by Dillon Fisher (8th)
Circuit Superstars: Nothing But Niche
Circuit Superstars is an interesting specimen to crack open. It’s supposedly an arcade racer like Need For Speed and Burnout but also includes some simulation style ideas. It stands out from all other racing games like it because of those qualities and its top down view. This all seems like it would mix together terribly, but it doesn’t. These things produce one of my favorite games of all time… Circuit Superstars.
Part 0.1: A Paragraph to Address a Common Issue
Let’s address the looming presence that resides over this game. It’s a racing game. So, it’s going to cater to a much smaller audience than other styles of games. For example, it’s probably going to have a much smaller audience than an action or puzzle game. There's also one more wrench in the layout. Which is the camera perspective. The top down camera isn’t a hindrance to the game in any way, it just is different to what we’re used to. This makes it less of a must try into a could buy. So this a disclaimer that this game is not meant for everybody and anybody, this is more of a specialized game for a smaller group. This allows the people who like it to really like it but it also wards off a lot of others. Now that I got the warning out of the way, let’s hop right in.
Part 1: The Controls
Like any good video game, or any video game at all, this game uses controls. Controls are one of the most important things in a video game. A game that’s bad in other areas can be seriously carried by the controls. And likewise, a good video game in other areas can be seriously tanked by the controls.
The controls Circuit Superstars are very interesting as they have to be operated from a top down camera. In this game, the result of the camera view being what it is means that the car is drifty. This means that when turning, you're basically drifting around the turn. The different thing about this game is that brakes are used a bit more sparsely. In most tracks, lifting off the throttle and coasting the corner is a more convenient and faster route. The handling does take getting used to and my first few hours playing were spent in frustration as I kept binning the car into the wall. However, if you come into the game with an open mind and a good amount of patience for the first few hours, you should have fun with the game.
Part 2: Cars, Cars, Cars Galore
In a racing game there are 3 things that make up the skeleton for the game, handling, tracks and vehicles. And oh boy, does this game deliver on vehicles.
This game has an astounding 15 different cars to play as. Which might not seem like a lot but it is quite many when looking at the entire list of cars. There is also so much variety with all the cars too, maybe too much. You have road muscle cars, rally and stadium trucks, 3 eras of “Grand Prix” cars and much more. I’ll put a full list below with the name of the car and the inspiration of the cars.
Agitator - Stadium Super Truck
Brusso - 1950’s Grand Touring (GT) Car
Osprey - 1960’s F1 Car
Mantra - 1980’s F1 Car
Piccino - Fiat 500
Bonk - Semi-Truck
Impact - Stock Car (More commonly known as a NASCAR)
Tubular - Sprint Car
Vost - Rally
Conquest - LMP2 (Le Mans Prototype 2)
Panther - Grand Touring Car
Storm - Modern F1 Car
Feather - Lotus 7 (I really don’t know what that is)
Road Rebel - Production Touring Car
Loose Cannon - Muscle Car (Looks like a Dodge Challenger)
Now, that was a lot. I know. So If you still don’t know what they are, I’ll give you a very quick rundown.Agitator and Vost are both all-terrain cars. Conquest and Panther are endurance racers. Loose Cannon, and Piccino are both road cars. Bonk is a semi-truck. Impact and Tubular both race on ovals. (Road and dirt ovals respectively). Brusso is a vintage version of a GT (Endurance) car. The Osprey and Mantra are both older versions of F1 cars. The Storm is a modern F1 car. Road Rebel is a touring car, which is a racing series based on changing regular cars into race efficient ones. (This is my basic knowledge, if you know more, feel free to correct me). I don’t know what the Feather is but it looks alright.
So, did that explain anything? Probably not, but it does represent the amount of variety that this game has. Even better, the cars have different stats! The storm has insane speeds and great breaking power while the Impact has better draft, worse cornering and a very good top speed. These stats directly correspond into the track they are designed for as they really reach their maximum potential.
Part 3: Tremendous Tracks
The tracks in Circuit Superstars are really high quality and they complement the cars that race on it super well. The thing I love most about it is that different tracks have different cars that work well with. But before we get onto that, let’s list the tracks!
