Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Overview

Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a third-person shooter with a few RTS elements mixed in. You play as the weapon-toting Meccaryns, a Sea Reaper sorceress, and the monstrous creature known as Kabuto, in turn. The game takes place on various islands on an unnamed alien world, populated by several types of creatures. The cattle-like Vimps act like resources for basebuilding. The Smarties, the indiginous race, act as construction workers and base builders (or as food, if you're playing as Kabuto). And the villainous Sea Reapers wish to control the entire world, and have enslaved nearly the entire Smartie population. The world has various enemies scattered around. The game consists of episodes, and you play all of the episodes for each character before moving onto the next.

• Basil the Meccaryn's' episode plays as a squad-based shooter, with some base building elements.
• Delphi the rebel Sea Reaper's episode focuses on melee combat and magical spells, along with more base building and some unfortunate racing levels.
• Kabuto the Giant is a singular creature who uses his incredible physical strength to smash, crush, and tear down enemy fortresses with his bare hands, and then devour the hapless soldiers inside.

The game also has a multiplayer mode, which allows players to pick any of the three factions (although to keep things relatively sane, only one player per game can be Kabuto).

Characters

Meccaryns

An alien race not native to the planet, the Meccs are armed with advanced technology and weaponry. The Meccaryns wear spacesuits and jet-packs, which they can use to fly for short periods of time, though swimming is out of the question, since the local equivalent of piranhas seem to find Meccaryns especially delicious. The jet-pack can be upgraded to other backpacks, such as the "bush-pack", which acts like camouflage. The playable Meccaryn is Basil, Baz for short, the leader of the group. The rest of the squad consists of Tel, Reg, Gordon, and Bennett. A lot of the humour in the game comes from these characters, as they are not always as professional as they probably should be.

Sea Reapers

In the singleplayer campaign you play as the rebel Sea Reaper Delphi, who abandons the way of her people to fight for freedom. Being at home in the water, she is not attacked by the piranhas and can even heal her wounds while submerged in water. She can also move very fast in water, and has a super jump/teleport spell which can be used on land. Delphi uses a sword and a bow instead of advanced weaponry, though they should absolutely not be underestimated; Delphi is absolutely deadly with both weapons. Several kinds of arrows can be used, with different effects, though Delphi has a limitless supply of ordinary arrows. Sea Reaper females are also powerful sorceresses. As the game progresses Delphi learns how to use more and more spells, much to her enemies' despair. Delphi was originally designed to be topless, though no attention is drawn to this throughout the game, it is treated as natural. However, the ESRB nixed this idea and so a bikini top texture was added to the character. However, Planet Moon made it known that Delphi's original model could easily be returned with a simple modification to one of the game's files, allowing most players of the PC game to see Delphi the way the developers intended her.

Kabuto

Created by the Sea Reaper queen to make her rule absolute and unquestioned, this giant is very different from the other characters, as you have no weapons besides your body (though he does make creative use of a gigantic focusing lens in the singleplayer campaign). But given that he's about 60 feet of pure muscle, that is one hell of a good weapon. In the beginning you must eat Smarties to grow. Once full size has been achieved; Kabuto can stomp, elbow drop, devour, and body slam his way through his portion of the game. Kabuto can eat enemies and Vimps to replenish health. Kabuto can also make "offspring", using them as troops. Strictly speaking, the Kabuto you control in the singleplayer campaign is not the real Kabuto; Delphi uses a magic spell to transform herself into another Kabuto, in order to match the terrible beast's power.

