Giants: Citizen Kabuto - Reception

Reception

Planet Moon Studios' blending of two genres in Giants has earned the acclaim of reviewers. Game Revolution and GameSpot found the simplified real-time strategy task of resource gathering in Giants more interesting than tedious, and Troy Dunniway, Microsoft's Head of Game Design in 2002, commented that the real-time strategy elements enhanced the game's shooter aspect rather than making it a hybrid of two genres. Sci Fi Weekly was impressed that both styles of play never interfered with each other, which was complemented by the unique gameplay of each race. The Entertainment Depot, however, found the base building in several missions tedious; they said the player had to rebuild the base several times due to being forced to leave the base defenseless, which allowed the enemy destroy the structures.

Reviewers commented that the imaginative character designs and use of advanced graphics technology, such as hardware transform and lighting, and bump mapping, made the graphics of the game unrivaled in its time; ActionTrip was so impressed by the game's visuals that they thought their graphics card was supporting the complex hardware environmental bump mapping it was incapable of. The animation of Kabuto's antics such as elbow dropping onto tiny enemies, and tossing up and catching food with his mouth, in particular, won the praises of reviewers. Many critics, however, were disappointed that the computer versions of the game could not run smoothly at full details on the recommended system specifications.

The AI in the game was also the subject of much commentary. Reviewers said they needed to prompt the allied non-player characters to perform actions on several occasions, although the allied AI performed pretty well most of the time. FiringSquad disagreed, calling their computer controlled teammates worthless and finding joy in leaving them to their deaths. The game review site thought the same of the enemy AI, a view echoed by IGN; enemies were unaware of the deaths of nearby teammates, and kept running into obstacles. ActionTrip, however, stated the enemy AI did well enough to take cover or flee when hurt, and constantly attack the player's base.

Many reviewers found the best part of Giants to be its bawdy humor; the scenes were "bizarre and funny without ever letting the silliness distract or annoy the player". FiringSquad claimed the humor kept them plowing through the game regardless of the issues they encountered, and were disappointed when the game steadily lost this approach in the later stages. Mac Guild and Macworld UK, however, considered the humor crude on a childlike level and its delivery forced. In spite of the humor, many reviewers found themselves bored by the monotony and slow pace of certain segments, According to ActionTrip, Giants lacked a unique quality to capture attention, compared to its contemporaries such as American McGee's Alice, MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, and Sea Dogs.

The frequent crashes of the retail Windows versions infuriated many reviewers; Game Revolution censured Interplay for focusing on censoring the game for marketing purposes instead of testing for and fixing the software bugs before release. Several reviewers could not connect to multiplayer games due to failed connections or bugs. The reviewers who managed to play online, commented the games were fun, although they were occasionally disconnected or lagged. GamesFirst lamented the lack of dedicated low ping servers, and several reviewers declared that the computer versions of the game was flawed for not implementing an in-game save feature.

Reviewers appreciated the PS2 version for including the asked-for save feature, but complained the ported game retained the AI and level design issues associated with the Windows version. IGN remarked that it looked less impressive than the computer versions. The lower resolution, flat textures, washed out colors, and sparser environments made the game average looking. The PS2 version also exhibited clipping issues; character models and projectiles would pass through objects on occasion. The game reviewer, however, praised the console version for presenting a smooth animation, rarely dropping frames. On the contrary, other reviewers stated the frame rate dropped when there are several objects on the screen, presenting a heavy load on the graphics engine. The lack of replay value for the console version after completing the single player mode was a common complaint among the reviewers.

Review aggregators Metacritic and Gamerankings calculated scores of 85 and 86.7% from their selected reviews for Giants as of 2007. Although most critics had awarded high scores to the game, GamesRadar and GSoundtracks reported the Windows version sold poorly. In contrast, the Mac OS X version sold out within months of its release, in spite of its smaller market base. According to the quarterly sales reports by NPDFunWorld, the PS2 version sold 11,272 copies in the US for the six months since its release. This is a poor sales figure compared to the 51,726 copies of Shadow Hearts and 753,251 copies of Max Payne sold in the same period for the PS2. Despite the poor overall sales, reviewers have nominated Giants as a game deserving a sequel, and have kept it on PC Gamer UK's Top 100 as of 2007. In 2009, Andrew Groen of GameZone ran a retrospective on Giants and suggested that the game's mix of humor and action inspired later games such as Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter. He further commented that games of 2004–09 were influenced by Giants in one way or another.