Indiana Jones And The Great Circle: The Order Of Giants review – a little bit of DLC

MachineGames’ excellent Indiana Jones adventure gets a new story expansion that provides even more tombs to raid and relics to recover.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, harking back to simpler times. Indy cheerfully raids tombs with no thought for preserving dig sites or relics (apart from the ones he stuffs in his satchel) and the bulk of the bad guys are Nazis who unambiguously need to be punched or shot.

The movies have had a profound influence on video games, from Tomb Raider to every mine cart level you’ve ever played, but the only good official tie-ins were The Fate Of Atlantis and the graphic adventure based on The Last Crusade. That means last year’s The Great Circle certainly was the first decent action game to feature Indy, with its satisfying brawling, varied puzzles, and pitch perfect Harrison Ford impression by Troy Baker.

While it’s possible to use Indiana’s journal to travel back to areas from The Great Circle that you’ve already explored, in search of artefacts you might have missed, there’s no substitute for something new to explore, which makes the arrival of The Order of the Giants, the game’s first piece of downloadable content, immediately welcome.

The DLC’s story takes place in the Vatican, which was the first open world area in the main game, and gives you access to previously off limits parts of Rome in a new but related quest. To kick it off you meet Father Ricci, a young archaeology-obsessed priest, whose pet parrot Pio is at least as much of a character as its owner.

Ricci’s been studying historical documents about the Nameless Crusader, a mythical warrior whose helmet is supposed to be hidden in chambers built beneath the papal mansion of Pope Paul IV. He has been unable to find out more though, mostly because the pope’s former villa is now guarded by large numbers of heavily armed soldiers.

This being Rome, they’re not the German variety, so often used as cannon fodder in war films and the Indiana Jones movies, but Black Shirts, loyal to Italian dictator Mussolini, who also makes a small early cameo. Clearly it doesn’t matter all that much which flavour of fascist you’re punching into submission, but it’s an interesting acknowledgement that it wasn’t just Germany that was being fought in the Second World War.

As in the main game, there’s a fair amount of combat, despite the fact that Indy is usually alone and frequently either unarmed or carrying only makeshift weaponry. The more you can conserve stamina and hit points by sneaking up behind enemies and battering them over the head before they have a chance to spot you, the better.

The emphasis on solo stealth also informs the way the plot’s delivered, which once again arrives mostly through eavesdropped conversations and conveniently placed confessional notes you find around the place. Indy does have the odd actual conversation, but not as frequently as in the base game, making The Order Of Giants far more about the mechanics of traversal and puzzle-solving.

There are some excellent sections that focus on finding your way into and around the series’ trademark cavernous underground spaces, inevitably followed by age old mysteries you’ll need to unpick. Tomb Raider borrowed heavily from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and this borrows back some of its puzzle mechanics. So you can expect to match sets of archaic symbols, rotate ancient stone pillars, and slot ironwork swords into rectangular gaps in statues.

Some of those puzzles are unusually taxing for the series, and in one case – guiding a flaming ball bearing through an iron maze – not in the way intended. While that one takes a little initial figuring out, its main difficulty comes from attempting to slot parts into the maze against the clock, while having to deal with its occasionally obtuse interface.

Other than that, there’s a bit of boating action in a call back to the Thai level of The Great Circle, and crimson robe wearing cultists, reminiscent of the Thuggees in The Temple of Doom. They provide an excuse for liberal use of chanting and sinister masks, which helps build an atmosphere that only needs darkness and a light mist to really set it off.

As ever, the crumbling architecture is beautifully observed, looking less like a Disney theme park and more like actual Roman sewers and cave systems, especially when dramatically lit with a flaming torch or the guttering flame of Indy’s lighter. It’s also accompanied by hints of the films’ magical John Williams score, judiciously used to add drama and tension.

There are occasions when downloadable content changes everything, reinventing the entire premise of a game, like Prey’s Mooncrash, which built on the original mechanics, repurposing them as a roguelite. That’s certainly not the case for The Order Of The Giants though. It’s just more of the same, which is no bad thing given the quality of the original but slightly disappointing, nevertheless.

What you get is a solid, rather than mind-blowing, five-hour expansion of The Great Circle, with fresh places to loot, more bad guys to punch, and an emphasis on puzzle solving. It’s fun and authentic, although perhaps its biggest mystery is what’s not there – or rather who. Annika Lund, the evil Swedish archaeologist and former student of Indy’s, who appeared in the main game but then vanished, is conspicuous by her absence, and an indication that there may be more DLC to come.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £17.99
Publisher: Bethesda
Developer: MachineGames
Release Date: 4th September 2025 (Switch 2 in 2026)
Age Rating: 16

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