Nintendo
Go Play Circus Star
By Euric Fusilier
Aug 6, 2009, 7 :28 am

After the middling Go Play Lumberjack, the next game on the docket was another release in the Go Play series, Go Play Circus Star. Despite being in the same series, Circus Star was not developed by Panic Button, the company behind Lumberjack, but N-Fusion Interactive. Both games share a similar design, though, with a handful of base ideas providing a foundation for the bulk of the content. The downfall of such an approach, with a dull event bringing down others in a domino effect, is felt more so here than in Lumberjack, in addition of to a coarse structure.

Similar to Lumberjack, you start out by selecting one of a handful of unlocked characters, ranging from a flamboyant bodybuilder to a vaudeville-esque villain. Afterwards you are given a brief introduction by the ringmaster, who explains that you are putting on a show for fame and riches, with more money being earned by better performances and more fans leading to more money earned. You are then tossed onto the venue map, which consists of five locations, three of which are open – the park, circus tent, and camp – and two, the arena and stadium, are advanced arenas that you must earn your way into. The initial areas help you to get your bearings, with the park used for training; the camp for a single, random competition (between 1, 3, or 5 events); and the tent for when you are ready to perform for a crowd.

Pleasing the crowds, by successfully performing tricks and event-specific activities, you will gain money and fans. Although a greater fan base is supposed to lead to more money, I didn’t find the multiplier to be all that significant. Regardless, both are needed, because a total fan count is required for overall success while money is used to unlock events and venues. In theory, the better you are, the bigger your following, the bigger the purse, the bigger the venue needed to house your show as your rising star power requires a venue with better seating and lighting. The approach isn’t bad, but the key element in a game of this style is that the events have to be enjoyable enough for you to want to dive into the experience and spend the time to unlock everything, but Circus Star simply isn’t that engaging.

Despite the events having some pretty wild names, they are largely the same. Most events are little more than a slightly reworked balance game, either by having a moving icon hit a mark on a stationary meter or a meter moved so that a specific spot hits a stationary icon. Whether it’s walking a tightrope, riding a unicycle, or balancing on an elephant, it’s you wobbling back and forth and doing some sort of minor additional move, such as whipping the remote up to jump over a boxing glove or quickly tilting to adjust for gusts of wind. Heck, there might not even be a meter, which is the case with monkey dodging, where you lean left or right into one of five spots to avoid monkeys hitting you with pies – a pain to do with the balance board. There is even a set that involves repeating on-screen arrows with movements to have animals do what you want, but out of for no apparent reason and without warning, the controls are in reverse. Knife tossing, lobbing a knife at a number of balloons pegged near a scarecrow, as basic as that sounds, is one of the more original events.

Whether it’s trying to aim yourself through hoops after being shot out of a cannon or hitting balloons while bouncing on a trampoline, you will need to build up your trick meter by hitting your marks and keeping the fans applauding. Performing a one-star trick will show a brief cutscene of a slightly elaborate move, but a three-star trick will really drive the crowds wild. For all of the events, and the working-the-crowd aspect, there isn’t a whole lot to Circus Star.

The game was also entirely too difficult. Losing the fans was very easy, with one slip-up capable of draining your trick meter. Even after a few great shows, you only get a trickle of fans. Furthering slowing progress down is that the game kicks you out of the venue whenever you complete an event; instead of, say, just letting you select another event, you have to re-select the venue from the venue map and then the event to play. While that doesn’t sound like a problem, it does lead to the already excessive downtime, which is largely due to loading and animated intros. Now in Lumberjack, there were intros, setup screens, and loading as well, but the events lasted much longer than they do in Circus Star, which feels like you’re only spending a third of your time actually in an event. When the time sitting around is larger than the time spent actually playing, then there’s a problem.

Even if the fat was trimmed and the events lengthened, that still wouldn’t solve the biggest problem of the events not being all that enjoyable. I rarely used the balance board in any of the event because it simply didn’t offer the kind of precision needed, and struggling to acclimate was something I found I had no desire for. The remote only made things slightly better, but it didn’t change the fact that I didn’t have that good of a time. Some of the events, like the knife toss and monkey dodging, weren’t bad, but far too many were based off of the same premise and with only the modest of alterations. The money and fan system, as an interesting of a premise as it seems, didn’t end up interesting me much and couldn’t being in such a bore of a game.

Overall: 3.5/10
In the world of mini game collections, particularly in those that use only one or two foundation games to base the rest on, a weak base game can ruin a lot of the package. Which is what happened in Go Play Circus Star, and the weak events, along with strange design decisions that lead to a lot of wasted time and made an overly difficult system, means you aren’t missing much by avoiding this.

(This review is based on a retail copy provided by the publisher.)