Seamless experience with NVIDIA DLSS and Reflex

When I started playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I was filled with that feeling of nostalgia that every fan of classic Harrison Ford movies probably gets. Maybe that’s because I grew up with them and these movies helped shape my teenage years. I eagerly awaited the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, not only out of curiosity about the story of the legendary Indy, but also because I had read that the game had a lot to offer from a technical perspective. As this is a very demanding game when it comes to hardware, especially in terms of graphics, I wanted to see how NVIDIA DLSS and Reflex technologies would integrate and perform. Let me tell you about my experience with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and how this game runs on an entry-level gaming PC:

I played Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with NVIDIA DLSS and Reflex and loved it!

Let’s start at the beginning… After I finished downloading and installing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on my PC, I was surprised to find that the game starts with a replay of that first, iconic scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the jungle, in the temple, with all sorts of death traps and, let’s not forget, just like at the beginning of the movie, a giant boulder rolling menacingly behind Indy.

This is how Indiana Jones and the Great Circle begins

Once you get past the movie-clone introduction, things continue with an original story. MachineGames, the studio known for many of the great games in the Wolfenstein series (like Youngblood, The New Colossus, The Old Blood, and The New Order) and for collaborating with the rest of the Bethesda family on other well-known titles (like DOOM, Deathloop, and Skyrim), has prepared a diverse universe and story, sprinkled with quality humor. And compared to the Wolfenstein games, Indiana Jones is more creative in its style of neutralizing fascists. Instead of shotguns and raining bullets, the game guides us through an approach that combines stealth, hand-to-hand combat, and comic improvisation. It’s the first game where I managed to defeat a fascist by hitting him over the head with a guitar… 🙂

A fascist relaxed by a guitar song

I was thrilled to discover that Troy Baker voices Indy. As a gamer, in addition to an interesting story, good picture quality, and smooth gameplay, I always appreciate quality voice acting. A good voice can draw you closer to a character, bringing them to life and evoking empathy, whereas a poor voice will always make you feel detached from what’s happening in the game, on your screen.

If you haven’t heard of Troy Baker, his IMDb page will confirm that you probably knew him from somewhere, but weren’t sure where from. 🙂 Maybe from The Last of Us (I and II), perhaps from Death Stranding, or maybe even from Batman. He somehow manages to make Indy sound natural, with a relaxed, sometimes wry tone, much like what you’ve seen in the movies.

Indy’s voice is beautifully performed

The story in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes place somewhere between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the ones in The Last Crusade. More precisely, it begins in 1937, before World War II, at Marshall College, where professor Indy teaches archaeology. Apparently his affair with Marion Ravenwood is over, and Marcus Brody mentions directly that Indy is trying to run away from personal problems. However, as it always happens, and not just in movies, books, and games but also in real life, trouble follows Indiana whether he likes it or not. Someone breaks into the college museum, steals a cat, that is, a mummy of a cat 🙂 (obviously, a rare and strange artifact) but leaves a clue in a broken window frame: a Vatican medallion. Indy puts everything on pause, packs his bags and sets off for Rome. By the way, the whole journey is presented just like in the movies: an airplane moves on the map, showing where our protagonist is leaving from and where he’s arriving.

The journey to adventure starts on the map

Once in Rome, you infiltrate Castel Sant’Angelo and discover a secret passage to the Vatican. Now, we’re already getting ready to explore, sneak around, and soon, solve puzzles too. And also now, we’re starting to see more and more what the two allies mentioned at the beginning of the article can do. I’m talking about NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex.

And just like that, we’re already in Rome, at the Vatican

The point is this: on the entry-level gaming computer Powered by ASUS I used for playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I had an ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB GDDR6 OC Edition graphics card.

ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB GDDR6 OC Edition

In addition to the video card I mentioned earlier, these are the main hardware components of the computer I used for playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle:

• ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB GDDR6 OC Edition graphics card
• ASUS TUF GAMING B760M-PLUS motherboard
• Intel Core Core i5 14500 CPU with 14 cores, 2500 MHz base frequency and 5000 MHz turbo boost
• 16 GB DDR5 RAM from Corsair running at 5200 MT/s (MegaThreads per second)
• 1TB BarraCuda Q5 SSD with PCI Express 3.0 x4 interface
• 850W ASUS ROG Strix Aura PSU with 80 Plus GOLD efficiency
• ASUS TUF GAMING GT502 Mid Tower PC case

At a mix of medium settings and 1440p resolution, the game ran decently, but it instantly transformed when I activated DLSS: the frame rate increased significantly, the image kept its sharpness (I, for one, didn’t notice any degradation), and the movements used to sneak through courtyards guarded by fascist Italian soldiers became much smoother.

The game comes with support for DLSS version 3, and in Balanced mode, the computer performance went up to a comfortable 90 frames per second, and that, to me, translates into instant reaction time and a smooth image even when the camera is spinning fast, according to sudden mouse movements so common in combat.

The PC I used for playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Moreover, NVIDIA Reflex lowered the latency and got rid of the feeling that the character has a slight lag on my commands. The reactions are immediate, and Reflex makes an impact especially when you need to quickly sneak through corridors or behind enemies. No, using a pistol is not recommended at all, as it will result in alerting the entire Nazi block. 🙂 The game requires creativity, and if stealth isn’t your strong point, you’ll often end up in hand-to-hand combat. And these fights require a certain precision, where again, NVIDIA’s Reflex technology seems to have a positive effect.

The game encourages you to act from the shadows, without using a gun

As I progressed through the game, I came to see the Vatican, but not the pacifist Vatican of today. More like a holy place, infested with fascist soldiers getting ready for the start of World War II. We get to the point where Indy meets Gina Lombardi, a journalist looking for her missing sister. Right now, their relationship is pretty cold, but I can’t wait to see how it evolves.

This is where you meet Gina Lombardi

So far, the gameplay style has alternated between stealth infiltration, melee combat, puzzles, as well as some cinematic sequences. As for system performance, I can say that I’ve been able to play everything smoothly, seamlessly, and lag-free, thanks to DLSS and Reflex technologies.

You’ll also have to solve puzzles 🙂

DLSS and Reflex bring real and significant improvements, which make the gaming experience more enjoyable and immersive. If you’re curious, I can tell you that at 1440p resolution and mostly average settings:

• Without DLSS, I got a frame rate of about 60 fps
• With DLSS on Balanced mode, I went up to about 90 fps – a 50% increase!

And by the way, on a more serious note, do you see any significant difference in quality with and without NVIDIA DLSS enabled?

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with and without DLSS

These numbers are not just statistics, but a representation of how much my experience has improved. At one point, I quickly toggled DLSS on and off to compare. The visual difference was minimal, but the difference in image and motion smoothness was huge. And when I turned Reflex off, I felt a slight delay, difficult to notice at first, but discernible in crucial moments. Making all these comparisons convinced me that these technologies change how you play, not just how the game looks.

What do you think? Can NVIDIA make Indy look better? 🙂

All in all, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is not just a game where you re-enact a movie, it’s a new story. And from a technical perspective, the combination of DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex is essential for smoothness and responsiveness in the game, especially if you can’t afford a monster like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Ti. Instead of struggling with performance drops or latency, I was able to focus on the adventure in the Indiana Jones universe, familiar yet still a bit different… What do you think: did you play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle? Did you like it? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.