Giants: Citizen Kabuto

In Giants: Citizen Kabuto, players take on the roles of three humanoid races: gun-toting Meccaryns, magic-wielding Sea Reapers, and the gigantic Kabuto. Each player is assigned direct control of a single character. The game's developers, Planet Moon Studios, created this design to encourage players to focus on the action and not to be burdened with micromanagement. Players can customize the controls, which are largely the same for each race, with slight differences for abilities. The single-player mode consists of a sequence of missions set as an overarching story. Each mission requires the completion of certain objectives to progress to the next mission. The objectives are usually the elimination of enemies or a certain structure, but several of them test the player's eye–hand coordination or require the player to rescue and protect certain units. Players control their characters from a default third person perspective; a first person view is optional. Each race has its own offensive style, and a special mode of fast movement. Killing a creature releases a power-up, which heals or awards weapons to its collector. The real-time strategy elements of Giants consist of base building and resource gathering, wherein the resources are small humanoids called Smarties. There are a limited number of Smarties in a mission, and players must rush to gather them, or kidnap them from each other to gain an advantage. Players in control of Kabuto need not build a base; instead, the character gains strength and produces subordinate characters by hunting for food. Kabuto consumes Smarties to increase his size and power; at maximum size, he can produce smaller Tyrannosaurus-like units as subordinates. To restore his health, Kabuto eats Vimps and other units (player- and computer-controlled). Multiplayer mode allows a maximum of five Meccaryn, three Sea Reaper, and one Kabuto player(s) to play in each session. Due to the lack of a game server browser, players connect through online services MPlayer or GameSpy Arcade for the Windows version, Besides the standard "destroy all enemy bases and units" missions, the multiplayer mode includes deathmatches and "Capture the Smartie (flag)"-type games. Players are permitted either to start with a full base or to build one from foundations. == Plot ==

The game world of Giants is set on a fictional "Island" traveling through space. Its surface comprises grasslands, deserts, and forests, surrounded by azure seas. Missions for Meccaryns provide cover to hide behind, large spaces of water for Reapers, and creatures for Kabuto to eat. Meccaryn players sport guns, explosives, and backpacks that provide special abilities: and the "Bush"-pack camouflages the character as a shrub. In single-player mode, players assume the role of Baz, leader of a group of Meccaryns comprising Gordon, Bennett, Tel, and Reg. Several scenarios in the game shows the responsible Baz frustrated with the laxity of Gordon and Bennett, and the inquisitive Tel and Reg. • Sea Reapers are amphibious, humanoid swimmers. Planet Moon Studios initially conceived the Sea Reaper single-player character, Delphi, as evil, but later gave her a conscience. In his back-story, the Reapers created him as their guardian, but found him beyond control. Creative director Tim Williams gave the "Citizen" title to Kabuto for its allusion to the character's wish for a sense of belonging to the Island. allowing him to use professional wrestling attacks and aerial techniques such as elbow drops, foot stomps, and the "butt flop" described as "like the body slam, but with less dignity". For non-playable races, the team designed Smarties to have oversized heads, bulging eyes, and idiotic personalities for comedic effect. Williams used cut scenes to introduce and conclude each mission. As Baz, the player searches for Reg and Tel. Timmy, a Smartie rescued in the first mission, functions as a guide for the player, introducing other Smartie characters and providing exposition of the scenario. The plot portrays the Smarties as suffering under the reign of the Sea Reapers and their Queen Sappho. Alluding to the film The Magnificent Seven, Baz gathers the separated Meccaryns and takes on a quest to solve the Smarties' predicaments. Yan, the Samurai Smartie, serves as the guide for this story segment, giving instructions on Delphi's abilities. After completing the training missions under Yan, Delphi attacks Sappho's base and the Reapers, eventually confronting the queen in a boss fight. When defeated, Sappho summons Kabuto to destroy the Smarties, but Kabuto eats her instead. In the final story, Delphi has transformed herself into a Kabuto-like creature to challenge the original. The player wanders around the islands as the Delphi-Kabuto character, searching for prey to increase her size. After Delphi-Kabuto achieves her maximum size, she proceeds to a boss fight with the original Kabuto. Despite her victory, Kabuto revives in a triggered cut scene and restores her Reaper form, whereupon the player takes the role of Baz against the revived monster. After defeating Kabuto, Baz is shown in the final cut scene, flying off to Planet Majorca with Delphi, Borjoyzee, and his fellow Meccaryns. == Development ==

