every bit fall in place with RT and lighting and art design. The way they add life and vegetation to every little corner of the game world is top of the industry quality.

I don’t know what more to add, besides this:

🔟

Game of the Year 2024
Am expecting a 40+ hrs runtime for me. That would be pretty good length IMO, what I expect.

I think level design is good in Bethesda rpgs as well. Am assuming fair bit of design info gets passed around within their camp.

Starfield with 10-15 biomes like this and same quality would be amazing. Hopefully they keep adding expansions, and they sell well enough to keep it going.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Finished it last night. It took me 43 hours, nowhere near 100% but I did all mysteries and fieldwork I found at least.

Yeah I would agree that it plays almost like a Skyrim game, especially playing as a thief since it’s pushing you to use lots of stealth. Playing offensively with guns is super stressful so about half of it I deliberately chose to not use guns, even when picking up a gun I just flipped it and used as a melee weapon instead. But eventually I used guns in select locations where it didn’t pull in every soldier in the area.

The exploration is fantastic. Bethesda should totally consult Machinegames for both exploration (and puzzles!) for TESVI because I think the maps here are about as great as they can be, at least for a more densely stacked area. The way they do vertical maps with lots of underground areas with mysteries is like top 5 all time. Could even let Machinegames do their own fantasy The Elder Scrolls spin-off title. But making games takes time and I also wouldn’t mind more Indiana Jones titles, so maybe it’s better if they just keep on doing their thing with this IP, assuming they liked working in it.

Anyway as an Indiana Jones fan I couldn’t be happier over how this game turned out. It’s not perfect, no game is, but it’s so great where it matters that I chose to ignore the little I can find to complain about, like some minor jank. And for me as an Indy fan it’s pure fan service like how Astro Bot is for a PlayStation fan, it was just a total joy to play through from start to finish.

Oh and I can’t believe how great the voice acting was as well! I don’t get how they did it. Must’ve been tweaked with AI or something, no way that is only Troy Baker himself.

Visually this also goes up there to the top for me. About half of it I played without RT, looked so good even then. Then they did the path tracing update and fixed Frame Generation and I played the rest with path tracing at max. Just amazing! A technical marvel plus amazing art design. Can’t believe how great it looks when every bit fall in place with RT and lighting and art design. The way they add life and vegetation to every little corner of the game world is top of the industry quality.

I don’t know what more to add, besides this:

🔟

Game of the Year 2024
I am playing it on puny XSX so no path tracing update (and some minor screen space GI pass issues in some areas and times where the LOD changes visibly in front of you… mostly shadows but lighting and Sometimes objects too), but I can say that any and all blemishes disappear. The whole is much much greater than the sum of its parts!

The game is definitely trying to nudge players, at the medium / default difficulty settings at least, towards more stealth and fist fights than using guns. Between the number of enemies and bullets per weapon (and the enemy accuracy when aiming + your own movement speed), trying to play it like a first person shooter will get you killed easily… then again it is quite realistic (if you play well and you setup your arsenal including dynamite 🧨 you can give yourself a great chance even with large groups of enemies though).

I know it is small but the sound effects when you punch enemies is just so Indy and so satisfying!

Troy Baker does the performance of a lifetime here but to be fair all voice actors put up an incredible performance. Everything is in realtime including cutscenes (where they allow minor camera movement to highlight that hehe) and this is a story and set of characters as engaging as Raiders of the Lost Ark easily. Some areas like The Vatican have sprawling 3D mazes (horizontally and vertically) set in an awe inspiring virtual tourist pleasing spot of the world. Overall I prefer it to Giza, but it is not to say that it looks bad at all.

I wish the XSX controller had haptics though, something is missing here in the way you control Indy to make it an 11/10 so to speak ;). Luckily in a few months, I hope this will be rectified as I can get to replay this game on my PS5 Pro too I hope. Bit of graphics improvement and hopefully a good DualSense implementation (punching and blocking, light tapping feedback depending on various materials as you walk, possible with the finesse of responses haptics feedback engines, as opposed to normal rumble, allow if they spend the time to implement it, etc..:)).

This is a game that can be played decently anywhere, even on Steam Deck and other handhelds (I hope it will get a Switch 2 port too) and a must play for Indiana Jones fans IMHO. Different genre but it is something I can recommend as another Indy movie as I normally do with Fate of Atlantis for example.
 

Fess

Member
Am expecting a 40+ hrs runtime for me. That would be pretty good length IMO, what I expect.

I think level design is good in Bethesda rpgs as well. Am assuming fair bit of design info gets passed around within their camp.

