Game review Gigantic Army for PC

Gigantic Army bills itself on Steam as “a heartfelt homage to 16-bit era mech shooters such as Cybernator/Assault Suits Valken, Metal Warriors, and Front Mission: Gun Hazard.” This got my attention because the SNES era of gaming is where I felt most game makers hit a sweet spot between good graphics and fun game play. I watched the trailer and thought it looked interesting, and the price of the game being only €5.99 on Steam was hard to resist. Obviously I didn’t. The game is cheap, so why not?

Well actually, cheap applies to more than just the price. Before I get to an elaboration on that point, I want to talk about the controls and the graphics, because this really does feel like a game from the SNES era. The comparison to Cybernator is a good fit, mainly because the mech you pilot uses almost the same abilities. There’s the dash, the rocket jump, the shield, and a selection of weapons to customize your mech with. The mech’s method of aiming even feels kind of similar. So on that aspect, they’ve done a good job.

Thing is, the mech in Gigantic Army feels much, much slower than the mechs from the games it’s inspired by, and it’s like walking in molasses. The dash is somewhat helpful in moving you along faster, but it only goes a short distance, and the double tap on the analog stick required to activate it is finicky. I had trouble getting it to activate when I needed it, and randomly, I managed to dash while I was trying to aim at an airborne enemy.

Oddly enough, in the upper right hand corner is a frame rate counter telling me the game is running a steady 60 FPS. It’s true, there’s no lag or screen flicker, but it’s hard to appreciate the steady frame rate when I’m piloting a mechanized lard ass. Also, I want to turn off the FPS counter, because who really cares about that in 2D scroller, right? But there’s no option for that. It’s just a useless thing taking up space on the screen.

I didn’t care for the default controller layout, since it puts the jump button in an awkward place, but the game does at least allow me to change the buttons. Once I fixed the layout, jumping and shooting at overhead target was less of a chore. There is still some frustration involved in trying to aim the gun at certain angles. I’d have to wiggle the stick around, watching many shots strike higher or lower than where I needed them, and while it is possible to finally find the right angle, more often than not, I found it was easier to shoot at a diagonal while walking forward until I got myself lined up with my target.

Since aiming is so fiddly, sometime your weapon is aimed up while an enemy is rushing you, and the mech has a piston-like lance that launches in the direction you’re facing. This is a good thing, as it lowers the number of times you’ll be struck while your gun is pointed the wrong way.

While the graphics somewhat live up to the SNES era, the music is unmemorable. I mean, I had to go back and play the levels during this review to confirm they weren’t all playing the same song. They aren’t, but it’s just barely there as background noise, and after a few seconds, I find I’m ignoring it. What I’m saying is, I’m never going to think, “Man, I sure hope they release a CD soundtrack for this!” But being charitable, I can say at least it isn’t annoying. So there is that.

While you have options for your main and special weapons, the only reason you might use certain combination is to get the achievements for killing 100 enemies with that weapon. For the main weapon, you can use a machine gun, a spread gun, or a grenade launcher. This is like asking, “Do you want one of these pea shooters or a real gun?” Seriously, by selecting the grenade launcher, you don’t even really need the special weapons at all. Once you’ve gotten used to the rate of fire on the grenades, you can take out everything up to the big bosses without once going for the other weapon. There are power upgrade items for the guns, but even at full power, they’re still crap compared to grenades.

My real problem isn’t with the weapon options, it’s with the timer. I really, really hate games that have a timer to begin with, and when I have to fight three bosses using a pea shooter, I often find I make it to the last boss with no time left, resulting in my health being chipped away instead. And the problem with that is, you only recover a portion of health in between stages. This is a severely cheap tactic that irritates me by itself, but when combined with the timer, it makes me want to chuck my controller. Hence, the grenade launcher became my default weapon because I could kill all the bosses, still have some time to spare, and not lose a crap ton of health in the process.

But that timer also means there’s no reason to stop and admire the view, or to explore. Not that there’s many reasons to explore aside from some power ups tucked away in a few nooks. But still, that timer…goddamn, that fucking timer. And you know what? I went and looked up game play videos of every single one of the games these folks claimed as their inspirations, and not one had a timer. Of all the things that bug me about this game, the timer is hands down the biggest irritation for me.

