Bug free, but lonely. Review

Bug free, but lonely.

When Giants was first introduced several years ago at E3, it looked to

revolutionize multiplayer gaming with an intricate balance of three distinct playing

styles mashed into one cohesive effort. But when it was finally

released a year ago, its myriad successes were matched by its plethora of

bugs. The result was exciting and frustrating and a total nightmare to grade.

Fast forward to the present. With the highly competitive console market in

full bloom, it’s a fitting time for publishers to start moving PC games on to

these powerful home rigs. In the case of Giants, it also gives them a

chance to clean up some of the crash bugs once and for all. Unfortunately, while

they were spraying Raid on the pesky critters, they also wound up killing off

some of the fun that made Giants such an anticipated port in the first

place.

Giants

is an action game set on a big, beautiful planet floating about in space. Three

races vie for control of the island – the macho, cockney Meccharyns, the exotic

female Sea Reapers, and the brutish giant Kabuto. You’ll play as all three over

the course of the single-player story. In a sense, Giants is really three

distinct games rolled into one due to the different abilities and mechanics

of the three sides.

You start off as the Meccs. Having crash-landed on the planet on your way

to a nifty vacation, you find yourself embroiled in a struggle between the indigenous

Smarties and the oppressive Sea Reapers. The smallest of the bunch, the Meccs

rely on jetpacks to fly and big guns to destroy. Zipping around blowing stuff

up is quite fun, and their burly firepower more than makes up for their lack

of endurance.

After wailing through a few hours of Mecc missions, you’ll start playing as

the Sea Reaper Delphi, who is out to stop the terrible ways of her evil mother,

the Queen Sappho. Delphi is the magic user of the lot, using a collection of

interesting spells and brutal bow and arrow attacks to beat down foes. She can

also ‘turbo’ around the island like a ninja, blazing past opponents in a flash

and gutting them before they knew what hit ’em. Obviously, this makes her a

blast to play.

Last (and probably least) is the giant Kabuto. The big boy is the hulk of

the litter, a towering, lumbering monstrosity who has perfected the art of smashing

things. Playing as Kabuto is easily the most straightforward of the three, though

a few power-up moves and the ability to hatch controllable offspring give him

some variety.

Still, it’s tough to play as the slow giant after zipping around as the Meccs and Delphi. It’s not nearly as challenging or rewarding. Kabuto is also missing the base-building ability of both Delphi and the Meccs, though in honesty that’s really not as big of a letdown as it should be.

In the port from the PC, the control over the base building portions of the

game has been all but stripped away. You basically go out and gather Smarties

and the meat (Meccs) or souls (Delphi) of the cow-like Vimp, which in turn feeds

the Smarties, who in turn go about building up your little home base. The PC

version allowed you to decide which portions to build first. Do I fortify my

walls or build a gift shop to get new weapons?

The choice is gone in the PS2 version. You just haul back a few Smarties and keep feeding them until they’ve built up your base to the max, after which you either plant a pop-up bomb (Meccs) or cast the Tornado spell (Delphi) on your enemy’s barracks. It’s redundant and not well-implemented.

These base building bits are also far and few between. There is exactly ONE

base building mission as the Meccs and only THREE as Delphi. That’s it. This

was okay in the PC version because the single-player was initially designed

as a warm-up for the multiplayer (which, for a long time, was unplayable due

to bad Mplayer matching and some of the game bugs).

The

problem is that there is absolutely no multiplayer in the PS2 version. When

you beat the game, you’re done. Though the game is a decent length – around

25 hours or so – the only reason to play it again is to try it on a harder difficulty

setting. There’s no Skirmish mode or Quick play mode or any other mode at all

aside from the Story. Plus, you don’t get anything new after beating it on the

Normal difficulty setting, which kills off the replay value. This game feels

like a port instead of having some notable differences to reflect the different

hardware.

Regardless of which side you’re playing, the control is very well done. An intuitive

auto-aim makes fragging enemies simple and holds up for all three sides.

The story is exactly the same as the PC version, which is a good thing since

it means that this is still one of the funniest games around. The Smarties offer

terrific comic relief. You’ll meet Yan the Samurai Smartie, who may or may not

be your father, Boorjoyzee, the grumbling Scottish Smartie and an assortment

of other bizarre little dudes. The dialogue is very good and the humor is very

British – couple that with top notch voice-acting and you’ve got wealth of very

entertaining cutscenes.

But like the PC version, the hilarity peters off dramatically when you reach

the Kabuto levels. The Meccs and Delphi have a ton of funny story elements,

but then the Kabuto experience just sort of flings you from mission to mission

without any new cutscenes. It’s very odd and makes the game feel incomplete.

The PC version featured some jaw-dropping graphics, but the PS2 version will

put your jaw back on. It doesn’t look bad, per se, but it hardly holds a candle

to the PC. Textures are somewhat flat (particularly the ice, which looks terrible),

the colors are a bit washed out and several missions have frame-dropping sequences

(apparently flying Sea Reaper guards cause the game to chug horribly). The planet

is still colorful, though, and some of the explosions and smoke effects are

neat.

The enemy AI has taken a turn for the worse, as Sea Reaper guards never really

take cover and seem oblivious to the actions around them. I once decimated a

squad of guards in a ball of fire and watched as another patrol group standing

no less than 5 feet away continued walking along at a steady pace without paying

me any mind. Dumb.

At least this time around you can save whenever you want, which is much nicer

than the PC version that wouldn’t allow you to save in the middle of a base-building

level.

I can see why Giants was considered a good game to port, but it suffers

in the translation due to weaker graphics, worse AI and the missing multiplayer

game. Though the core of the game is intact and it’s still got some genuinely

fun moments, this is a much better game to rent than to own.