Beaten: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Series)

 I've only ever played two Indiana Jones videogames, and I've beaten them both. The first was the masterful Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari VCS, when I figured out that the clock was actually moving and you had to be in the map room at the right time, just like the movie. After that I just never came across an Indy game in my decades of gaming across various hardware, but they kept making them.

The most recent one dropped into my lap - or more accurately, onto my pricey XBox Gamepass Ultimate Super Platinum thing, and seeing it was from trusted studio Machinegames, I decided to download it and see if it was as good as their Wolfenstein games.  It was better.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has been carefully crafted to be a videogame that feels very much like playing through an Indiana Jones movie. The look of everything, the music, the font used to introduce a new area, all are very authentic. As is the incredible voice talent they found to sound like Harrison Ford. Speaking of voice talent, the late Tony Todd put in one last performance here as the mysterious giant Locus, another perfect role for the horror movie legend.  It was kind of bittersweet knowing it was his last.

A break in at Marshall College sends Professor Jones on a journey to capture the thief, which in turn leads to a bigger mystery with another Nazi once again arrogant enough to try to use the power of God resting in some ancient device for evil ends. This seems to take place in the timeline, if one cares, after Raiders of the Lost Ark as it’s prize is mentioned once if I recall correctly.

The game plays in first person and while Indy can use guns and blast away at enemies, it clearly wants the player to be more Indy like and just whip and punch enemies. Shooting summons every guard in the area whereas a stealthy approach is better. With a few upgrades, the whip-punch combo works well, Whip an enemy to make them drop their weapon and stun them, then punch them repeatedly until they fall. There is a block option too, so some fisticuffs require finesse.

And since the enemies are fascists, it was timely fun just punching them over and over. By that I mean, in the game's larger areas, the respawn of enemies behind you means that all the backtracking one does requires clearing out areas repeatedly. I'd take it as a sign of our times rather than design intent that makes punching fascists the least tedious part of such a game.

The game's main areas are pretty large and deviously designed to require tons of exploration. Later in the game, the player gets the option to travel back to them to complete any unfinished business, a feature which encouraged me to do exactly that. I did not go for 100% but I was close.

There is lots of lore to collect and read, as well as a camera that didn’t exist in the 1930s because it somehow instanly puts the printed photos into your inventory. Indy uses the camera a lot as a puzzle solving tool, and for general sightseeing. Weirdly enough, he doesn’t use it during the endgame cutscene where some truly historic shit is happening.

There were some weird design quirks and a few glitches but the game autosaves frequently enough that this was not an issue. Enemy AI was a little dopey, too, sometimes missing obvious chances to detect me. Or was it actually truly accurate AI, as being a fascist does require an unbelievable degree of stupidity? I’d say in this America “You know who you are” to them, but they are also too stupid to know how stupid they are.

There are lots of great puzzles for Indy to solve and they are not too challenging, but are rewarding nonetheless. Truly each large region itself is a puzzle in and of itself to explore. Indy uses his whip to swing over pits and to pull on certain switches out of reach.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a complete joy of a game, authentic to fans of the character while fun for us few gamers who appreciate archaeology and punching fascists.

Beaten: Cthulhu Saves Christmas (Switch)

 “What the what?” I said to myself as I pulled the small red case that said “Cthulhu Saves Christmas “ off the shelf of my local mom and pop video game store, where it blended in with hundreds of other Switch games.

As I turned the case around and read the back it was clear what I was holding. Chtulhu Saves Christmas is a classic 90s style top down turn based RPG from the same crew at Zeboyd Games that brought us Chtulhu Saves the World as an XBox 360 indie game way back in 2010. Mind blown.

I purchased and downloaded Chtulhu Saves the World when it came out but only sampled it at the time, so I had to check to make sure it was still there on my 360, as a part of that console’s downloaded library. Thankfully, it was, because it turns out Chtulhu Saves Christmas is actually a prequel to Saves the World, so I was right to hold out these fifteen years so I could play them in order!

It’s also worth noting that I am out of touch with wherever video game journalism is these days, so news about this game never reached me until I found it on that store shelf. Finding it that way was also a weird thing, as it is a Limited Run game, produced by a small company that releases physical versions of some downloadable games for a premium price. So, it's sort of rare.

Graphically, it's gorgeous, as these modern top-down games tend to be. Cthulhu is joined by three party members as they attempt to save Santa from various non-Grinch Christmas villains. The party themselves are also characters from Christmas lore and each has unique abilities to add to the mix. Even though Cthulhu desires to destroy the world, he's a likable, personable character who gets along well with others in this quest.

The story is great and the writing and humor are superb. There is a central hub called Christmastown where, in between parts of the quest, Cthulhu can do various activities with the other party members or on his own which lead to useful loot items for the four party members. This part is important as the relationships he makes with the party members seem to play some role.

Turn based combat is fun, and sometimes challenging, but never unmanageable. What is manageable is the grind, thanks to monster variety in each area, as well as an actual countdown of the random encounters per area. A three bar meter on the screen builds up as the player explores the area, and when it turns red, a battle begins. After the first area I noticed it had a countdown number above it for the number of these encounters remaining.

In addition, there is a button on the menu to just go ahead and start an encounter. So I would start a new area, fight every encounter, then be free to explore and loot the remaining dungeon before fighting the boss. There is not a lot of loot, and it's just items, no money. There are no shops and upgrades come from the few chests found as well as the relationship quests back at Christmastown.

