Developer: Digital Mayhem (Planet Moon Studios)
Publisher: Vivendi Universal (Interplay)
Platform: Playstation 2, Win 95/98/Me, Mac (OS X only) (Reviewed On Playstation 2)
ESRB Rating: Teen (PS2), Mature (PC & Mac)

Giants: Citizen Kabuto created some great buzz when it first appeared on the PC, so I was naturally interested to see how the port to the Playstation 2 had developed. Given the successful port of Max Payne, I had high hopes that Giants would be as solid a gameplay experience. While an entertaining little diversion, Giants doesn't really live up to the hype. Graphics problems, short single-player, and the absence of the highly-touted multiplayer version from the original (and an inexplicable edit to reduce the rating from Mature to Teen) make the Playstation version a less-than-overwhelming experience.

The game's story is amusing and simple. You begin as a Mecc, essentially a British Space Marine, complete with powered armor, jetpack, and a bewildering array of weapons. Accidentally stranded on an obscure little backwater planet, you and your platoon must save the indigenous Smarties from the evil machinations of the Sea Reapers, in hopes of getting off the planet and proceeding to serious drinking and vacation elsewhere. As you progress through the story, you take on the role of Meccs, a beautiful turn-coat Sea Reaper (daughter of the evil queen, wouldn't you know it), and finally, the infamous Kabuto itself, a massive Godzilla-esque bipedal monstrosity that stomps, smashes and devours anything in its path.

The game is primarily a straight-forward action shooter, with lots of zipping around and plinking at the various nasty inhabitants of the planet. But there are stints of jet-ski racing, base-building, and architectural destruction thrown in to boot. To its credit, the game tries to be a wide variety of things, but it fails to be outstanding at any of them. This is not to say the game isn't fun (it is), but it's 5-day rental kind of fun, not shell out large green kind of fun. The story mode takes between 10 and 15 hours to complete, and there's precious little in the way of side-quests or bonus missions that would make it worth replaying. Add to this that you face only a handful of different types of opponents, and it can also get a bit repetitive.

Visually, the game is decent, with a very distinct and original style to all the characters and backgrounds that chucks realism in favor of a more cartoonish look. The biggest problem is framerate. During some of the more intense moments, when facing large numbers of enemies or while flying using jetpack or magic, the game lags badly. And since such circumstances are fairly commonplace after the first few missions, it can get pretty annoying. The animation is otherwise decent, but the polygon counts are pretty low, so everything looks a bit blocky.

The game's audio is entertaining, and the cutscenes are full of "adult" humor that the voice talent delivers with excellent comic timing. Music is minimal, and never really jumps into the fore to make you take notice, but I suppose it's better to be forgettable than terrible where such things are concerned. As a bonus, bad guys make very satisfying crunchy noises when Kabuto pops one in his mouth.

I'm not sure what added features the PC and Mac multiplayer modes make possible, but without them, the Playstation 2 version is only a mediocre addition to one's game library. The missions that involve base-building were easily the most entertaining, as they added a nice strategic element to a too-simple shooter, and more of them would have been cool. In fact, a bonus play mode with nothing but such missions would have made the game substantially more worthwhile, and given players a reason to finish the game and continue to play.

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