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Everyone deserves a present at Christmas, whether you’re eighteen, forty-three, or seventy-nine. Do you agree? I’m now thir… anyway, I’ve reached an age where there appears to be a distinct lack of presents. Now, I don’t expect anything (I do, spoiled only child), but there’s a specific satisfaction that comes from receiving everything one asks for, as if parents were mere servants, and I a feudal Lord, cracking the whip, demanding the prize. I’m getting carried away here.
It’s nice to receive gifts. Being as December is the month of giving, it was about time the overseers at Game Pass HQ decided to panic drop a bunch of games. Whether they actually panicked, I can’t say, but what I do know is, they owed me (sorry, us) big time.
And they’ve delivered. In the space of a couple of weeks, they’ve more than justified my small spend on their service. Starting with:
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
I stayed away from reviews for this one. I wasn’t going to allow anyone to influence my mind for one of my favourite franchises. All to often, to my own detriment, I read reviews before playing games, and sometimes use them as excuses to avoid playing a game. Whether that’s to alleviate some of the pressure on the growing to-play list, or to play a game of told-you-so with my bizarre mind – “see, I knew [insert new game] wasn’t going to be what I thought it would be” – instead of trusting my gut, buying what I want and being the sole arbiter of judgement.
Thing is, I, and I can probably confidently say we here, never used to read reviews. I didn’t even know how to access reviews prior to the internet; my dad wasn’t going to pay a fiver for Play magazine when he could buy me a game and shut me up that way!
Shall we continue? If you didn’t know, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was developed by MachineGames and so uses the same engine as Wolfenstein. It looks like Wolfenstein, sounds like Wolfenstein and sort of is Wolfenstein. An Indiana in Wolfenstein clothing you might say.
And that is one of the reasons it is a brilliant game. It was released without a hiccup and works out-the-box like games of yore. It provides a quintessential gaming experience for gamers that want to play a AAA game for the sheer enjoyment of videogaming; to experience a convincing, entertaining story; and the fun of playing in another world done well, one that doesn’t force you to think about the fact you’re playing a game.
To say it got off to a smooth start is an understatement. For what is the game’s prologue – a reintroduction to Indiana – you learn the basics where it all began in Raiders of the Lost Ark before Indiana wakes, thrusting you into the main story.
Burning the midnight oil – oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had jobs where we were happy to fall asleep at our desks – Indiana is awoken on a thundery evening at the university. He investigates the noise and finds a strange tall man chanting Latin. After getting sleeped, Indiana wakes up to find an Egyptian cat mummy has been stolen, setting in motion the rest of the story…
The repurposing of the game’s engine has been done remarkably well. This is no longer an out-and-out shooter, but a stealthy, puzzle-solver. You can use anything at your disposal, in classic Indy style. A candlestick anyone? You have your fists, your whip and there’s your revolver, along with other firearms you can pick up.
A simple fast travel system helps shorten the amount of time you spend running between locations if you’re not the explorer type. The world is easy to explore thanks to a moving map, and the
locations, the scenery and characters are delightful because they convey an aliveness that is often present in the fleeting nature of the adventure genre. The effort that has been put in to telling this classic adventure story is obvious; it wouldn’t be as entertaining, as Indy-like without care.
Of course, nothing is perfect. The AI when alerted by weapon fire tend to rush to you, which I suppose is what a bunch of cronies would do, it just felt strange triggering a stampede only to sit in a corner and pop them off one-by-one as they approached. Stealth it is then!
If you’re obsessed with Indiana Jones, or merely a fan, you will – I am quite certain – be thrilled with this new instalment. Of course, as a fan, I think my experience was enhanced. Nonetheless, this is an entertaining game and sets the bar for what a AAA game should always be, minimum.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn’t original, it doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been seen in other games, and is not complex. Just as National Treasure is a great film, this is a great game.
Still, the title could have done with more thought! I won’t let that slide so easily.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
I’m listing this game high up the list because I have hope. The festive season is a time for goodwill and I believe somewhere here, there is a strong game. At the moment, I don’t think it’s quite there. Here’s my story.
I booted up Stalker on the night of its release, sat in front of a dinky television in a caravan in Auchterarder. After a day Munro bagging and haggis spotting, I was looking forward to the single-player experience I’d been longing for. Now was my moment of intimacy.
And my evening came to a blistering hasty end in a dark, dark tunnel, somewhere deep inside digitalised Chornobyl.
