Gigantic Review

  I can't remember where I heard about this game but it somehow made its way on my PC so I thought I would give it a go.  Gigantic developed by Motiga is 3rd person hero shooter.  A shooter in the sense that some heroes have guns but there is actually quite a bit of melee in this game.  This might be a little specific but this game reminds me of what Alterac Valley from World of Warcraft would have been if they had melted it down to core components for a stand-alone game.  The only issue is, the game ran terrible.

The Game:

  Gigantic is a hero shooter where two teams of five are pitted against each other in an arena with the objective to destroy the other team's Guardians.  Guardians are giant monsters that play a passive role until they have a full charge then will attack the enemy guardian.  To charge the monster you can kill an enemy or summon energy from nodes across the map.  These nodes can also be used to summon small minions that do things such as heal or build barriers.

  Each hero has a left and right mouse button ability, which are your basic attacks, and Q and E abilities, which are more like buffs or stronger attacks.  Throughout the fight, you are building up energy which can be released in the form of an ultimate move, which has three levels of damage, depending on your charge.  You also can use your enemy to upgrade the smaller minions you summoned in the energy nodes.  You will want to do this, it's worth the investment.

  Crowns are the in-game currency and gems are the currency you can buy with RL money. The shop surprisingly lets you buy almost everything with either crowns or gems, so like in League if you want to spend the time you can get the hero you want through just gameplay.  Where they go a step further is they allow you to even buy skins. In the place of daily quests, you are given fortune cards that reward you with the gold once completed.  I will say here that the pricing is pretty fair if not a little steep as a hero is a little less than $5.  Then again you can earn them so you might not have to buy them all.

  The matchmaking system in this game is pretty cool too.  You are able to pick up to five heroes you want to play then join the queue.  You can only pick one if you wanted but I assume that would substantially up your wait time.  They have fought the AFK problem through having to confirm the map as well as a ready check before the fight.  The interface is simple but works surprisingly well.

My Thoughts: 

  This game had a lot of promise of being something unique but I just could not get it to run well on my pc.  I am running a GTX 980 so it's not the newest hardware but it shouldn't have issues running a game like this especially on its lowest setting.  I was constantly clipping and lagging.  When I turned my FPS counter on it showed a drop from 60 to 17 FPS in the main menu screen just moving my mouse.  In the game, it would work well in spurts but when the action got hot it would almost be unplayable.

  The game has really cool aesthetics and reminds me a little of Samurai Jack, which holds a special place in my heart.  There is a lot going on so it can take a few round before the game slows down enough for you to know what is happening.  I really didn't understand the barrier summon until I realized the enemy was running behind a rock I couldn't.  Where I thought it was useless it turned about to be extremely helpful in moving from one combat instance to another without having to worry about getting taken out by enemies.  It made the map a lot more dynamic.

  Characters were familiar to other games that I have played but there are so many hero shooters and arena shooters it's going to be hard not to connect even the most unique characters to others.  I did enjoy my time with Tyto the Swift as much as I could.  In a few instances where the game was running at some level, I found the close combat fun.  Then again turning yourself into a turret with HK206 was pretty enjoyable as well.  Until the guy you are shooting at is on the other side of the screen, then it's pretty shitty.

  This game really does rely on a team that knows what they are doing and can stick together.  The rounds I lost had a lot to do with us being spread out and just slowly feeding a group of 4 of their team roaming around and getting nonstop kills.  We lost pretty badly but it was a lesson learned.

  Really I could see this game having promise but I was just not able to get that experience out of it.  The money model seemed fair and the fact that so much could be bought by just playing the game was nice to see and refreshing.  It's just a shame I could not get this game to run well enough to fully enjoy and from what I have searched I am not alone.  There seems to be a fix but really I am not going to go out of my way to self-fix a game when I have so many other options out there.

TL;DR:

  This game has promise of being something worth playing but I was not able to really play it.  The game was very choppy for me and it made for a negative gameplay experience.  Maybe in a future patch, I could see myself diving in but until then I am moving on.