Sunny Side Park - Circuit
Sugar Hill - Circuit
Maple Ridge - Circuit
Rennevort - Circuit
Faenza - Circuit
Magdalena - Circuit
Copperwood - Circuit
Siena - Circuit
Whistle Valley - Circuit
Tilksport - Circuit
Thunder Point - Circuit
***
Bullseye Speedway - Oval
Speedopolis - Oval
Poke Bowl - Dirt Oval
Thunder Point Club - Rectangular Oval (I put in the oval section because it’s a mix of the corner complexity of a circuit but the basic layout of an Oval, with the Oval genes standing out more).
***
Interstate - Rallycross
Buffalo Hill - Rallycross
Lost Lagoons - Rallycross
Tilksport (Rallycross Layout) - Rallycross
***
Magdelena Club - Club
Copperwood Club - Club
Tilksport Club - Club
Thunder Point Club - Club
Buffalo Hill Club - Club/Rallycross
A quick breakdown for what each label means. Circuit courses are your basic style racing course, many straight turns and cool cuts. Look up any type of track that’s on road, is diverse in the layouts and you have a circuit. (They’re also called road courses but I call them circuits). An oval is a basic oval. As Americans, you should probably know that NASCAR races on ovals.
Next up, Rallycross is a style of racing where it’s a dirt course like Rally racing (quick rundown, Rally racing is where you drive from point a to b in different terrain weather etc, it’s a race against time not people), but you are racing against people directly in a closed track.
Finally, we have club tracks. These are tracks that are shortened through cutting parts from the main course out and shortening it down. These are all specialized for cars that can’t hit the same speeds as the Storm, Panther and Conquest cars. The only weird and different club track is Buffalo Hill where it’s a club track but also stays like a Rallycross track.
Different courses can have different specialties, which I love. Racing Faenza with a touring car is good and all but it works better with the F1 car because of its long straights. Lost Lagoons is a great off-road track and a notable one because of its insane jumps and u-turns, which seems perfect for a rally car. It’s not though, the jumps are tricky to land and the car’s tricky to turn on the uphill u-turn. You know what works well on it. A super truck would tank those jumps and hit those turns amazingly. Each car perfectly corresponds to its track side counterpart.
The greatest thing about the tracks in Circuit Superstars is that they can have different layouts. In Magdalena, the main track has a straight to hairpin (a hairpin is a u-turn around a corner) for one of the turns. The club version cuts that out and takes an easier route around. This is probably one of my favorite features as this allows for more variety in the tracks with all these different layouts and it allows different cars to shine as not all are super fast on straights.The different styles of tracks really add to the gameplay too because they allow the stock car and supertruck to go from insignificant racing vehicles to amazing and entertaining cars to drive.
Now the cars are only one part of the game. A pretty important part, but not the most important. The most important part of this game would be the racing itself. And boy it delivers.
Part 4: The Real Rumble
The racing is probably the greatest racing i’ve ever played. It has very different and interesting mechanics with its arcade style handling, damage model, and crash physics. Although, there is surprisingly deep strategy involved too.
In races, there are two parts. Qualifying and the race. In basic terms, qualifying is a series of laps where you try to set the fastest time on the track. This impacts where you start on the grid in the race. In this game, the gameplay makes qualifying not as important as one would think. Whenever I landed in the bottom 2 rows in qualifying, I was never annoyed as much as I was in a game like Formula Legends. The reason is that overtaking is kind of easy. When the race starts, it’s pretty easy to gain a place or two by just placing yourself in a good position. This is one of my favorite things in Circuit Superstars, overtaking can be easy at points. Whenever you're in a good battle for position, it’s not like one person is defending for a while and you're attacking. No, you and that other guys are always switching positions and it’s genuinely a blast.
There is another thing regarding overtaking. If you're accustomed to getting past someone down a straight, forget it. That’s not happening. Most of the overtaking comes through the turns. This is mainly caused by 2 things.
- The only method of overtaking down a straight with support from a slipstream, which has a pretty limited range of use. Also, the only time that this can be used is when you're already kissing the bumper of the car in front. That’s not as easy as one might think.
- The drifty physics make it easier than putting a chance down the straight
I like how the physics work and how different they are from other games. They work like a charm and they cause this game to be more interesting than other titles. However, if you take a bit to think about this, this sounds like an arcade racer. Granted, it’s leaning to simcade but it hasn’t been truly pushed over the wall yet. This is where the last major feature comes into play. Let’s talk about strategy.
Part 5: Thinking on Your Feet, or Wheels
This game has the most simplified, yet intense strategy I have ever seen. For starters, this game has 3 bars of importance. Health, Tires and Gas. The health controls how fast your car is, the tires control how much grip you have on the track, and the gas controls how long you can go before you need a mandatory pit.
