Diego Nicolás Argüello
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Writing For
PolygonLatest Reviews
The trial that awaits isn’t easy, but neither was digging the hole, when you think about it. You started with a single scoop and built a hole empire. Nothing can stop you.
The Great Circle is at its best when you’re rewarded for paying attention to your surroundings and going off the beaten path. Yet, when the story assumes control once again, it makes for dissonant results. During the Raiders of the Lost Ark section, the game uses the light trap moment of the film to teach you how to crouch. In the movie, the carelessness around this contraption leads to the immediate death of two explorers, with both scenes faithfully recreated in-game. After the cutscene ended, I immediately started sprinting, missing the tutorial prompt as I stepped into the light straight on. But to my surprise, it wasn’t the end of Indiana Jones’ story — the spikes barely made a dent in his health bar. The push for a cinematic feel is constantly looming over The Great Circle, hindering the potential of its genuine novelty elements. The promise of a modern Indiana Jones game that allows you to fully embrace the fantasy of inhabiting the character in a new light, rather than repeating his greatest hits, remains a mystery yet to be solved.
These moments rival those of the best stealth games, when the slightest noise can mean revealing your position to much more powerful foes. Frictional has made a name for itself by creating these moments out of elegant yet terrifying systems. The Bunker’s standout achievement, then, is creating a nonlinear sandbox where you’re constantly learning from your own bad habits. I’ve never been so conscious of how much noise everything makes around me in a digital space, cautiously entering rooms to avoid kicking an empty wine bottle or activating the flashlight intermittently when I knew the monster was near. As McKee described, it’s your mundane actions, in conjunction with the crude and hostile setting, that create a solid ceiling of sound — one that only grows thicker the longer you inhabit the bunker.