Indiana Jones may have arrived too late for many awards ceremonies, but it’s definitely one of the best games of 2024 regardless

I was there at The Game Awards 2024, on the ground in Los Angeles. I don’t know how it all felt and played out online, how the onslaught of ads, Muppet Interludes, and occasionally rushed awards categories worked online – but in the room, my first time experiencing that way, it totally just works. Witnessing it that way left me with only one predominant thought: god, 2024 was a pretty great year for video games.

One game not actually represented in the nominations for Geoff Keighley’s industry-leading awards event was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The game had a moment on the night thanks to an on-stage appearance by Indy originator Harrison Ford, video game depictor Troy Baker, and Bethesda mastermind Todd Howard – but the actual game released a couple of weeks too late for the cut-off.

Because for some reason The Game Awards is in December every year, its calendar year runs roughly from late November or early December through ‘til the same time the next year. I never quite got this – the Oscars are in March and Golden Globes in January for exactly this reason: so the awards cover a calendar year. For whatever reason – I suppose due to the need for advertising and reveals to power the show – The Game Awards falls awkwardly in the run-up to Christmas.

That means that each year there’s a couple of games that release too late to be considered for the awards the year they were released in. This year, one such game is Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which means no GOTY nominee, no best performance nominee, no best direction or design nominee – all things the game rather deserves. I’m kicking myself as I write this, because in doing so I’ve realized that we didn’t even give it a wee nod in our Alternate Awards. I hope all my fellow judges and panellists keep it in mind for 2025’s awards, when it’ll be eligible.

Anyway, all of this is to say that Indiana Jones is absolutely one of my Games of the Year for 2024. Is it my actual game of the year? Probably not, no, because this is the year in which Balatro released – I have 170 hours logged on that on Steam, and god knows how many more on my phone. But somebody else on Team VG247 had already decided to write about Balatro, and The Great Circle is probably my second favorite game – which is no small feat in this stacked year.

I mean, seriously. I am the nerd whose hyper Final Fantasy fandom led to my founding an FF fansite as a tween, which then later morphed into one of the biggest RPG fan nerd destinations on the internet. This is a year in which Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth released – the best Final Fantasy game in at least fifteen years, a total certified banger – and it isn’t my game of the year. It isn’t even second! This is also the year in which Dragon’s Dogma 2, a game I quite literally dreamed about, came out.

But there’s something magical about a game like Indiana Jones. This is a title I wasn’t even ultimately all that bothered about. I like first and third films in particular, but later messy outings somewhat soured me on the whole series – and with the mess that is modern Star Wars, I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust Disney. Plus, Harrison is too old – how can you possibly replace him?

Basically, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted this. In fact, I was pretty sure I didn’t. And yet what MachineGames managed to do is provide something I didn’t know that I wanted – a little bit Riddick, a little bit Immersive Sim, something that’s actually a bit like what I dream and hope IO Interactive’s upcoming James Bond game will be.

I could spend more time rehashing my glowing five-star review, but I don’t really need to. The point is that regardless of how well people manage to remember it when filing their Game Awards ballots after whatever 2025 holds, this game should be held up as one of the very best in an absolutely killer year. It’s brilliant. Play it. Cheers.