Started out well, was able to blow holes in walls and create alternative paths. But that didn't last long. I don't really remember the destruction having much effect on the campaign. A few holes you could blow open but nothing that amounted to much. It was a mostly linear corridor shooter with old school enemies with precision aim. Save often. I got stuck a few time not knowing in what order I was supposed to do things to get events to trigger so I could proceed. Went downhill when the enemies with gauss rifles showed up. Instant head shots. I died a lot!! Used God Mode for the last two levels. Interesting to see how the story began but I doubt I'll ever play it again. I much preferred Red Faction Guerrilla and Armageddon to either of the first 2 games.
Pretty much constant shooting. Enemies appear to respawn at certain spots until you cross an invisible barrier which stops them. The story is nothing special, just a reason to shoot some bad guys. No relation to the first game. Not a big deal to me but some people seem upset about it. Seems to have more destruction then the first game to me. Mostly you can blow holes in some walls to proceed. Boss fights are rather asinine. Prepare to die. I resorted to cheat codes for the last 3 bosses. Really only 4 bosses.
Simple and straightforward alien blasting fun. A variety of weapons and armor. Lots of little secret rooms to discover, I barely found half on my first playthrough. Has a nice soundtrack. I played on normal and the game was fairly easy, especially towards the end when you had some wonderful weapons, you pretty much wave them in the direction of the aliens and squish. Somewhat short, my first game lasted about 5 hours start to finish. The character controls are good, the car controls were a bit of a pain, for most of the car parts I was unable to turn while driving in reverse. There were a few parts where the car would suddenly decide turning while in reverse was ok, annoying but not a big deal. Overall a very entertaining game if you just want to blast some stuff with various weapons.
Star control 1 is hardly a game, just some scenarios based on the crappy combat. I played for maybe 30 minutes before I was done. Star control 2 seemed better until I realized I had spent around 6 hours mining minerals and wasn't really making any progress in the game. My ship was still too weak to head out into space and the combat still sucks. I couldn't do a damn thing in the combat of either of these games, I was often exploding before I could determine where the enemy ship was at. The story seemed interesting but the gameplay is crap. I wanted to explore space and interact with aliens not mine friggin minerals for hours on end.
Tons of different races, the larger units look pretty cool, smaller units are very pixelated. About halfway through the campaign my army became unnecessary. I could run my hero into an enemy base and just let him hack everything to death. Resource management is a pain as you don't usually have enough troops to guard all your resource spots so you will be chasing the enemy hero and a few units around the map as they steal your mines. The story started out good but crapped out at the end. Kept me playing to the end but I don't have much desire to go back.
At it's best Giants is an average 3rd person shooter with some absolute crap rts elements thrown in. The level design is nothing special, just some islands with trees and lots of hills you have to fly/jump over or walk around. Base building is torture. Even worse, it is pointless, you never build troops all you do is spend 30 minutes building an item shop which gives you access to the one item you need to complete the level. In between gathering the smarties (your builders) and vimp meat/souls (resources) you will have to defend your base yourself. So I hope you enjoy lots of running back and forth. The game isn't all that difficult, but there are a few areas with loads of enemies that may take a few tries to get through. I was enjoying the meccs campaign until I got to the ridiculous base building level. Delphis' campaign was worse then the meccs simply because the bows were annoying to use and she had several levels where you had to build a base. Her campaign also features 4 race levels that are pretty much crap, I forced myself through 3 of them and skipped the 4th one. I only made it to level 3 of the Kabuto campaign, it was just boring. Kabuto loses health pretty quick for a giant monster and his offspring are not worth the effort of controlling. Cutscenes made me chuckle every now and then. The graphics are decent, pretty good for a 13 year old game.
I pretty much hate this game, my favorite part was when I uninstalled it. I spent most of the game hording supplies that I didn't really need. Ammo and health are plentiful, at least on Normal difficulty. Once you gain the ability to use guns the enemies are all easily killed. The biggest danger is that they will spawn right behind you while you are looting the previous monster that spawned right behind you. The graphics are dated but bearable, the character models are horrible though. Space Monkeys! I don't even know what to say about these. The combat felt very clunky to me, just unsatisfying. The story was pretty meh for me, just never grabbed me. Never felt any of the atmosphere or horror that so many of these reviews are going on about. Just ran about the spaceship looking for key cards, weeeeee. Hacking was pretty tedious with very little payoff considering you can just shoot the cameras and turrets without much trouble. I was very glad when I finished this game, it was a chore to play. I regret missing it when it came out , it might've been a better experiance.
