Giants: Citizen Kabuto Review

All done with Giants! Hmm... I guess this is my last review this year? And now I'm supposed to say: "and what a fitting way to wrap up Y2K," but I can't...

Giants has a lot of everything: it has absolutely fabulous graphics; possibly the best graphics I've seen this year. Planet Moon Studios have done a fabulous job, both in terms of art design and the technology powering it. They've squeezed every ounce of power out of my venerable GeForce card and have fully utilized the enormous potential of the hardware T&L. Giants world is bright and colorful with incredible looking palm trees (with separately animated branches), and a number of polys per scene which can only be achieved vie the power of T&L. The textures are extra crisp and life-like. Some of it made me believe I had Hardware Environmental Bump Mapping on my NVIDIA card, that's how good it is -- the water, Kabuto's skin, terrain. Outstanding work by the Planet Moon team! Occasionally, I even felt like I was playing one of them NVIDIA tech. demos, which were put together to show off the power of their GeForce line of cards.

What's more, the top-notch expressive voice acting and sound effects are on a par with the visuals. Visually, as well as acoustically Giants has more candy than your eye or ear can handle. Vibrant, sharp, and pretty are just a few adjectives that may sum up my final thoughts on the game's sound and appearance.

... And it all goes perfectly well with the offbeat nature of the game -- the edgy attitude, and the genuinely funny Pythonesque dialogue, which Planet Moon lads are famous for ever since their work on the original MDK. Wait - you say! All that and I don't see an editor's choice award up there?!?

Hold on, there's more of the good stuff I'd like to talk about first! Only then will I go into why I didn't give it the editor's choice badge. You've probably heard all about this already, but it doesn't hurt to mention that Giants is one giant game featuring not one, not two, but three completely different races for players to mess around with! The small, feisty and tech. savvy Meccs (right bunch of lover boys), the curvy looking, perky-nippled Delphi, and the huge, giant creature known as Kabuto. All three races are involved in this struggle to help or rule over the fourth race in the game, The Smarties. They are like the game's main motive, which is somehow related to each of the three rivaling races. Cunning little bastards; like the ole' Odyssey, who played dumb and profited during the Trojan War.

Hmm... lemme stray from the subject for a sec. The whole concept of Giants is in some ways similar to the Ancient Greek mythology. Besides the cunning Smarties, there's the one about Theseus and the all-powerful Titan (him and Kabuto are probably related). That and the fact that the game features gay Smarties, which is exactly what most of the men in ancient Greece were: clever and gay.

Meccs are small, but very well equipped with firearms (and with more than just firearms - ROOAR, as good ole' Eric Idle would say). There's also more than one of them, which means it'll be easier to fight larger and more powerful opponents. Delphi (besides being topless - yeah just delete arpfix.gzp in the giants\bin directory and you're all set) is also very cute. No wait, that's not her main attribute. Delphi is this mystical and powerful creature of the sea (balanced character - perfect combo of speed and strength). She relies on her spells and deep water to get her out of trouble. Finally, there's the huge Kabuto, who is just big and strong -- period. That's his thing, man! He smashes, punches, and kicks his way to victory. That's of course when he's not using his Offspring, but I'll talk about them later. Planet Moon has excellently conveyed the sheer size of the beast on-screen. Kabuto's dimensions are something else, and the only game that comes close to producing the same effect is Gunman: Chronicles with its gigantic boss creatures. As Kabuto grows in size, so does the special effects' THUMP! and the damage he leaves on the terrain, which helps create a stunning impression of strength and power.