GIGANTIC (PC)

Thanks Perfect World Entertainment for the Ultimate Pack!

In the world of Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, competition can be stiff. Today I’ll see if Gigantic, a new MOBA competitor can crush the competition.

In Gigantic, you and a team of five warriors fight alongside the giant guardians Leiran the griffin and Grenn the naga. You gather power for them by capturing points with summoned creatures that can gather energy for you. If you wish you can also gather energy directly from the points without a creature. Once your Guardian gets a full bar of energy, they attack the enemy guardian and they will pin them down for you to attack. You cannot damage an enemy Guardian without your Guardian’s help. Once you do enough damage to inflict a wound to the enemy guardian your guardian will reset their position. You claim victory by inflicting three wounds against your opponent.

The warriors you choose all fulfill roles from supporting allies to front-lining in battle. The main creatures you summon to hold capture points mine the energy for your Guardian. As you level up in the matches you may choose a talent to power up each skill in the way you choose. At level 5 you unlock a powerful passive. You start with an ultimate ability at level one that needs to build a charge instead of being on cooldown. Your charge can also be spent to instantly upgrade a creature that is standing on a point.

Now despite lengthy development time to the full release of Gigantic, it doesn’t have a good unique take yet to separate itself from the competition. The gigantic guardians are glorified base objectives. We have had other MOBAs that require special objectives to attack a base before such as some modes in Heroes of the Storm. Holding objectives isn’t a unique seller either. The warriors you can choose from all have fun abilities, but nothing that makes the game shine from its competitors yet.

The creatures are a bit of a negative unique point to talk about. In the in-game shop you can buy alternate creatures for your load out. The mountain cyclops for example can be turned into a snow cyclops that creates icy areas around the battlefield to slow down opponents. It costs 11,000 in-game coins to purchase this or 675 premium currency which equals about $6.75 in real money. Now while the snow cyclops only gets 100 more Hit Points and only gains the ability to freeze foes, it’s still a noticeable upgrade. As Gigantic’s metagame develops this could turn into a very abused pay to win feature. No game that wants to be a multiplayer competitive game should lock something extremely important behind a paywall to be competitive.

So I was gifted the Ultimate Package which unlocks all heroes in the game now as well as future heroes that will come to the game at a later date. I decided to grind the daily quest cards I had to get in-game coins before I activated the pack. They are generous at the beginning and as you level up your account you can draw more quest cards to get coins. After the initial set of beginner’s quest I was sitting at about 5,000 coins which was enough for a few of the characters while some cost a full 10,000 coins. From a casual play perspective every character seems fun and usable but as Gigantics metagame develops people may prefer particular characters. The pack is definitely a pay to grind less option that may put some newcomers off who can’t play the characters that their team asks of them.

Now despite these issues Gigantic has the most important aspect of a competitive multiplayer game down. It’s fun, the characters seem well balanced and with the card system they use to award players in-game currency, it doesn’t take too long to grind up coins to purchase new heroes, skins or creatures. The characters all feel strong and competitive in their own way. While plenty of people may argue balance in the forums and Steam hubs, you’ll have fun with the summoners, warriors and various classes of characters in Gigantic.

The graphics have a nice painted feel to them but nothing stood out and blew me away. The giant griffin and naga are nice to look at but you don’t really have time to look at them anyway. The soundtrack and sound effects are pretty average too. Some people may say that no one really cares about graphics or sound in a competitive game. This is untrue; little touches on certain character skins or in the map you’re fighting in add to the experience for both casual and competitive players.

Some quick side notes: if you install through Steam a second launcher will be installed on your computer as well. If you tend to suffer lag or glitches when you launch a Steam game only to have to activate another launcher, I recommend installing the Gigantic launcher on its own. Keep in mind as of right now the game asks for six gigabytes of ram at least to play the game well; they are working on optimizing the game for lower end PCs but this will not affect my score.

I will not judge Gigantic based on comparisons to other games in the genre. I also wont judge current metagame, game balance opinions or e-sports potential. Anyone, reviewer or gamer, who gets angry when a game has even the smallest of similar mechanics to their favorite competitive game is usually a hyper fan of some sort. League of Legends wasn’t the only MOBA that had potential and now we have several mainstay MOBAs in the world. Gigantic has every right to exist in a competitive genre. Gigantic’s meta wont be developed for at least another month or two and I would be a fool to make calls about certain characters or abilities in the game before the competitive nature of Gigantic has a deeper analysis to it. That being said, while Gigantic has a lot of potential to grow its community and it has a pretty end story in its development, it’s still a very average game.

From a moral standpoint, the violence is pretty tame. The enemies explode into smoke when defeated, and some characters use magic but it is never focused upon in the game. Gigantic is purely focuses on winning against your opponent.

While Gigantic has a lot of competition and it’s only starting it does have the chance to avoid common pitfalls in the competitive gaming genre. I wish them the best of luck and hopefully they will bring a unique experience to MOBA players.