Having played Indiana Jones and the Golden Circle on PC for review in late 2024, I’m well-acquainted with the twists, turns, secrets, and nooks of the game. I’ve also been very excited to play the game again with my family in our living room, so you’d better believe when I learned Xbox Game Studios would be letting this one slip over to the PlayStation side, I was watching for that date like a hawk. Here in April 2025, it’s finally arriving on PlayStaiton 5, and it’s made its PS5 debut in suitably stellar fashion, even adding a few little wrinkles that are unique to the platform.
A well-performing professor
There isn’t a lot of new ground to tread as far as what Indiana Jones and the Great Circles does on a PS5. If you read my December 2024 review of it here at Shacknews, pretty much all points still apply, which is hardly a bad thing (minus the gunplay that I still wish had more impact). As far as I could tell in my return to locations like the jungles of South America, the secretive halls of the Vatican, and the Pyramid grounds of Giza, Egypt, all beauty and functionality was in working order, and even a little more so since I last poked my head in, since MachineGames and Bethesda would go on to improve ray-tracing features and performance in post-launch patches.
I think one of the few things worth addressing is that it was a little difficult to correct color and clarity that worked in both bright and dark scenes in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. This game has a lot of dark sections where it’s just hard to see anything without tweaking the settings a bit. If I bumped brightness to where it felt like I could play dark spots appropriately, then things like Indy’s hair looked washed out in the lit sections. It was hard to pin down a happy medium and I ultimately just ended up settling on something that felt the least noticeably off.
I also can’t help but notice that while this game once again has Streamer Mode to help content creators circumvent getting copyright claimed in their videos over its licensed music, the mode leaves a little something to be desired. It should go without saying that the opening sequence of the game loses a bit of the oomph when you take out the beautiful accompanying music and replace it with literally nothing. It likely won’t matter much to normal players unless you want to see how scenes play without any accompanying background noise. Other than these small gripes, The Great Circle remains a beautiful and compelling investigative adventure, and it’s made even more so by updates and tweaks that bring the most out of the heightened capabilities of the PS5 Pro, which provides better and more stable framerates and visual quality.
Feel that whipcrack
There are a few key places that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes advantage of on the PlayStation 5. For one, the Adaptive Triggers get some love. Whether you’re hitting enemies with haymakers, throwing objects at them, or beaning them into unconsciousness, the DualSense’s haptics provide just a little bit more tactile feel and immersion that makes the dramatic moments feel all the more intense. It extends to the investigative side, too. Everything from investigating clues under a magnifying glass, turning objects to get extra info, and even turning keys to unlock doors and contraptions feels good through the PS5 controller’s various functions.
The only thing that bugs me functionally in Indiana Jones that has made its way over to the PS5 is how certain functions are bunched together. Specifically, the push function and the lean function are mapped to the same button while the crouch button must be assigned to its own function. I would have liked to put the crouch and lean function together instead of the push input, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to break up the paired functions attached to the same button. If you can get past that annoyance, it still controls fine in pretty much every other aspect.
It's not the years, it’s the mileage
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle remains one of the most beautiful action games of the modern age, and it finds itself at its best thanks to various updates as it hits the PS5. The PlayStation 5 Pro pulls a glorious spectacle of visuals and performance out of this game while the DualSense provides a bit more immersion for those who enjoy a haptic experience. It doesn’t necessarily shed the small gripes I’ve had about the game since its original review, but it’s still a must-see experience for any fan of Indiana Jones or adventure gaming.
These impressions are based on an early PlayStation 5 copy provided by the publisher. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle comes to PS5 on April 17, 2025.
-
Shacknews
replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is as thrilling an adventure on PS5 as anywhere else