Now let’s talk about the special weapons. Again, there’s three choices, but this time two of the three are decent, while the other is kind of pathetic. There’s a multi-missile option that’s pretty badass, and that’s visually purdy when you launch all these missiles in a flurry of smoky contrails. They’re homing missiles too, damned handy in boss fights because they go right to the weak spots. Then there0s the beam cannon, and that’s real purdy too, and real powerful. If you target a boss’ weak spot with it, the beam cannon can melt off a crap ton of hit points from the health bar in just a few seconds. Very nice, yes. But last is the cluster bomb, and it’s not so useful. The problem is, most of the time, the cluster bombs it drops just scatter onto the ground. Even if you jump and use the rocket pack before laung the cluster bomb roughly 50-75% of the payload is wasted ammo, so it’s ineffectual against most of the bosses. There is an achievement for killing three enemies with the cluster bomb, but once you’ve done that, it usually makes more sense to go with the better special weapons.

Weapon customization has a trade-off. Choosing the pea shooters gives you more ammo for the special weapons, and each of the special weapons has a set amount of shots with no items in the game available for reloading. You can get more special weapon ammo going with a machine or spread gun, but even then you’ll want to save those big toys for the last boss and just muscle through the other mini-bosses with the main weapon.

I feel conflicted about this game because the initial levels are kind of fun, although sometimes cheap with the timer and health bar problems I mentioned above. But the later levels keep getting more cheap. Enemies endlessly respawn from a tunnel, and when you get to the end of said tunnel, it’s a dead end. You go back the way you came to go to a lower level, and more enemies keep pouring out of that dead end to shoot you in the back. I don’t suppose I’d really mind endlessly shooting them if I didn’t have the timer to worry about, but because of that, I have to rush through, usually taking damage that can’t be recovered with the health packs or between levels.

Keep in mind, when you take damage, the weapons upgrades you’ve collected also diminish with your health, so you take a few hits and you’re right back to the lowest levels of pea shooter. Cheap, cheap, cheap, and all for the sake of making the game longer by forcing you to keep playing the same levels over and over. This in some respects is similar to the SNES days, but the games Gigantic Army emulates are actually more forgiving, and as a result, less aggravating and more fun.

And then there’s the mines. In earlier levels, they’re on the ground, and the enemy mechs walk all over them, no sweat. You can jump up onto platforms to avoid them, but you can’t shoot mines to get rid of them. This is cheap, and aggravating, and it only gets worse when the later levels begin placing mines on the ceiling and the floor, guaranteeing that you hit both with almost every jump.

The final levels feature some bosses who fire missiles that you can’t shoot while they’re in motion. Said bombs are armed with guns, and they will hover all around you and blast you to pieces in the crossfire before attempting to blow up near your mech. And while they’re doing this, the boss is firing two types of canons, and wielding some kind of laser halberd. And the end boss is even more cheap. There’s no end to the hate I feel for the two final bosses, and the game just stops being fun for me.

I haven’t even gotten to the story, where humans are facing the “Ramulons.” (I picture the game makers in a meeting: “Gee, Romulans are kind of cool, but the name is copyrighted.” “WAIT! We’ll call our aliens Ramulons!”) The story is all told on what looks like an e-ink ereader, only some of the letters clip off the side of the screen, and the device is set next to a pack of cigarettes for no reason whatsoever. The story goes like this: humans are inept and bad at fighting this advanced army until level three, when they suddenly win the war. Then the narrator thinks humans are mean and stinky to the poor widdle Ramulons, so they switch sides to fight with the remaining Ramulons, who are now inept and equally incapable of fighting the same mechs they were trashing just one level before. So, three levels later, they win and…that’s it, Game End. Not Game Over, Game End. There’s no final narration, not even on the crap ereader screen. There’s not even a “You Are WINNER!” screen. I mean, I know the game is only €5.99, but shit, man, you don’t even bother with a credits scroll?

Remember how I said I went to YouTube to look at the games that inspired this one? Yeah, well all of those games have some pretty nifty story elements to them, in some cases even including cut scenes between the levels. But Gigantic Army doesn’t bother. It’s the barest minimal effort needed to finish the game. And, having looked at those other games, they all feel faster and more urgent. The size of the mechs in those games fill the screen and make them feel fast, massive, and powerful, while the mech in Gigantic Army is a little thing in the middle of lots of empty space. I think this is one of the things that make the mech feel so slow, because it takes a while to cross the screen even when using the dash.

The game is cheap in every sense of the word. It’s got a cheap price, but it’s also got a cheap story with no cut scenes or character art, cheap tactics, and cheap production values. While it does get the control and graphics right for an SNES title, the games it’s emulating were better, and they had better production values.

I did like the first levels, and so I’m willing to cut the game some slack. I can even admit that I’ll probably go an play the game again every once in a while to see if practice might eventual make those final bosses less annoying. But even if the makers say this is a heartfelt tribute, it feels to me like a half hearted effort.

I give Gigantic Army three stars. I can’t say I’d recommend it, but it is cheap and should be worth a few hours of distraction. Just don’t go in expecting too much.