Story overview

The single player campaign opens with a squad of five Meccaryns on their way to the lovely planet Majorca with the hope of getting some R&R. However the group crash their spacecraft on a strange planet for unknown reasons, scattering the group across the world. Squad leader Basil (Baz for short) and second-in-command Tel set out in a scout ship to look for the others, but this ship also crashes, due to a mis-communication whilst Baz was attempting to fix the craft during its flight. Baz falls off the side of the ship and unfortunately for him, Tel flies off, without the knowledge that Baz is no longer aboard. Baz makes his way across the island to recover his jetpack, which has been retrieved by a local inhabitant of the island, known as a Smartie. The Smartie returns the jet pack to Baz after he saves the Smartie's friends from falling off a cliff, which up till this point the Smartie had been throwing rocks at, as he assumed they were wax models (Smarties, despite their name, aren't especially bright). The Smartie then demonstrates knowledge of where Tel has crashed the space ship, and the pair go to rescue Tel as he dangles from the tip of the now destroyed craft, over the edge of a cliff. The Smartie (Who finally introduces himself as Timmy) requests to be reunited with his parents.

When Timmy is reunited with his parents, Timmy's obnoxious father requests that Tel and Baz retrieve some Vimp meat for him in exchange for information on the whereabouts of a third Meccaryn, Reg. Upon retrieving the requested meat the father suddenly remembers that his wife was kidnapped by the tyrannical Sea Reapers, who seek to take over the world. Baz and Tel retrieve the missing misses and she reveals the whereabouts of Reg (whom she had an affair with) to Tel and Baz.. Baz and Tel request the aid of Timmy's grandfather, the (actually intelligent) elder Smartie Berjoyzee, to get to the location of Reg. At this point Timmy has gotten himself captured by the Reapers yet again.

Tel and Baz arrive on a third island with the intention of saving Reg from the Sea Reapers, who have captured him. The pair rescue Reg, Reg receives a beating from Berjoyzee as he screams "That was me daughter ya dirty wee bastard!" He also informs the threesome that they will be required to rescue Timmy again. They assume he has been taken to prison so the three Meccaryns blow it up and discover via Timmy's old cellmate that Timmy has been moved. The three Meccs and Berjoyzee travel to a fourth island in pursuit of Timmy.

They arrive just in time to witness Timmy being sacrificed to the monstrous creature Kabuto, much to the dismay of the Meccs and Berjoyzee, and a new character: Delphi, the Sea Reaper princess, who does not believe in the ways of her fellow Reapers. The Meccs call for backup from the crashed ship, and the other two members of the squad, Gordon and Bennett, arrive soon after. All the Meccs are captured by the Reapers, although they are freed by Princess Delphi, who rejects the ways of her mother and people.

Delphi decides she needs to defeat the Queen by herself at this point, and after fighting the Reapers on her own for a while, acquiring the aid of Yan, the samurai Smartie, on whose advice Delphi goes about retrieving a crystal, by allowing herself to get captured, and inexplicably forced by the Sea Reapers to participate in jet ski races, with the final race allowing her to gain access to the palace where the crystal is kept. Delphi's mother the queen releases Kabuto upon the Smartie villages, but Delphi herself manages to transform into a Kabuto, with the hope of taking on the original Kabuto and stopping him once and for all.

The Kabuto campaign is light on the story; every level's objectives boil down to smashing a Sea Reaper fortress and continuing onward, the campaign mostly depicting Delphi growing more and more powerful. However, she is still no match for the real deal, and she is quickly struck down by Kabuto. For the last boss fight you assume the role of Baz again and take down Kabuto by shooting him in the weak point. Kabuto is dead, the Sea Reapers are defeated, and the world is saved. Yan and Berjoyzee fall in love, as do Baz and Delphi, and the Meccaryns plus the Sea Reaper ex-princess head off to a well-deserved vacation on planet Majorca.

Original System Requirements

Minimum

• Pentium II\K6-2 350MHz or higher
• 8MB D3D compatible video card
• 64MB RAM
• 4X CD-ROM
• 900MB of free hard drive space
• DirectX certified sound card
• Mouse and Keyboard

Recommended

• PentiumII\K6-2 450MHz or higher
• 128MB RAM
• 16MB D3D compatible video card
• 1.3GB of free hard drive space

Availability

The game was re-released on GOG.com for $5.99.