Gigantic Releases On Steam

The Mighty Gerbil

Tribe of Judah TF 2 Chapter Leader & CGA Admin
Staff member
Gigantic, a free to play game I played extensively in closed beta, released on Steam a couple days ago. Anyway it's fairly decent. I like it better than Overwatch but it doesn't have the polish or depth of content Overwatch does. My issues with Overwatch are another topic but the short of it is Overwatch limits player agency extremely and, with the exception of the roster limit, I feel far more free in Gigantic.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/327690/Gigantic/
https://www.gogigantic.com/en/

PROS:
1. Yummy, yummy art style.
2. Characters exude personality and originality.
3. Free to play not pay to win.
4. Enough elements to differentiate it from a pure Moba, because I normally don't like Mobas.

CONS:
1. No voice chat.
2. The Moba problem of one player dropping and ruining the game is still present.
3. Few Maps, one mode.
4. A few characters could use a little more balance (HK-206 I really tried to make you work in closed beta but other characters are just better).
5. You have to use Arc, yet another game client. (Though using it through Steam will log you into it automatically once you've logged into Arc once.)

Other things which could be bad or good:
1. I miss the closed beta hud it was better.
2. No real animated emotes, yet.

GAMEPLAY:
Gameplay itself can be a bit daunting to pick up but it does have a good tutorial and practice modes (Gerbil will also help get you up to speed should we meet up). All characters can be used in these modes too so you can try them before you buy them for multiplayer. The goal of your team is to gather power for your "Gigantic" guardian by killing enemy players and controlling points. Get enough power and your guardian will attack the enemy one downing it and giving you a window to damage it. Damage it enough and it dies and you win. The finer details come in how you upgrade points and where you attack. Points don't only provide power but are also Moba towers, except they are creatures. These areas provide some safety to heal and retreat to if upgraded. Teams attacking together are a must but where and when vary based on who is alive and what is upgraded on the map. Though if an enemy team isn't paying attention you can backdoor to kill their creatures. Finally certain conditions can also trigger an end game "clash" were the gameplay goes faster and sometimes the map gets smaller. Guides here.

CHARACTERS:
All the standard classes are there assassin, healer, support, sniper, tank etc. . Most of them are soft classes not hard classes meaning healing helps but it's not required to win. Character designs are far more varied than Overwatch's "put a cyborg part on them so them seem like they are in the future" too. Swashbucking owl, eccentric alchemist uncle, thin Ursula from the little mermaid, a Minotaur, a dragon sorcerer, a robot (Gigantic made HK-206 before Overwatch's Bastion and is less like Johnny 5 BTW), a female Rocketeer (err not the dancers the jet pack guy), a female Goth lighting assassin and so on. Most of the time FTP games that do weird characters don't make it work but it not only works in Gigantic it seems normal. Everyone "fits" because there are so many different characters no one sticks out.

FREE TO PLAY MECHANICS:
The game has a standard weekly 5 character rotation but you can pay or play to unlock everything and nothing is pay to win. It's a bit confusing but I believe the system works like so. There are cards and badges which give rewards either in exp or money. You get like 7 free cards to start and a free card draw every day as well as one from leveling up different characters (the free draw stacks up supposedly so you don't have to play every day though I don't know if there is a limit). For every draw you choose between three cards which all have different tasks. Some require winning, getting revenge, not dying etc. Basically the only tasks that require anything more than playing well are use "X" character tasks but with 3 different cards to choose from I've yet to get a hand that doesn't have a non-character related task. You can have 7 of these cards active at one time. There are also badges which basically function the same but are always on, some of the card tasks require badges to complete. There are also rare cards which give better rewards but are harder to complete. It's basically a system of picking achievements and completing them for game money. You can unlock a 5000 point character in about the first 4-5 hours, if you are decent, though it is currently a double exp weekend which helps complete exp based tasks that can give you money. Many characters are 10000 though and once you run out of cards progress will slow. Of course you can pay real money to unlock all the characters. There are also skins to earn points for and point boost things.

MORALS:
Not really sure as there is no story mode or cut scenes to speak of. There is no cussing and none of characters are lewd (YAY). Clearly it's a mythical world but I haven't got into the mythology of it. There are few text entries on the character screens which reference "Eternals" but it's pretty vague. Tyto is referred to as both as male and female but I believe that's a reference to the mystery of the character not actual androgyny. With no voice chat any cussing would be purely text chat though atm I can't get chat to work for me.

Anyway I don't think it has the staying power of TF2 or even Overwatch but it is interesting for what it is. I don't have much time to play before Wednesday, as I have other things to do, but to people who know me look me up after then and we can test it out :) .
 
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The artwork is pretty. I might give it a try since a friend of mine runs on Xbox and this game allows cross-platform play.
 
No, no, no, no, no, no, and no.

The game was clearly designed for console. Couldn't get it switched over to PC controls. Locked up on the tutorial in a perpetual spin around my character, accidentally clicked the settings option and ended up having to kill in task manager because it didn't allow me to back out of the settings.

Uninstalling it right now. Foul creature... crawl back to the darkness from which you spawned!
 
No, no, no, no, no, no, and no.

The game was clearly designed for console. Couldn't get it switched over to PC controls. Locked up on the tutorial in a perpetual spin around my character, accidentally clicked the settings option and ended up having to kill in task manager because it didn't allow me to back out of the settings.

Uninstalling it right now. Foul creature... crawl back to the darkness from which you spawned!

Oh sorry to hear that :( . Aside from a window glitch it's played fine on my computer since closed alpha, never used a controller even. They did go to a windows 10 exclusive at one point, which got me to stop playing, but they reversed direction later. Loading Arc through Steam is kind of weird but it's worked. Oh well :( .
 
http://www.arcgames.com/en/gg-refer...eferral_code=SkNpQllsTlRmQmdQTnlkajRFQzNxQT09

I noticed there is a refer a friend program after I had already made this thread. It rewards both the host and invitee if you invite and play with people in the game. The link it generated for me is above. Since I was talking about the game already I thought I'd throw it out there since it was there /shrugs. My arc name is themightygerbil but IDK if you need it or how it works. Also if I don't recognize your name I will reject any friend request, just an FYI.
 
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