Ben-Hur

This was a freebee that got a bit of stick but I’m not sure why. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a horrible game but it isn’t a real game experience as it only takes 10 minutes to get through... if you don’t die repeatedly like I did.

Ben Hur is a chariot racing game that sees you complete three races for a maximum of 9 laps of an oval circuit. But you won’t do that. What you will do is try to destroy all of the other chariots by ramming them in to walls, whipping their horses and just generally do everything you’re not supposed to do in modern racing games.

In terms of the game play it feels really unfair. Some runs, my chariot appeared to be made of pink wafers in that it crumbled as soon as it went near another chariot, whereas my opponent’s chariots were weapons of mass destruction in comparison.

That about covers the gameplay elements so on to the...

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 10 Achievements

With a game that can only take ten minutes comes a relatively short achievement list that proves if something is marginally difficult but quick, people will persevere with it.

The first two I got were for completing laps in under 120 and 60 seconds and considering how one-dimensional the course is, these two are pretty pointless. With your waffery chariot, it should be considered an achievement for simply finishing a lap.

The next one I got was for destroying an enemy chariot. Again, this shows how shit I was at the game as I finished a lap before destroying a chariot for the first time. This ties in with the achievement for winning a race as the only way I actually managed to win was by destroying all of the competition.

This is where the achievement list gets annoying. You can win a race if everyone is destroyed but the AI is so equally competitive with each other, and stupid, that they will destroy each other or crash into walls before you get a chance to destroy them all. There are two achievements for destroying all chariots in one race and destroying all chariots in all three races. To get the last one though, if an AI opponent does crash in to a wall of its own accord, you can simply kill yourself and restart the race keeping the result from the previous race if you are in race two or three. You also get an achievement for completing all three races and winning. But you have to restart a race if you don’t win so this achievement is just for completing the game.

There are another two achievements for destroying 1 and 5 opponents with the whip attack mentioned above. Getting whip kills is incredibly fussy and after the first one, you have no way of knowing how many you’ve got. You’ve got to keep whipping and cross your fingers!

The last achievement I unlocked was for winning a race without using a health potion and based on my wafer chariot comments you can probably understand why. The only way I found to do this was to actually win the race by racing. However the game suffers from Mario Kart Syndrome in that no matter how hard you race, or the AI races, you never really pull away from each other. And you have to actively avoid the health pick-ups which is the opposite of Mario Kart.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Ben Hur is a quick but irritating completion. On the whole, it’s easy but not as easy as it’s advertised (videos for 1,000G in ten minutes can be found on YouTube). It doesn’t deserve the furore against it though – it’s a free game with easy Gamerscore, the operative word being ‘free.’ It someone gives something to you in exchange for nothing, you aren’t obligated to enjoy it. Take the easy option and just don’t play it.