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Nearly four years on from its announcement, and 15 years since the last mainline Indiana Jones console game (that's probably best forgotten), the tomb-raiding fascist-thwarter is back, and by our reckoning better than ever in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The first-person adventure from Bethesda and MachineGames is out now on PC Game Pass, and sees you exploring beautiful, sprawling renditions of ancient monuments, all wrapped up in a colourful, characterful Indy package.
It's such a wonderfully paced, breezy adventure, in fact, that it can feel like it's over all too soon. Thankfully, once you chuck that fedora back on the hat rack and furl the bullwhip back into its, uhhhh, whipbox, there are plenty of other Indy-minded adventures you can embark on through PC Game Pass. Here are some of our favourites.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus
The series on which Indiana Jones developer MachineGames cut its teeth is one of the best first-person shooters of recent generations. Ok, so its approach to taking on Nazis is a little more gung-ho-Tarantino than Indiana Jones, and you might want to usher any children out of the room when you start butchering your way through the Third Reich, but the developer's hallmark combo of polished first-person action and razor-sharp writing is here in abundance.
Playing as buzz-cut beefhead BJ Blazkowicz, you rampage through an alternate history in which the Nazis won World War II. The first game, The New Order, sees you taking on a mechanised Third Reich armed with exosuits, laser guns, and clanging super-soldiers, before the sequel takes you to a darkly comic Nazi-occupied America in the 60s. These are modern classics that deserve to be played in sequence. While the co-op focused spin-off, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, isn't quite as brilliant, it's still good fun with a friend. After all, killin' Nazis never really gets old.
Dishonored 2
Shamefully under-appreciated, Arkane's stealthy first-person adventures set in a Victorian-adjacent world of inter-dimensional magic, whale oil, and witches are still two of the best stealth games around. Coming from a super-talented team whose roots can be traced back to Thief and Deus Ex, Dishonored's vast yet dense urban levels are rife with world-building and intrigue, beckoning you to sneak into every backalley and dilapidated apartment.
The freedom you get in weaving your way through each mission is incredible, bolstered by imaginative powers that let you teleport to high ledges, possess rats, and chuck guards into the air using tentacles made of swirling black magic. The gritty cities of Dunwall and Karnaka may be a far cry from the historical monuments of Indiana Jones, but they all share an acuity for open-ended level design that's up there with the best of 'em.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Without Indiana Jones, popular culture might never have gotten onboard with rogue archaeologists with a penchant for nabbing relics with one hand while fighting evil organisations with the other. And by extension, Lara Croft might never have come to exist. Eidos-Montreal did a great job in rebooting the wavering Tomb Raider IP back in 2013 with a darker tone, action-movie set-pieces, and compelling storytelling that gets us into the troubled mind of Lara. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the most recent entry in the reboot trilogy, though you also can't go wrong with playing the original 2013 reboot on Game Pass (the middle game, Rise of the Tomb Raider, has just left the platform).
Set in the muggy jungles of Peru, Lara once again comes into conflict with the iffy Trinity organisation in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, though her own moral compass comes into question as her knack for artefact acquisition triggers an apocalyptic scenario. It's a visually stunning mix of stealth, shooting, and rope-swinging that would have Harrison Ford smiling proudly in his rocking chair.
Core Keeper
Having recently completed its two-year journey through Early Access, this pretty pixelated survival game sees you digging through the depths of the Earth in search of resources and treasures, all of which help you build out your subterranean homestead. It's got a little bit of everything—combat, crafting, boss fights, RPG-like progression—and makes all these bits stick in a pleasing loop. You can play with up to eight players too!
As for the Indiana Jones connection? Come on; ancient underground structures harbouring untold treasures and unspeakable dangers, exploring dark environments by torchlight, spiders, a ragtag crew of companions. It's all there, just with added monsters.
Assassin's Creed Origins
If ambling around the Great Pyramids of Giza in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has got you curious about the heyday of Ancient Egypt, then Assassin's Creed Origins is the best way to experience it in video game form. True to the AC template, Origins is a mix of open-world exploration, stabby fun-times, and hanging with historical figures (Cleopatra and Julius Caesar say 'hi'). It's got its fair share of tomb-raiding and treasure-hunting too, so you can create yourself a head-canon in which Mr. Jones delves into the pyramids only to find them devoid of treasure because Origins' heroes Bayek or Aya got there first.
Set during the Ptolemaic era (so pretty late Ancient Egypt, as things go), Origins has one of the better stories in the series, as your revenge quest over your son's death brings you into conflict with a shady secret order seeking to control Egypt from the shadows, and into cahoots with the assassin order seeking to stop them.