I had a great time playing and beating Cthulhu Saves Christmas, even though I hate the holidays myself. It's just long enough to matter and a great game for the Switch itself. I also love the fact that small games are getting physical releases thanks to Limited Run Games. I'll certainly be paying them and their releases more attention going forward.

2024 Year in Review

Well shit, 2024 was a shitfest of a year, weren’t it? I reckon it’s only a matter of time before one of these sociopaths in charge of all the nukes has a temper tantrum and all these video games I own get EMP’d or just plain vaporized, so the idea is to play them while I can! 

Back in 2020 I decided to go full retrogamer, that is to play various titles from my collection from various eras on various devices, rather than the decades-old drive to play the latest and greatest. This year I decided to formalize that a little, by creating a spreadsheet to track each category that I filled while playing every game I beat.

Some categories are eras in which the game was released, from the 1980s up until the modern decade. Under miscellaneous, the categories are "Play at Release" which is pretty self-explanatory, "Unfinished Business" meaning a game I put some effort into back in the past but never beat, and "Portable" encompasses games played on portable devices, mostly those made by Nintendo.

"System" involves games played on a particular system, and currently includes the last three generations of consoles from Microsoft and Sony. Next year I am definitely adding the Nintendo Switch to that list as I am starting to realize how awesome the Switch library has become.

The results show that portables exploded this year with my acquisition of an Analogue Pocket, which allowed me to beat a whopping four Game Boy games and two Game Boy Advance games, with a 3DS game thrown in for good measure. My love of what I call the eighth generation of games has me still playing lots of stuff on the XBox 360 and PS3, with five games beaten between the two systems. The XBox One and PS4 era took a hit this year with only one game each, while the current generation each provided two games for me to take down. 

As far as eras, the aughts were clearly still the decade my head is at, but other decades still got some attention. The exception is the 1980s, where I failed to beat any game from that era. I was close - level 47 out of 50 on The Adventure of Lolo for the NES, but ultimately I did not dedicate the time to the eighties that it required. I tried to start Ultima 3 Exodus, but the instant grind-or-die from starvation problem at the beginning of the game deterred me.

Noteworthy is that I beat an Atari VCS game, sort of. Blue 21 is a homebrew I had downloaded with hundreds of other Atari VCS ROMS back in the 2010s when I purchased an Atari Flashback Portable. It's strip blackjack for one player against a female opponent, and I beat it just to see how graphic the Atari could be with this. It's an impressive feat:

Other than the games I beat, I tried out a few other games like the aforementioned The Adventures of Lolo for the NES, playable on the Switch via their online library, to scratch my occasional puzzle game itch.  

Over on XBox, Game Pass allowed me to play a good chunk of Gears 5, which I abandoned at some insane boss fight. Also on Game Pass was Squirrel with a Gun, which I only dabbled in a little, and Star Trucker, which was an amazing game to play a little but ultimately was too harsh of a sim type game to dive any deeper. Another Crab's Treasure looked like fun until I realized it was Dark Souls difficult. I hit up STALKER Shadow of Chornobyl, Demon's Tilt, Powersalve Exhumed, and Back 4 Blood on the recent XBox consoles as well.

My heart still remains with my old Xbox 360, as I put a little time into El Shaddai, a stylish action hack and slash, and two of the three legendary Burger King games - Pocketbike Racers and Big Bumpin'.  Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth reminded me of my inability to stay too long in those sorts of strategy games. Kengo: Legend of the 9 similarly reminded me that Japan makes some brutally unforgiving fighting games. Add to the list for the 360 Guncraft: Blocked and Loaded, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Assault Heroes, Sega Superstars Tennis, A World of Keflings, Risk, and Worms, some of which were last minute downloads before the XBox 360 store closed. 

Over on the Playstation 3 I finally played Tokyo Jungle, a crazy animal survival game. On the PS5 I tried a little of Sekiro Shadows Die Twice and died a lot more than twice.

And as always, I walk around our apartment and stop by the Vectrexes for a quick game, or play an Atari VCS classic on my Atari Flashback Portable, or just see what's in my Odyssey 2 library.

Of course my wife still pushes me to play Mario Kart 8 on the Switch, even though the entire franchise has sucked since Double Dash on the Gamecube. She wants me to help her get 3 stars on all 150cc tracks, so we make a little progress on that here and there. Mario Party Superstars wore out its welcome this year in time for Mario Party Jamboree, which I'll be forced to play until I die thanks to its seemingly endless content.

My goals for 2025 inlcude more of the same - playing all sorts of games from the now forty-plus years of software acquisition. Acquiring classics and new games I want will continue. I really should start looking at Vectrex homebrews too. 

I need to make time for another eighties classic or two. I also plan to acquire an second Switch for the upstairs setup and squeeeze in a few more Switch games, For my portables, my Sony, and my Xbox consoles - I plan to keep building up their libraries as well and beating a few from each.

I also want to devote more time to this website and have already expanded it a little by adding a new section called Mutliplayer Hall of Fame. Be sure to check it out! As the world burns down around us all this year, and my dream of gaming retirement seems to be more of a fantasy than ever, the remaining time left becomes even more special.

Damn right I'm filling those remaining moments with fucking video games.