Free-to-play games have flooded the market, but the doesn’t mean huge things aren’t brewing in the world of games that doesn’t cost a penny to start up. Developer Motiga has been refining Gigantic into an exquisite PvP experience for years now, and it has finally lived up to, for lack of a better term, its gigantic potential.
Gigantic is a third person team based PvP game where you and your fellow heroes have to work together to take down the opposing teams towering monster, known as a Guardian, to claim victory. It’s a simple concept surrounded by a colorful cast and diverse classes that mesh into a world akin to an action-focused Saturday morning cartoon. Initially Gigantic may appear to be the new MOBA on the block, but don’t get it twisted – this is a purely tactical team based experience.
“We just wanted to create a great PvP game.” Carter McBee the Gameplay Designer at Motiga explained. “The MOBA tag kind of got slapped on later. [Gigantic] has enough troupes there that we just embraced the term MOBA, but that wasn’t what we set out to do. Our game doesn’t have a lot of the traditional MOBA elements to it. It doesn’t have items, lanes, minions, creep ways, or anything like that. It’s more about the PvP and action experience.”
Playing the finished version of the game after it being on the show floor for at least the past year and half was satisfying. During any given match the action rarely ever dropped with a diverse set of things to do to win the match. Unlike other games in the genre I wasn’t force to grind out my character before I could start having fun or being useful – you don’t have to wait to max out your stats or unlock your ultimate super to fight effectively. No matter the class or current ability you will always be reward with attacking with a plan and playing smart. With the benefit of assigning new skills and upgrading abilities while waiting to spawn you can get back into the fray without missing a beat in attempt to bring the opposing Guardian to its knees.
“You can’t win the game without your guardian, and that’s the main objective of the game to kill the other teams guardian.” McBee stated. “The way it works is you power up your Guardian by killing other players, killing creatures that the other team can summon, and collecting the orbs that spawn throughout the map. It’s basically a race to power up your Guardian before they power up theirs. Whoever wins that race their guardian will rampage across the map and pin the other Guardian over and give you a chance, as the players, to go in and do as much damage as you can.”
The Guardians each have three bars of health known as ‘wounds’ and after wounding a guardian three times you win the game. When you power up the Guardian, it’s a grand spectacle to watch them transverse the land to attack the other. Some fly, casting huge shadows while other slithering and crawl along the ground destroying anything in their path.
Like I stated earlier the playing Gigantic is reminiscent of a Saturday morning cartoon and this largely due to its watercolor art style and behind the back third person perspective.
“One of the strengths of the game is the charming art style. One thing the third person camera does for us is it allows you to see who you’re playing as and gives you a better sense of your surrounds.” McBee said gleefully. “In a lot of ways it can be more strategic just because you have a better sense of what’s going on around you than a traditional first-person shooter. Also we have shooter type heroes and heroes who don’t shoot at all who are melee based, which tends to work better with the pull back camera. So the view works out for our game and the fast pace nature of our game.”
You can expect to see Gigantic on Xbox One and PC with an open beta coming at end of 2016. There was definitely a lot of time and effort was poured into this title that has been a long time in the making. Even if you have never played a PvP game before this would be a great introduction into a little of everything the genre has to offer.
