Giants: Citizen Kabuto
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| Giants: Citizen Kabuto | |
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| Developer(s) | Planet Moon Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Interplay |
| Engine | Amityville |
| Release date(s) | December 6, 2000 (Windows) December 21, 2001 (PS2) |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Mature ESRB: Teen (censored) USK: 16+ ELSPA: 15+ |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Mac OS X, PS2 |
| Media | Windows: CD (2); Mac OS X: CD (2); PS2: DVD (1) |
| Input | Keyboard, Mouse |
Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a multi-platform video game developed by Planet Moon Studios, published by Interplay. It was released in late 2000, after many delays.
The game was praised for its state of the art graphics, humorous story, and innovative genre blending gameplay. The game mixed elements from third-person shooters, real-time strategy games, and action-adventure games.
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[edit] Synopsis
The story centres around a planet where the local population, known as the Smarties (an odd-looking gnome-like race who like partying and drinking beer), are being oppressed by the Sea Reapers. Also residing on this planet is a giant called Kabuto who is considered a great menace. This is the hostile situation the Meccaryns (short, British starship troopers who also like to drink beer) are introduced to when they crash land on the planet. The game is split into three sections, one with the Meccaryns, one with a rebel Sea Reaper princess and the final part as a Kabuto look-a-like.
[edit] Meccaryns
In the beginning of Giants: Citizen Kabuto, you are introduced to the Meccaryns or Meccs for short. These technologically advanced English-sounding space marines have obviously mastered space travel and energy based weaponry. The main character of the campaign is Baz, a Mecc commander, and he is accompanied by his team of fellow Mecc comrades Tel, Reg, Bennett and Gordon. At the beginning of Giants you play with Baz by himself, but as you progress through the game you eventually reunite with your entire squad.
Meccs are one of the most environmentally versatile units since they are able to reach or defeat 100% of land based obstacles that are presented to them using their jetpacks (later in the game you will receive a boost module for your jetpack). Many people claim Meccs rely on numbers which may be true in some cases. However, a Mecc by its lonesome is still a very powerful force to be reckoned with, especially when they have access to their most powerful weapon called the Millennium Gun (a large hand held mortar). The Meccaryn vehicle of choice is the "turbo chopper", a helicopter of sorts, capable of carrying two gunner occupants on the side and the pilot who has access to a machine gun as well as having 3 millennium bombs at his disposal.
[edit] Delphi
Delphi is the daughter of Queen Sappho, ruler of the Sea Reaper folk. Delphi believes that the wanton slaughter and abusive treatment to the Smartie people is a disgraceful and cruel facet of Sea reaper culture and rejects her heritage because of this. She eventually becomes Baz's lover and the two are often seen getting intimate in the cut scenes in between missions. The Meccaryns and Delphi fight for the Smarties' freedom together. While the Meccaryns rely on technology to wage war, Delphi uses a magical bow and has a plethora of destructive powers e.g a hurricane/tornado spell which envelopes whole bases.
Delphi's bow is like a weapon with 4-6 alternative firing modes all with different effects, damage ratios and abilities. Delphi is the only creature that can swim, all the other creatures succumb to the pirahnas that inhabit the water. This gives her a decided advantage over Meccaryns and especially Kabuto. Delphi's main mode of land traversal is her turbo ability. By aiming the mouse cursor at an area a distance away Delphi will leap into the air and jump towards the location when it shows green. When turboing Delphi will look blurred because she is moving so incredibly fast. Delphi's vehicle of choice is the Reaper Ski which comes equipped with turbo, missiles and can even manoeuvre across land.
[edit] Kabuto
Kabuto, like Delphi, is not a faction by himself but a singular playable character. In multiplayer games Kabuto can dominate an online match even pitted against plenty of opposing teams. Kabuto is a mammoth creature in size and strength with a hominid build. Many spikes addorn the creature's body, while its maw is fierce and imposing. He is the pinnacle of Sea Reaper magical ingenuity that went horribly, horribly wrong. Kabuto went rogue when his Sea Reaper masters angered him. Alone and with no one else of his kind there was only one thing Kabuto could possibly imagine of doing: eating his sacrifices and killing thousands with his bare hands.
Initially kabuto starts of as a relatively small version of himself. Though still incredibly strong, Kabuto is very susceptible to Meccaryn weaponry and Reaper magicks. Playing with Kabuto means you must eat Smarties or Meccaryns/Reapers to fill up a meter on the right hand side of the screen. Once this meter has filled up, Kabuto will grow in size. By doing this multiple times Kabuto will reach critical mass (where he can't get any bigger), but gain access to powerful wrestling moves using the adrenaline bar. He will then also be capable of producing two offspring, relatively pint-sized mini-Kabutos. Though small, they are strong in their own right, and are useful to take out or distract targets from afar, or even capture units for dinner. Kabuto does not have a vehicle, as might be expected from its giant size, and cannot produce bases like the Meccaryns or Reapers can.
[edit] Criticism
The game was also criticized for its various game crashing bugs, bad netcode, bad frame rates, lack of mouse speed changer, and lack of in game saved games. While several patches were developed that solved the majority of the bugs, the damage to the game's reputation had already been done. Despite this the game was a considerable critical success (breaking even commercially).
In terms of multiplayer, the game never became anywhere as popular as games like Quake or Unreal, likely due to the large amount of bugs (both exploitable and otherwise) present in the early versions of the game. To further compound matters, none of the various ports of the game are compatible in any way with each other. Despite this, a small dedicated community for the PC version of the game remains in GameSpy Arcade's Giants lobby, and on the forums of the Giants World Domination website. The game as mentioned, was later released for the Macintosh as well as the PlayStation 2. An Xbox version was in development and by accounts near completion, but never released due to Interplay's declining financial status.
[edit] Third Party Modifications
Due to the proprietary nature of the game's engine, and the fact that Planet Moon was unable to release any official modding tools the game lacks a significant modding community. It should be noted however that through community-driven projects such as GiantsEdit, GiantsZip, and GiantsModManager a small but dedicated community of skinners and map makers was created.
In addition to custom maps and skins, a player by the name of Nullpointer (the creator of many of the aforementioned tools) released several unofficial patches that added additional functionality to the game - Allowing custom maps to (for the first time ever) be used without the aid of GiantsModManager, and allowing several previously unavailable bits of functionality to the game. One of Nullpointer's ultimate goals was to create a full (unofficial) update to the game, which would have brought the version number up to 1.5. Though a significant amount of work was done toward this goal, the project was eventually scrapped as a result of Nullpointer's declining interest in the reverse engineering of game software, and the lack of support on the part of the game's developers.
In August of 2005, players [NEO]Tasiin and [NEO]Vortex released the first version of their Giants Graphical Revision Mod (GRM) to the public. Created using tools created by Nullpointer but not publically released, GRM improved the overall graphical quality of the game through a combination of reworked high resolution textures and modified data files. An update to GRM (GRM2.0) is said to be in the works, but details regarding its contents and/or release dates are unknown - Though it is known that it will contain modifications to the game's executable file itself.
[edit] Trivia
- A poster of Giants can clearly be seen displayed in a corridor throughout the film 'How to make a monster'[1]
- The Sea Reapers were censored in certain releases of the game to no longer be topless. However, a minor renaming of a file in the game's directory is enough to restore the Sea Reapers to their original appearance.
