Another intense multiplayer shooter is jumping in on the action with a whole squad of colorful heroes accompanied by a couple Gigantic monsters. I had the chance to join the fun with Motiga’s new five on five MOBA, Gigantic, and try to get a grip on this collection of Pixar inspired heroes.
Now I like to diversify my gaming portfolio as much as possible, but I can’t help spending the majority of my time in fast paced action games like Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Titanfall. So when I jumped into Gigantic, I was happy to learn that there were a number of heroes that fit my particular type of experience.
“We trying to do a better job at fitting to players different playstyles,” said James Phinney, VP of Product Development at Motiga. “You can come from a shooter background, and action background, or even an RPG background and get moments that you can’t find elsewhere.”
Charnok, the Draconian sorcerer, immediately caught my attention with his incredible offensive ability. I quickly took charge of the match with my fire projectiles and powerful ultimate move, only to play a definitive role in my team’s defeat by not helping with the objective.
Gigantic’s match structure is based around a few unique mechanics, and while it limits the current match variety that’s offered, I haven’t seen many modes like it in other games. Each team has a Guardian, a huge beast that needs to be killed in order to win the match, and those Guardians can only be killed when your team gains enough power.
To gain power, you have to kill the enemy team and capture power points and spawn a creature. Each kill nabs you ten power points, and each creature nabes you 20. Creatures also provide additional benefits like healing players immediately around them, building walls to create chokepoints, and summoning monsters that guarded an area around the power point.
At first the creatures, guardians, power points, and different heroes were a lot to take in. I spent my first few matches trying to understand what everything was and what role I played in it. And like other good multiplayer games, it eventually clicked.
I began to understand Gigantic and that it wasn’t complicated for the variety of unique features it introduced, it was complicated because of the situational awareness it demanded of every player on both teams.
There are many elements that need to be monitored during matches, and when you get locked in a shootout with the opponent that tracking can get away from you. Each map has several creature points that will exchange ownership multiple times, levels of power are also constantly changing as kills are exchanged.
A lot of communication and team chemistry is required to succeed, when I played almost everyone was getting used to the game (except for a few developers that slipped in for a match). That led to a lot of overall confusion, but after everyone had spent a couple of matches getting pummeled they started to understand that they couldn’t win it alone.
Like a lot of big multiplayer titles, Gigantic’s excitement is found in the flow of the game. A match is never over, even when most of your team is dead, you’re guardian is on his last bit of health, and the other team is getting ready for a push. It happened several times during my time in game, all hope had been lost as I told one of the developers that we were going to lose soon after our guardian got down to his last heart.
Almost instantaneously a few members of my team took out the entire other team and capture a creature point, and soon after pushed an attack on their guardian. Suddenly the match was even again and we regrouped before taking the team out a second time, eliminating the enemy guardian and winning the match. Exciting moments like that are what build followings for multiplayer games, and I think Gigantic may be providing plenty of them.
Gigantic will enter Open Beta on December 8th, and it’ll be free to play once it’s fully released. Future heroes will be available for purchase with both real currency, and in game money earned by playing.
I don’t know how the game handles its matchmaking or how all the different heroes balance, I played in local multiplayer matches with the handful of heroes we could fit into our play sessions. Luckily, Gigantic is having an open beta on December 8, so you’ll be able to take control of one of these colorful heroes and see how they feel firsthand.
