Circuit Breakers Review

I used to love Smash TV back in the ‘90s, and it is still one of my proudest completions on the SNES. What we have here is almost the spiritual grandson of that game – a fast paced, multiplayer twin-stick shooter that has an intense adrenaline hit from the first wave of enemies. Excalibur Games are bringing this game to the Xbox One after a successful run on the PS4 and Steam, so the question is, is it worth your time, or are better shooters out there?

Surprisingly, there is a story of sorts attached to the shootery. It appears that far in the future, AI has advanced to the point where the first truly sapient system can be built. Called FIRST – First Intelligent Robot System model Two – this intelligent machine decided that if it stayed near its creators, the Humans, that it would be an inevitable target. It then fled to the depths of space (how isn’t explained, maybe on a USB stick?) and when it finally made planetfall on a distant world, it commenced building an army ready to hand any interlopers their asses. In response, the Galactic Government of Affairs hire a crack team of mercenaries to take out the rogue AI. This team became known as the Circuit Breakers, and they are tasked with wiping out the robot army and defeating their creator. In case you were wondering, this is where you come in!

Starting from the beginning, there are four characters to choose from, with more being unlocked as you go. Aldo is the leader of the mercenaries. He is described as being full of himself, and having unmatched drive and confidence to push the team to bring their A games. He comes armed with a machine gun that can be upgraded by collecting Energium, but I’ll cover that later on. The second member is Shelby – the straightforward member of the team. Armed with a shotgun, she thrives when up close and personal with the robot threat, and can more than hold her own when surrounded by droids. The third, Samson, is rather unkindly described as not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but something of an explosives savant. He comes with his signature rocket launcher, which fires slowly but makes a big impression on whatever it hits; he is the true power on the team. And last but not least is Tay, the token smart member of the team. She apparently is the real brains of the organisation, and is responsible for developing the weapons that the rest of the team use. She totes a laser gun, which can overpenetrate the enemies, and can mix it with the rest of the team.

So, having met the team, it’s time to see how the game plays. Opting initially for Aldo, I sallied forth to meet the robot threat. And boy, does the word “threat” underestimate what faces our hero.

The game is set out over a series of rooms, with waves of enemies pouring in and attempting to remove you from the field. Once you have killed the requisite number of enemies, the door to the next room is opened and you are free to leave the current one. In a nice touch, you don’t have to clear the room entirely, and if you find yourself by the exit after killing a bunch of robots, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour and nipping out the door can give you a much needed breather. Rinse and repeat for further rooms, and by the time you reach every ten of them, Circuit Breakers will throw a boss at you. These are screen filling affairs, which require pinpoint precision in order to see success, usually after you’ve spent time removing armour plating or other enemies in the room.

The unique hook of this game is the Energium crystals that the robots drop when you fill them full of holes. These have the effect of levelling up your gun when you grab them, but the kicker is that the upgrade only lasts as long as the Energium does. So once you’ve had your gun upgraded, to a heavy machine gun in Aldo’s case for example, there are only a finite number of shots that you can fire before it is downgraded again. Obviously, if you keep killing and grabbing crystals then you’re golden, and with multiple levels of gun available, as long as your shots are accurate and the robots not too swarmy, you can really start to bring the pain. However, with robots who barge into you, shoot you, fire in a circle, tote armour or even jet-pack boost into you, the three chunks of health (totally a technical term) that your character starts with can be vaporised very quickly. And with only three lives to play with, the pressure really starts to mount up.

Luckily, the arenas are blessed with crates which are dotted about to bring you hearts, allowing your health meter to refresh itself. The crates can also trigger explosions, taking out any robots nearby, and also may have Energium inside, allowing your killing spree to continue without having to dive into the throng of enemies to pick some crystals up.

The Energium meanwhile also has a handy second effect – with a single press of the LT button your reserves can be used to shield you from harm while your supplies last. This obviously comes in handy if you’ve backed yourself into a corner, which is very easy to do with the sheer volume of things onscreen all trying to mess you up. Getting back out of the corner is a lot trickier than getting into it, let me tell you!

If you end up playing on your own then it’s very easy to get overwhelmed, but luckily couch co-op is possible for up to six players. Yes, if you have £300 worth of Xbox One controllers sitting around, and a similar number of friends at a loose end, then you too can enjoy the multiplayer mayhem that Circuit Breakers unleashes.

Aside from some brief stuttering at the start of the session, the multiplayer sessions run very smoothly, with multi-angle firefights very much fun indeed. Helpfully, if someone dies (and they will, given the amount of baddies) then as long as one member of the fire team stays alive, the dead ones can spawn in again after a 10 second count. Of course, being the last one alive and trying to stay that way for 10 seconds when the world’s supply of homicidal robots are on your tail is a tall order… made even more tricky by the fact the robots are ramped up when multiple players are in the game. These include the very horrible “Whirly Death Gears of Destruction” as we named them, that spin around and fire a circle of bullets across the screen. When five spawn at once, Circuit Breakers can begin to resemble a bullet hell shooter!

It is also easy to get disorientated when looking at more than four players on the screen at once, as the only identifying marks the players have is the colour of the disk around their feet, with each controller assigned a different colour. When you add in the fact that when you are hurt and on your last health block, the circle pulses red, it’s not tricky to find yourself watching a different character than your own, and be wondering aloud why your guy doesn’t do what you tell him. I’ve also found that a couple of times my character has seemed to get stuck in the corner of the screen, and no amount of stick wiggling can convince him to move. A cheap death obviously occurs, but by the time the next room has loaded in, everything seems fine again. This only happened twice in my time with Circuit Breakers, but it was a little unnerving, to say the least.

Graphically, the game is a throwback, almost a love letter to the top down shooters of the ‘90s, with a cute, pixelated look that is very retro. The graphics portray the action very well, and seeing your little guy get obliterated as they lose their last scrap of health can be very traumatic. It all moves at a good speed as well, with only minor slowdown. Luckily the controls are up to the job of keeping you alive, as they are fast, tight and responsive. Movement is on the left stick, as you would expect, with shooting on the right. There’s also the option to use the face buttons to shoot, but despite this being the control scheme in SNES’ Smash TV, I found it tricky to pull off diagonal shots with the buttons. To be honest, the stick does such a good job of directing the fire, the face buttons are largely redundant.

Overall then and you’ll find that Circuit Breakers is a game that does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a chaotic, fast paced twin-stick shooter with the emphasis on twitch reactions and overall spatial awareness. The Energium crystals are a great idea executed well, and adds that extra layer of strategy in that keeps you coming back for more. Each character has a list of challenges as long as your arm that you’d need to complete before you can say that you have mastered the game, so with that added hook, the unusual six player multiplayer mode, and a score attack mode to try out, its longevity isn’t in any doubt.

If you are in the market for a twin-stick shooter, you could certainly do a lot worse than Circuit Breakers.