I suspect I might be in a minority here, but I can confidently say I didn’t use a single repair kit as I bumbled and faffed my way through MachineGames’ excellent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle late last year – mainly because I was so enamoured by the game’s ludicrous clobbering loop I couldn’t take two steps forward without hoovering up another handful of melee-focused bric-a-brac. So I very much appreciate that Indy’s latest update finally gives my never-diminishing stash of repair kits a purpose by letting me lob them at foes.
Besides that, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s Update 4 comes with a heap of tweaks and changes designed to further enhance its already excellent action, starting with two new Adventure Books that’ll provide Indy with some additional whip-focused benefits. Open Season, for instance, creates a temporary window after hitting enemies with a whip in which they’ll take increased damage from subsequent attacks. And with Sleight of Hand, Indy can pull an enemy’s weapon towards him after disarming them with the whip.
That brings us to the dozen or so quality of life improvements, touching on numerous areas of the game. There are new one-liners for Indy during fights, for instance, to provide a bit of extra vocal variety while punching Nazis and other miscreants, and Machine Games says Ray-traced Global Illumination has also been improved across all platforms “at no performance cost”.
Elsewhere, there’s now a timer around Indy’s health showing how long you’ll need to wait until enemies call off a search, and a number of UI elements and effects – specifically the HUD’s centre dot and “stealth” vignette while crouching – can now be toggled on or off. Additionally, the journal has seen some improvements while in its somewhat fiddly “lowered” state; you can see more of it, for starters, and it’s now possible to switch between local maps and level maps.
Moving on, there’s a new “Always Allow Skipping Cutscenes” option if you have absolutely no patience for cinematic chatter’; there are a couple off new tutorials; the menu for purchasing Adventure Books and map information booklets has been improved; the PC version now supports the PlayStation DualSense Wireless Controller for advanced haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, and PlayStation or Steam Deck controllers will now show up in the controller configuration menu on PC. And for details on its lenghty list of bug fixes, you’ll be wanting to go check out MachineGames’ patch notes.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s fourth major update is now live on PC and Xbox, and it seems reasonable to expect all its additions and improvements will feature in the PlayStation 5 version when it launches next Thursday, 17th April. And it is, of course, well worth picking up. “Smart, fun and so very Indiana Jones,” we wrote in our five star review, “The Great Circle is a stealth action tour de force that marks a bold new era for MachineGames” – and that was before we went on to name it Eurogamer’s game of the year in 2024.