Starfield with 10-15 biomes like this and same quality would be amazing. Hopefully they keep adding expansions, and they sell well enough to keep it going.
Yeah the Bethesda rpg team should look at this to learn something on how to create cities and villages. Tightly packed smaller areas. And underground mysterious areas. If you’re still in Gizeh you’ve seen nothing yet. There is sooo much cool stuff happening throughout the game. I’ve got nearly 800 screenshots now lol. Keep playing! 🙂

Regarding Starfield I’d say it’s too big, too open, 10-15 areas for 1000 planets isn’t much, there is always going to be flat empty spaces. When I first heard about planet sized worlds and how they had found a way to do it I actually thought they had procedural generation to create cities on civilized planets, 100s of cities, villages. But it’s really one city on a planet at best, the rest is enemy outposts and small settlements and caves which can be cool but repeated too much.
It really was an impossible mission to fill up a whole universe.
But I see it as a high end No Man’s Sky with role playing, good combat and ship building. And from that perspective it’s great.
 

Fess

Member
I am playing it on puny XSX so no path tracing update (and some minor screen space GI pass issues in some areas and times where the LOD changes visibly in front of you… mostly shadows but lighting and Sometimes objects too), but I can say that any and all blemishes disappear. The whole is much much greater than the sum of its parts!

The game is definitely trying to nudge players, at the medium / default difficulty settings at least, towards more stealth and fist fights than using guns. Between the number of enemies and bullets per weapon (and the enemy accuracy when aiming + your own movement speed), trying to play it like a first person shooter will get you killed easily… then again it is quite realistic (if you play well and you setup your arsenal including dynamite 🧨 you can give yourself a great chance even with large groups of enemies though).

I know it is small but the sound effects when you punch enemies is just so Indy and so satisfying!

Troy Baker does the performance of a lifetime here but to be fair all voice actors put up an incredible performance. Everything is in realtime including cutscenes (where they allow minor camera movement to highlight that hehe) and this is a story and set of characters as engaging as Raiders of the Lost Ark easily. Some areas like The Vatican have sprawling 3D mazes (horizontally and vertically) set in an awe inspiring virtual tourist pleasing spot of the world. Overall I prefer it to Giza, but it is not to say that it looks bad at all.

I wish the XSX controller had haptics though, something is missing here in the way you control Indy to make it an 11/10 so to speak ;). Luckily in a few months, I hope this will be rectified as I can get to replay this game on my PS5 Pro too I hope. Bit of graphics improvement and hopefully a good DualSense implementation (punching and blocking, light tapping feedback depending on various materials as you walk, possible with the finesse of responses haptics feedback engines, as opposed to normal rumble, allow if they spend the time to implement it, etc..:)).

This is a game that can be played decently anywhere, even on Steam Deck and other handhelds (I hope it will get a Switch 2 port too) and a must play for Indiana Jones fans IMHO. Different genre but it is something I can recommend as another Indy movie as I normally do with Fate of Atlantis for example.
Haven’t played it on Xbox but I hear it’s running well and that’s the most important bit. And it looks great without path tracing too, one of the best looking games out there imo.
It’s actually super demanding on PC with path tracing, I ended up playing it on my regular desktop PC with a 4090, tried path tracing on the new 4080S couch PC first but when VRAM is above 16GB you have to lower several settings or the framerate absolutely tanks, it’s brutal. Some settings can be lowered without much visual stuff lost but I think this game could end up selling some 50-series cards soon…
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Haven’t played it on Xbox but I hear it’s running well and that’s the most important bit. And it looks great without path tracing too, one of the best looking games out there imo.
It’s actually super demanding on PC with path tracing, I ended up playing it on my regular desktop PC with a 4090, tried path tracing on the new 4080S couch PC first but when VRAM is above 16GB you have to lower several settings or the framerate absolutely tanks, it’s brutal. Some settings can be lowered without much visual stuff lost but I think this game could end up selling some 50-series cards soon…
I will probably create some short videos especially if I connect it with Twitch, but this is one of the artefacts you can notice in XSX:
 
Yeah the Bethesda rpg team should look at this to learn something on how to create cities and villages. Tightly packed smaller areas. And underground mysterious areas. If you’re still in Gizeh you’ve seen nothing yet. There is sooo much cool stuff happening throughout the game. I’ve got nearly 800 screenshots now lol. Keep playing! 🙂

Regarding Starfield I’d say it’s too big, too open, 10-15 areas for 1000 planets isn’t much, there is always going to be flat empty spaces. When I first heard about planet sized worlds and how they had found a way to do it I actually thought they had procedural generation to create cities on civilized planets, 100s of cities, villages. But it’s really one city on a planet at best, the rest is enemy outposts and small settlements and caves which can be cool but repeated too much.
It really was an impossible mission to fill up a whole universe.
But I see it as a high end No Man’s Sky with role playing, good combat and ship building. And from that perspective it’s great.
Its funny to me the company that started this race of bigger open worlds is now building its games with bite sized open worlds.

I think it makes sense and doesn’t get overwhelming as a player.
 
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