The initial vibe was there and the visuals spots on, and then the characters spoke: they sounded like people who shouldn’t be anywhere near Chornobyl and as if they were overacting in a studio somewhere; I expected Ukrainian English-speakers to do the voice-acting. Either way, it transpires, you can play the game with Ukrainian dialogue and subtitles. So, disaster averted for now.
I jumped over a wall and began making my way along rough ground towards an even bigger wall. I walked like a drunkard, swaying slightly even after correcting my controller input. Turns out I was experiencing stick drift that wasn’t caused by the controller. OK, I thought. I continued…
I arrived at the even bigger wall and entered a tunnel. The tunnel was so so dark and black, sort of like a real tunnel. I marvelled at how black and shiny my screen was, until I realised something was wrong. I increased all of the brightness, contrast and gamma settings, which had no obvious effect other than turning everything from black to light black.
Somehow, I managed to escape the catacomb of colour absence, and arrived in a room where I used a knife to cut some boards nailed to a door. That was enough for me.
Since then, I’ve noticed two updates for Stalker on my Xbox, which have probably fixed some of these issues. I’m going to wait a while longer. Based on this short experience, it might seem odd for me to imply that there is a game worth playing here, but there is. It had charm and that’s enough for me to give it one more go.
EA Sports WRC
Remember when racing games were fun? Once upon a time, I could load up Gran Turismo do some licences, race some events and win some cars. Now you have to set the temporo-mandibular bar on your offside right bladewing before you practice, then you have to practice some more and qualify and race, because if you don’t you’re not a real race driver, and I am, alright!
I’m not a simple racer, I’m a serious gamer. How could I have improved my personal best on Laguna Seca if I wasn’t good. And why would the host say, “are you sure you’re not a professional” after my first time trial? You tell me.
What’s great about EA Sports WRC is how it finds the balance between racing sims and those arcade style racers that we don’t see much of any more. My first racing game as a child was F1 1998 and I played it on a PC, using A to go, space bar to stop and the direction arrows to turn. It was meant to be a sim, but it wasn’t really. So where did this impulse come from to create the real within the unreal? Isn’t the point of gaming to have fun, to be entertained like the crowd was by Maximus Decimus Meridius?
Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever had fun on Microsoft Flight Simulator, it’s a game that is impressive to look at and experience for a short while, nothing more, nothing less.
I don’t want to feel as though I can’t drive a car properly, when I clearly can in real life. I want to race fast and flow along tracks easily, feeling all the time like I’m driving an F1 car, or a rally car bobbling over gravel tracks – emphasis on the like. The feeling is what gets me, not whether it’s accurate or not.
I will be keeping this installed as my go-to racing game, having overdone Forza Horizon 4 and 5. Both superior to Forza Motorsport, which is suffering, unsurprisingly, from an identity crisis. Check this one out, you will not be disappointed. Who would have thought EA could make a decent game again. I didn’t realise until now that it was released last year!
New to Game Pass
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
Coming soon
Carrion – 02/01/2025
Road 96 – 07/01/2025
Sniper Elite: Resistance – 30/01/2025
Avowed – 18/02/2025
Atomfall – 27/03/2025
What am I playing?
Having completed Inscryption, I moved on to the disappointing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. There’s not much to say about the game, other than we were lied to. All the information fed to players in the build-up to its release implied that the game would be an improvement on its predecessor.
Instead, the game is glitchy, slow and isn’t refined. There’s a lot of pop-in on consoles and load times are surprisingly long. It was obviously rushed out of the gate too soon, and after a game of catch-up, they will get it to where they implied originally, I don’t doubt that. Thing is, as I said earlier, considering I’ll only be playing to look at something pretty for a few hours, I’m hardly the kind of person the devs care about anyway.
I’m still yet to level my Ogryn to thirty in Darktide, which is something I’d like to do eventually. Other than the above games I’ve spoke about at length, I’ve been watching Attack on Titan via the Crunchyroll app on my Xbox. I’ve started season four of the wild journey and recommend anyone that hasn’t watched it to do so. That’s coming from someone that doesn’t watch much anime.
I also started The Evil Within and intend to complete it once I’ve finished with Indiana. Although the graphics are dated and the performance on consoles is limited to 30fps, it evokes a sense of claustrophobia most newer horror games seem to have forgotten how to capture.
I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a relaxing, if possible, festive season.
Do let us know what you’ve been playing on Game Pass over on our socials!