Lashings of fun? Microsoft reveals new Indiana Jones game

Can MachineGames's new first-person adventure Indiana Jones and the Great Circle live up to the third-person thrills of Indy-influenced hits Uncharted and Tomb Raider?

History is not exactly littered with glittering Indiana Jones video games. The beautiful LucasArts adventure, The Fate of Atlantis; the pretty good Lego games; the decent Emporer's Tomb; the presentable SNES side-scroller, Greatest Adventures ... There have been good games, but few classics that transcend the brand like, say, Knights of the Old Republic. Maybe that's about to change.

During Microsoft's latest Developer Direct online event, streamed on Thursday evening, we saw a 12-minute preview of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a globe-trotting first-person adventure, set between Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Last Crusade. The project was revealed three years ago, but this is the first footage we've seen, and it's promising stuff. It has Nazis, it has a whip, it has Dr Jones in deserts, in tombs and arguing with Denholm Elliott in fusty college buildings; and it has a story involving a stolen artefact that is somehow linked to an international network of ancient monuments all of which align with a circle spanning the world.