Games you should have played – Gigantic
The late 20-teens were filled with a variety of MOBA-style hero shooters. From Overwatch to Paladins to Battleborn it was easy to look at the genre flooding the market and simply decide to avoid any of the titles altogether.
However, if you did you most certainly missed what was possibly one of the more innovative approaches to the genre from a game you should have played called Gigantic.
What’s the big deal about Gigantic?
Developed by small indie studio Motiga, Gigantic blended elements from a variety of different games to create something truly unique.
Hero shooters are typically first-person, with characters that have relatively low health pools and don’t survive much beyond another character’s full burst which helps set a faster pace. MOBAs can often be slower with an emphasis on developing your strength as the match progresses by leveling up your character and taking objectives.
Gigantic found a happy middle-ground between these two sub-genres creating an engaging third-person arena-style MOBA with tons of charm, ease of access, and a consistent pace that made for fun matches that didn’t drag on for too long.
READ MORE: Video Game Movies or TV Shows We Wish Existed
Like most MOBAs, matches in Gigantic consisted of two teams battling across a map collecting resources, leveling up, and battling the enemy team
. What made this game so unique and why you should have played Gigantic was its approach to this tried and true formula.
Instead of each team having a base of some sort that needed to be destroyed, each team had a totally rad giant monster called a “Guardians” that when enough of the game’s resource was acquired would “rampage” and soar across the map and briefly incapacitate the enemy Guardian, making them vulnerable to attack.
After three instances of successfully wounding an enemy monster, it would fall and the match ends.
The way to acquire this resource, known as “power,” was also relatively unique, as you acquired it by both the simple method of finding it or killing enemies, but also via an offensive and defensive tower-style unit creation system.
Players would create and grow monsters that had their own abilities that would support players nearby.
Monsters would begin as babies, but by feeding them the power they would grow into larger more powerful forms.
These larger monsters would act as tactical objectives and would not only generate power for its team but also would generate power by being killed giving the enemy an incentive to attack them as well.
READ MORE: Genshin Impact 1.6: Will Kazuha be a Support or a DPS?
Gigantic was also stylistically unique as its fantasy setting took influences from many different global cultures in a tasteful way, blending it with its distinctive, cel-shaded art style.
What happened?
With so much going for it, just what went wrong? To put it simply, people simply stopped playing.
Bigger titles had already been out for a couple of years and had established their player bases.
While critically well-received, Gigantic simply didn’t resonate enough with players to pull them away from games that they were already committed to putting time into.
Over time its player base plummeted to a point where Motiga did the unthinkable and announced that on July 31st, 2018 that the Gigantic servers would be shut down for good, ending any chance Gigantic had of making big.
This unfortunate fate has befallen many games and when it does it can feel as though we’ve lost something we never even had in the first place.
It may not have been for everyone, but even if it was just to say you did, you should have played Gigantic.
