Game Name: Circuit Breakers
Developer: Excalibur Publishing
Publisher: Triverske, Excalibur Publishing and Excalibur Games
Platforms: XBOX One, Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4
Release Date: November, 2017
Price: 9.99$ (Microsoft Store)
Introduction
Someone at my work had given me a gift certificate for the XBOX Store. I was not sure what I should save it for and I saw this game for about 10$. It seemed like an old school action game. So I was decided to take a chance and I decided to purchase the game.
Let's see if Circuit Breakers is as fun as the previews and trailers made it out to be.
Story
Let us start with the story. There is none. Although, if you look on Metacritic, they have the following summary of the game
From Metacritic:
Far in the future, advances in artificial intelligence have created the first truly sentient robot 'System 2'. Fearing for its safety it escapes into deep space where on a distant planet it begins building a robot army and plotting the inevitable invasion of its former masters.
I have no idea where they get this story from but I will take their word for it.
Gameplay
The game is a twin stick shooter. You start off by picking one character. Each character that you start with or unlock have their own unique abilities. These abilities range from different ammo types (rockets, bullets, lazers ...etc) to the type of gun (machine gun, rocket launcher, spread shot and so on).
Once you pick your character, you are ready to start the game. As far as I can tell, the goal of the game is just to survive level after level of swarms of enemies. These enemies, which are all robots, come in different shapes and sizes. Similar to the character that you chose, enemies have different bullets and shooting ranges.
From what I can gather, after 10 levels that you complete, there is a boss bottle. I have yet to beat one of these bosses. It is not that they are difficult, it is just that I am not that good.
As you play and kill enemies, you pick up some crystals. Once you reach a certain number of crystals, your weapon levels up. The caveat is that these are temporary. Once you run out of crystals, your gun loses its new found abilities.
For example, if your weapon is at level 2 and you are at 50 crystals, you shoot without picking up any crystals, you see the number of crystals getting lower. Once you reach to 0, your gun levels down to 1 and you have to use the basic level ammo and gun. That is a bit of a shame but at the same time it adds a little challenge to the game.
As the game progresses, you can unlock new characters. I have only managed to unlock 5 characters so far. Some are better than others but it comes down to preference.
Circuit Breakers - Sample Gameplay (courtesy Jimmy Dali 2)
Bottomline
Is this a game that I would recommend? Personally, the answer is yes but I can see how not everyone would be on board. It is just mindless fun. A typical game takes about 10 to 15 minutes. It reminds me a lot of the Atari 2600 game Berzerk by Stern Electronics. You have different rooms of robots and you try to kill them. Here is a sample below.
Berzerk - Sample Gameplay
As you can see it is a very primitive version of Circuit Breakers.
Some have complained that Circuit Breakers does not have enough of a story and it has no clear goal. I for one, do not care about that. I just like to turn it on, see how far that I can go and shut off the game. It is a good way to play a quick game.
I could see Circuit Breakers fit in very easily on the Nintendo Switch. I can picture myself playing this on my way to work.
In addition to the gameplay, I really appreciated the graphics. I have always been a sucker for 8 bit looking games. That was enough for the game to catch my eye. I think that it was worth the 10$ and you can have hours of fun with the game.
Apparently there is a local co-op mode and there are other challenges such as Survival. I have not played with these different facets of the game yet, so it is difficult for me to review these. In all honesty, I am not too interested in them either, hence why I have not played these modes much.
This is not a game that will wow you, but it is one that is enjoyable. It is a middle of the pack game that no one will ever remember. The only players that will remember it, will be the ones that happened to buy this game and played it.
Ratings: 3 Robots out of 5
Have you played it? What do you think of it? Also, let me know if you agree with my views above.
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