Gigantic: Rampage Edition Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Gigantic: Rampage Edition (Xbox One)

Tuesday, September 3, 2024.
by Brent Roberts

In the genre of team based first person shooter (fps) games, the recipe for success is deceptively simple on the surface, but incredibly challenging to execute properly given that the entire game rests upon the execution of a single word; balance. Should one or more characters become unbalanced, the scales will tip and the entire gaming experience will suffer dramatically. Think of this challenge as a house of cards that is constructed upon the tip of a razor's edge in the middle of a windstorm. Developer Abstraction has decided to test this balance with their release of Gigantic: Rampage Edition. Originally this game was released back in 2017 and only lived for about a year, but now is back on the consoles. So, is this latest release of Gigantic worth the pickup or are the fondest memories of this game buried back almost a decade ago? Let's take a look.

When this version was released onto the consoles, Abstraction offered up two new heroes to bring the total hero count to 25 and as well, provided two new maps, along with a new game mode to go along with Clash , and that is Rush mode. Originally Clash mode was the main gameplay experience, but now that is hidden behind a level wall where you must play and rank up your profile through the Rush mode till you reach level 10, and at that point you will unlock the game mode Clash. This is when red flags started to arise for me, because why would you take the main gameplay mode from your initial release and deliberately hide it behind some form of progression wall? The only logical thought would be that this quite literally forces gamers to play this new mode whether they want to or not, and in my book is a pretty bad thing to do. From a gamer's perspective it almost makes Abstraction look unsure of their own talents, so rather than release a mode where no one wants to play, they can force gamers to use it in a tactic to say that this mode has been played by all Gigantic players... because it has to, not because they want to.

When you're in the main menu you'll have several options to choose from: Quick Play, Play, Heroes, Store, Fortunes, Profile, Friends, Settings, and Credits. The Play mode allows you to select Rush, and if you've leveled your profile up enough, the Clash game mode as well, but also provides the ability to select a custom game where you can create an experience using bots, and this is where the biggest issue of Gigantic resides, which is in the server connectivity. Let me explain. Originally Gigantic's servers were a mess and filled with tons of errors that prevented its player base from enjoying the game. Now in this release, we can see that some of those issues have been resolved, however there are still some incredibly game breaking issues that reside within this release.

When you start your search for a game, you're put into a queue and await for your match. Here is where you start to roll your dice of chance on whether or not you'll even get into a match. Once a match is found you get a 30 second countdown where it will say "Match Found" along with a button that says "OK", and when you click on it, the game 'should' send you into a lobby. However, this is not always the case. If someone doesn't hit OK, the game will kick you out back to the screen with an error msg saying that someone cancelled the match. Now the big kicker is that even if everyone clicks OK, there is still a 50/50 chance you'll get the match cancelled error and get thrown back into waiting for a match. In a game that is 100% dependent upon multiplayer connectivity, this breaks Gigantic in half in the blink of an eye. You cannot release a game that is dependent upon multiplayer connectivity, have that break, and expect your game to survive.

It gets worse as you get into the match as well because we all know that there are people who rage quit for whatever reason, and should that happen in this game, originally there were bots that would take the place of the person who quit, but the bots couldn't die and became almost an unfair advantage when you went up against something you couldn't kill, but could kill you. Also, these bots wouldn't be "team" specific. They would instead attack both teams so not only were you now down a person, but you would have a bot that killed everything it saw. I'll take "Things you shouldn't do to upset your community" for 500 Alex. Thankfully this has been patched but the damage has been done to the community. These connectivity issues and imbalances are single handedly the biggest issues that Gigantic faces and is the primary focus on why gamers will pass on this release, and it's a shame because the potential to be a fantastic shooter game is well within reach.

For starters, there are a total of 25 heroes to play as and they are broken down into your familiar classes of Frontliners (melee), Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, and Support. Each of the heroes in these categories also have various stats such as Offense, Defense, Mobility, Utility, Role, and Archetype. When you select a hero you can go into their menu where you have the options for Overview, Cosmetics, Skills, Builds, and Fortunes. The fortunes that you come across are the same menu system you see from the Fortunes option in the main screen. These are challenges within the game that you can complete to unlock new cosmetics for your character.

This is a nice feature because Gigantic has absolutely zero microtransactions. Let me say that again. Gigantic has ZERO microtransactions. In a gaming world where it seems like you get charged extra for a start button and that games deliberately come watered down only to push you to spend more money on content already there in the game, Gigantic doesn't do that. If you want to unlock certain items, all you have to do is play, not purchase. I also love that it's not a pay to win system where you can drop some cash and instantly level your character into an unstoppable powerhouse and have an advantage over the rest of the field.

Each of these characters have skill trees that you can map, customize and develop to the following buttons: Right Trigger, Left Trigger, Right Bumper, Left Bumper, and RB+LB. These skills can be upgraded and modified on your character, and this gives Gigantic a tremendous depth to the character play styles and allows you to really dive in and find a character and skillset that allows you to play how you wish. These customizations can be saved to custom loadout slots that you can access not only at the beginning of the matches, but also when you respawn you can change your character and loadouts as well. This type of on-the-fly customization allows you select the right hero and skill set depending on the situation you find yourself up against, and that adaptation can mean the difference between winning and losing.

There's more good news with Gigantic as well, and that is the art style of the game. This beautiful, almost cell-shaded type of art style, permeates every facet of Gigantic. The levels are dynamic and colorful and well laid out that provides multiple elevation options for gameplay. The characters all look distinctive and provide lots of vibrant and colorful and their skill uses display animations that can fill the screen with light and colors, and you can really see how this applies when you start looking into more skins for your character.

Gigantic is an incredibly complex, and deep MOBA style hero shooter that has been suffered from bad performance issues, poor support, and because of these has seen their community base absolutely disintegrate right before their eyes. While some of the issues have been patched, server issues still arise, and for a multiplayer only game, this is an issue that will quite literally wipe your community. With such issues, the final nail in this coffin was that the game that was originally free to play, now costs you $20. Yes, these game-shattering issues can be yours for a crisp $20 bill, but in today's world, if I'm honest, can be spent on better games.

When playing Gigantic: Rampage Edition, I genuinely wanted to enjoy it. I was rooting for this game and wanted this to be a quality option because I feel that as gamers, our community grows better with better options and I wanted Gigantic: Rampage Edition to be that very thing, but after playing this, the only thing that was gigantic wasn't my gaming experience, it was my disappointment.

**Gigantic: Rampage Edition was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 7.0 / 10
Gameplay: 7.0 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 7.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Gigantic: Rampage Edition (Xbox One)

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