When five members of Shiny Entertainment's MDK development team broke off to set up Planet Moon Studios in 1997 with software engineer, Scott Guest, Nick Bruty, Bob Stevenson, and Tim Williams initially conceived the idea of pitting players as spacemen, pirates, and giants against each other and having fun. Initially projected for release in late 1999, Planet Moon designed the structure of the single-player mode to be a gradual learning process for the players; the game would introduce new command sets to the players as they progress, and encourage them to repeat using the new commands for that mission. Planet Moon later created a special version of the game optimized for the graphics card to display water reflections, soft-edged shadows, and weather effects. This version was not sold as a standalone commercial product but as a part of certain GeForce 3 graphic card package deals. A Mac OS X version of the game was developed by The Omni Group; they rewrote the game's software to take advantage of the symmetric multi-processing capability of Mac OS X. Multiplayer mode was initially disabled in the retail release but was re-inserted in a later patch. who posted updates of their progress on IGN. Their greatest challenge for the PS2 port was converting and storing the special effects of the Windows version onto the lesser storage space of the PS2. LightWave 3D was used by the team to convert the graphic resources. Although they had to reduce the image resolution, Digital Mayhem increased the number of polygons that composed the player character models, making them smoother and more detailed in shape. Due to the limited capabilities of the PS2 as compared to the Windows platform and the addition of a save feature, the team focused on enhancing the action gameplay, streamlining the interfaces, and tweaking the Reaper ski races, level designs, and game balance. They redesigned the controls for the PS2's controller, Digital Mayhem originally intended to retain the multiplayer mode, They also announced plans for an Xbox port but nothing resulted from this. Near the release of the United States (US) Windows version of the game, Planet Moon failed to obtain a "Teen" rating from the ESRB despite changing the original red blood to green and covering Delphi's toplessness with a bikini top. They made the changes to broaden retail opportunities because many large retailers in the US refused to sell "Mature"-rated games; In October 2003, they offered the game's soundtrack to those who purchased Giants from their online store. Composers Mark Snow (noted for his The X-Files musical scores), Mark Morgan, and Jeremy Soule (both known for the music of several video games) were involved in the music for Giants. Interplay hired Morgan to compose the scores, although reports showed they initially hired Snow for the task. Morgan, however, could not fully concentrate on the task for personal reasons and handed it over to Soule. Closing credits of the game listed only Morgan and Soule, and Soule compiled their works onto the original soundtrack of the game. Soule originally offered to autograph the soundtrack on its release in the United States, but he stopped his offer when email feedback revealed many were intending to pirate his work through the peer-to-peer file sharing software Napster instead of buying it. == 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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. Game Revolution'' censured Interplay for focusing on censoring the game for marketing purposes instead of testing for and fixing the software bugs before release. Daniel Erickson for Next Generation gave it four stars out of five for PC version. He was positive to its graphics and gameplay and called it a "brilliantly conceived", "beautiful" epic game. Scott Steinberg for Next Generation gave it four stars out of five for PlayStation 2, and stated that it was a well made conversion of the original game for computers. 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 UKs 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. ==Possible sequel==

In September 2015, the independent studio Rogue Rocket Games, co-founded by Nick Bruty, former Planet Moon Studios founder, started a Kickstarter campaign for developing a new independent crowd-funded game said to be "the spiritual successor of Giants: Citizen Kabuto", titled First Wonder. As of February 2016, the Kickstarter did not reach its goal and the spiritual successor was cancelled, despite being greenlit on Steam. == References ==