The original Xbox brought with it a variety of unusual games. It helped bridge the gap between PC and home console development. This seems to be the main reason we got some titles that had no business otherwise in the home console market. This is where Circus Maximus comes into the picture. It’s a chariot racing game set in the Roman times. That’s very unusual, but a very interesting concept on paper. Despite the negative reviews I was always curious about Circus Maximus: Chariot Wars. I finally decided to give it a look. Unfortunately it’s a big confusing mess. Let’s take a look.
There’s not much story to speak of. Circus Maximus relies instead on its historical scenario to set the scene. You choose a driver, and a gladiator, chariot, and horses and you’re off to the bloody races. From here you compete in a variety of different game modes. These allow you to compete in a tournament, single race, or against friends in multiplayer. I’m going to come out and just say it; you’re not going to find someone else who is going to play this one with you. With that said let’s focus on the single player experience in this review.
Despite the fact that you’re racing with chariots, and have both a fighter and driver, Circus Maximus at its core is pretty basic. What I mean is that your goal is to drive around a course a set number of laps and come in first place at the end of the race. Simple, right? Not so fast. Combat is a huge part of the gameplay here. You’re in control of both the driver (thus guiding the chariot) and the warrior (who strikes the other chariots with their weapon and blocks incoming attacks). Each chariot has a life bar and when you drain it they crash. You and your opponents respawn rather quickly so it’s only a slight detriment to go chariot up except at the very end of a race.
Circus Maximus is a very complicated racing game. You have a variety of different attack types and blocks. You even use the right control stick to aim your attacks in specific directions while the left analog stick controls the chariot. Unfortunately the controls are too complicated, and in the worst way possible. One of my biggest turn offs in gaming is when I have to stretch my hand into awkward configurations to press multiple buttons at once. Sure enough that’s the biggest problem with Circus Maximus. You have to hold down the A button to move forward, both digital sticks are used to control the warrior and chariot, the shoulder inputs help with sharp turns, and the other face buttons are for a variety of blocks and attacks. The set up is just not compatible.
If your hand doesn’t immediately cramp up it soon will. There’s an option to have the chariot drive itself but do you really want to play a racer on auto-pilot? It’s about as fun as it sounds. You can bring a second player into the mix to control your warrior, but then the game just becomes boring for both of you. To get any amount of entertainment out of Circus Maximus you need to be doing both, but unfortunately it’s just too frustrating to do so. In typical fashion the AI isn’t held back by the awkward controls so you’re at a pretty big disadvantage on the higher difficulty levels. I was able to get used to the off-putting inputs, but I was never great at this game.
There are other very basic issues Circus Maximus can’t overcome. For starters, the race courses themselves are boring. They’re bland in design, look ugly, and feature only the most obvious of shortcuts. The environmental hazards rarely pose any kind of threat, and the only time I wrecked was when I was pushed or made an obvious error. Like I mentioned earlier you instantly respawn and there’s very little in the way of penalty. It really seems like there should be more of a punishmnent when your chariot is ripped apart, characters smashed, and horses whipped around. For how violent these animations are you would expect to have more ground to make up after respawning.
This leads me to one of the biggest problems in Circus Maximus. The rubber band AI is beyond frustrating. You can put a lot of effort into destroying a foe, but they’ll never be far behind when they come back. The game is downright unfair in this regard. You may as well not try to fight them and instead stay just barely in front. You’re almost penalized with how quickly they catch up. You’ll also have to deal with the occasional stolen victory. You can have a perfect run, rack up lots of kills, and still have a foe pass you thanks to the unfair nature of the game. It drains what little fun there was to be had right out of Circus Maximus.
Despite the obviously low budget I was pretty impressed with the graphics in Circus Maximus. The character models are highly detailed and feature a lot of intricate animations. Each character (and horse for that matter) has their own specific look and the style on these is very cool. The environments, as I mentioned before, are very bland however with lots of grays and browns. The scenery is definitely boring. That’s par for the course with these kind of low budget titles. The soundtrack is poor and I barely even noticed music in the game. The sound effects are at least high quality and very realistic.
Circus Maximus: Chariot Wars had a lot of potential. The concept deserves attention for just how unique it is. No other video games have taken a shot at this both before and after it’s release. The controls are absolutely horrendous, and the rubber banding AI does this game no favors. It’s a real practice in frustration, and is better left forgotten at this point.
