466th played so far
Genre: Strategy/Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2000
Developer: Planet Moon Studios
Publisher: Interplay Entertainment
A game combining strategy and shoot ’em up strategies sounds like it could be pretty fun – although it might not be high up on my list now, Magic Carpet 2 was pretty enjoyable.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto comes from the developers previously responsible for MDK, a fun FPS we’ll cover later that hopefully means good things for this game.
Our Thoughts
Quick hint to any and all game developers: If I die three times in your tutorial, and I feel it’s because of bad controls and shitty balancing, you’ve made a bad game. I don’t care how good the voice acting is or how well the world comes across, if I come to your game fresh, with okay enough gaming skills, and I can’t get through those initial levels, you have done a terrible job.
This may sound harsh to say, but the game started out that tough – not arcade tough, where that’s the challenge – but annoying tough, where you’re repeating the same actions without too mch of a reward. There’s the promise of a strategy game in there, but we never actually got to experience it because the whole sequence was just too frustrating. And this was four or five levels in, so it felt like we actually tried to do it right.
The jetpack and character abilities are pretty interesting, but at times the controls are frustrating. The story and characters are set up as quite light, while some darker things are mentioned the game hasn’t generally dug into it too much (yet).
Final Thoughts
While there might have been a good game in here, it took too long for it to appear. The difficulty feels apporpriate in older games, but not when half the core game isn’t in before you start throwing up walls that stop players. The game missed its hooks to draw you in and delaying the good stuff isn’t worth it here.