The Roman times were great…just not this time! It is officially 3am and ZT is exhausted from a hard days work. I have been revamping the main page of the site all night and trying to get game time in to review a shit load of games that were released today, needless to say I may not sleep much at all tonight. Having to get up at 8am and do it all over again tomorrow is not going to help either. I know you are wondering what all this babbling has to do with this game..well this game makes you feel the same way. Like shit…you hoped and prayed that it would be fun and gorgeous but in the end it comes out like crap.
OK perhaps I am being harsh and before I begin talking about the bad let me discuss the good (this will be short and sweet) Circus Maximus is a great multi-player game, grab four of your friends and saddle up for chariots of fire and half naked women slapping the piss out of each other. That is about where the game’s good points end, because if you are NOT playing multi-player you still have to control both characters. This is easy….if you have ten fingers on each hand. Can you imagine playing Rainbow Six with only one finger? Well that is how CM makes you feel while you are playing it.
Visually the game isn’t ugly by any means, in fact it makes a gorgeous N64 game with blurry textures and bland character models. Too bad this is the XBox and not an N64 cuz if it was man this game would be top class!! The frame rate is very smooth although I do not see how it could not be since this game looks like it’s running off of the Mace engine, whoopie that game is only what 6 years old?!? The animation is also lacking as characters almost seem like they are fighting with their selves to move. Whew that was a mouthful of badness right there eh?
We now approach the sound category, well the music is pretty fitting, too bad it isn’t present at all times. It kinda comes and goes and when it is there it is kind of like sex after 20 years of marriage…non-existent. The sound effects sound like 1 guy and 1 girl sat in a booth and made grunts and groans for five minutes then called it a day. Geesh did Kodiak even try on this game, and why I stress WHY was this game delayed so many times?!?
After all of the bad things I have said I feel almost dirty and impure about my XBox. This game will sit beside Azurik and rot in the gaming threshold of “crap” games that could have been great. Perhaps with a sequel this game will see it’s day, but until then we are left with a great looking N64 game that just doesn’t make the cut. In fact this game didn’t even place!!! ZT