The pits in this game are a different style experience to other like-minded titles I've played. When you enter the pit box, you become ghost-like and you can’t collide with anybody. You then just drive into your pit box, (which shifts around depending on what position you qualified in), and just let your crew do the work. An important factor in getting a good stop is the entry to the pit box, whenever you come into the box, the crew can shift around depending on how you entered the box, this loses time and delays the pit by a mere second or two. This seems inconsequential but is very important as the difference between losing a position to gaining a position in the pits can be by mere seconds.
Another thing that can win or lose time in the pits is gas and health. Gas and health are sliders that have to be gradually filled up in the pits while tyres are filled up in intervals of 25. (25 times 4 is 100, 4 tires on a car etc). Tires are normally quick, filling up to 100 within 32 seconds, and health normally isn’t a problem unless you have been in a battle for the last 10 laps or were in a big crash. Gas is the real kicker here. You don’t want to fill up gas past what you absolutely need because filling up a big tank takes a lot of time. In my 60+ hours I have had so many races which I have lost because I took too much gas and my other competitors have come out in front. This is one of the 2 things (Gas/Health and Pit Entry) which can make or break a race.
We haven’t talked about tires much, that’s because tires are an interesting part of the game. Unlike the other two sliders (health and gas), the tire is less impactful on lap times and performance. If you run out of health or fuel on the track, you slow to barely a crawl. When you go to the end of your tires, you don’t notice anything. Well not immediately. If you look at the performance of the car after the tires are out, you’ll see that the car loses a lot of grip around corners. Not so much that you are losing 5 seconds of time a lap but instead forcing you to be more attentive. It’s much easier to lose control of your car. Although, if you are a bit more experienced, you might be able to negate loss of time. However, there is one more thing that is caused by tire degradation. You lose a bit of top speed. So keep that in mind as you plan strategy in this game.
Part 6: The Side Stuff
Career Mode
This title lies to you. Partially. There is no career as one might think in this game, it’s really just a collection of shorter races for every car. Not much, and it’s honestly just meh. The races are cool and all but the “Championship” mode in its entirety is just ok. There is only strategy in some series, with some series being 5-10 lap races with no pits required. On the other hand, there will be a handful of 15-20 lap races with pits required for more endurance focused cars.
There is a feature though which I do like which seems pretty obvious, but it’s not as commonplace as one would think. In this game you can do multiple series at once! Insane right. In this game you could do a race in one series then leave and go to a different series. Other games don’t do that, which is insane because it makes life so much easier for casual fans.
The Garage
The garage isn’t like some super cool high-tech place where you can tune and upgrade cars in his game. It’s just a simple tab of all your cars. I like that you can’t edit the cars statistics which provides a more casual level where you don’t have to constantly upgrade your car to remain competitive.
The garage is also where you can customize the colors of the cars. Basically, each car has three different colors, the 2 main body ones and tire color. The body colors one and two switch around depending on which body design layout you're using. Design layouts are little arranged patterns that can be applied to a car for the main design. You put that on, and then you can change the colors of the design.
Another thing that I really like about the game is getting the different designs is really easy. There is a progression meter where every little stat you have during qualification and the race can help level you up. Whenever you level up, you get a new random design for a random car, some are good, some are bad, but it’s mostly a matter of opinion. It’s also really easy to level up, a longer race or a few shorter races are normally enough to get a level up. Which is neat because the ranks don’t gradually get harder to get past as you get higher, a pretty nice feature.
Replays and Camera Convenience
A camera/ replay feature isn’t something I would normally talk about, since it’s never truly amazing for me in many games. Well this is a pretty good exception. On the main menu, a tab called history has many offline/online replays (after a lot of races, oldest of the replays get deleted). It doesn't have all the camera tuning features that other games have but it has a replay of the entire race and qualification. You know what that means, you can A. Study your performances, or B. Do some fun stuff with it.
The fun stuff includes putting some insane shots with the free cam, filming big crashes (there’s normally at least 1 per race) and pretending to be an audience member. Theoretically, you could edit a race to be an announcer like if you had the time and focus. However, I'm not like that so let’s move on to the final verdict.
The Final Verdict:
This game is a great game with high replayability if you give it a try. This game is definitely not on the scale of other types of games since it’s really basic in some areas. However, it definitely is some chaotic fun. So go out there. This is one of the best 20 dollars I've ever spent.