iPhone Review: Ben Hur Live

Publisher/Developer: United Soft Media Verlag GmbH
Genre: Racing
Price: $2.99
Verdict: Epically boring.
Pros: Exciting theme, intuitive controls.
Cons: It’s the stereotypical movie-based game.

“Ben Hur Live” conjures up images of mighty gladiators, chariots with blades chewing up opposing chariots, and epic stories of honor lost and honor found. Unfortunately, “Ben Hur Live” only really succeeds in chewing up time and $2.99 US. In the game, you’re a chariot racer touring ancient Rome, Egypt, and Jerusalem–three very different locations that, oddly, feature nearly identical tracks.

The controls are fairly intuitive: Drag your chariot to steer it around corners and debris. Tap your horses to drive them forward. Tap your opponents to fend them off with your whip. The top of the game screen provides a map of the entire track and the locations of the other chariots. The lower portion of the screen is a close-up of your chariot and your immediate surroundings. Combat, if you can call it that, takes place in that close-up view: When another chariot enters your space, you tap them to make them fall back.

That’s it.

No bladed chariot wheels, no trampling, no grand traps. On some tracks, there is debris that you need to steer around, but that’s the extent of the drama. Essentially, the core gameplay consists of keeping your horses moving quickly and weaving left and right. Your opponents are all computer AI, which was a little bit of a surprise—although, to be fair, the language in the App Store game description does not promise multi-player. I incorrectly surmised that the opponents mentioned, plus the word “live”, indicated multi-player. In reality, the word “Live” in the game name refers to the name of the live-action 130-minute Ben Hur show currently touring Europe, not to live play against other people.

The overall aesthetic is solid: While the horses and people could benefit from more detail, the horse icons at the bottom of the screen and the sounds are very well done. The most impressive art asset is the opening screen, and that’s problematic in multiple ways. The core problem with Ben Hur Live is that it fails to live up to the idea of Ben Hur. As anyone who has read the book or seen the movie knows, the chariot race is a very visceral, exciting, even traumatic event. The action in Ben Hur Live can get intense at times, but does not capture, or even really echo, the drama of its namesake. The name and opening splash screen make a huge promise that this iteration of the game fails to deliver on.