The mix of many genres and types of gameplay is great but it really feels unfinished. There should be more variety within the particular genre, because it becomes repetitive. Mostly you don't notice it because of the fast pace and because of the gameplay type changes, but sometimes it really hurts the game. The jetski races in Delphi's segment are bad and then the whole last act, where you play as titular Kabuto feels like developers ran out of money and/or ideas bacause not only it's the simpliest and most repetitive segment but unlike the previous acts, it lacks any story developement and those great hilarious cutscenes. What a pity. The RTS missions are the most complex but unfortunately they're very simple too, there is no enemy AI and mission objectives and gameplay are always the same. And there is not many of them. Because of this, Giants are a perfect game for kids or for adults, who just want to play something simple and relaxing for a while but personaly I would prefer something more elaborate.
Many games like this were made in post-communist countries when kids (regardless of biological age) who grew up on old LucasArts and other classical adventure games or who just got their hands on computers and these games decided to make cool games as well. So we have silly plot, silly puzzles, silly attempts at humor and silly music (I had to turn it off after a few minutes, it's just bad). It's short, it's easy (the puzzles might be silly, but they make sense in their weird way...but that's maybe I grew up on this kind of games so I got used to it) and controls are simple so it doesn't become boring at any time, but it isn't much fun as well. It's really only a feeble shadow of the classics. But hey, it's free. :)
This game is average at it's best. It has quite beautiful hand drawn backgrounds, some of them animated, sometimes someone just walks past or car drives by, the city just feels alive. Characters are worse, especially the close-ups during dialogues look very crude. Cutscenes are the worst, they look crude just like the close-ups and the style and colour palette are like from a kiddie cartoon. Voice acting is really bad, sound effects sound sometimes very artificial and there are some bugs as well (at one location, there is sometimes echo when Jack speaks and when he says someting different there is not). Music ranges from perfect to annoying (but downloadable soundtrack would be welcomed). Controls are literally broken, according to manual, there should be two control options (one a bullet themed menu at right-click, where you pick the commands, second cycling through the commands with right-click) but you get only the menu, the second time without the bullet skin. Then you need keyboard to get to inventory or menus, which is not ideal as well. Puzzles are sometimes ok, sometimes illogical. Jack nor other characters help you very much (solutions doesn't often come from dialogues or Jack's internal monologue). Items appear at convenient places out of nothing. You can't examine items once you pick them up to give you any clue what to do with them. Some garbage items are active and you can pick them up, some aren't and there is no internal logic, why you can pick up a banana peel and not a wrench which would seem more useful. I know it's common but it's annoying and stupid anyway. One of two biggest problems is writing. The plot is unoriginal from the start and it really doesn't get any better. Many of the situations are illogical or downright absurd (beginning with the premise that they let you, as a suspected murderer, investigate the case , mess with the crime scene etc) and dialogues are cheesy at best. Characters are poorly written and many of them are bloody stupid, especially the police force is a bad joke. The second is lack of atmosphere. Despite the classical noir premise (detective suspected of murder, has 48 hours to prove his innocence), the game is not noir at all, it isn't a thriller as well. There is just no tension despite the fact that you can die many times (sometimes you can't knowingly avoid the game over, it happens for example when you enter a location). At the begining you can get to only a few locations but soon almost the whole city opens to you, which means like...I don't know 50 screens? (and there are more to come) And there are tons of rubbish Jack can (and will if you let him) pick up, which can be quite perplexing. You wander around the city freely like you were a tourist and never feel like you should act quickly or you'll be doomed. And Jack himself acts as everything was cool, no matter that he sometimes tells the opposite. That's a huge con for this kind of game. At one time you get to a location that looks like it suddenly fell from a different game (but maybe it's some kind of a homage to Broken Sword, who knows). And the graphic style is too colourful, some of the locations would fit more to a comedy game (the last act especially reminded me of a Czech comedy adventure series Polda). Pros: beautiful living backgrounds big part of the soundtrack many many locations some of the dialogue lines (mostly Jack's) are cheesy in the cool way a few rewarding puzzles Cons it's very very very very stupid lack of atmosphere problematic controls feels amateurish part of soundtrack is annoying there are really many many locations (depends on your taste) you can (and will) die a lot of times, possible dead end(s?) the end is really painful Result: not worth the money, really not worthy of GOG.
