Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a third-person shooter video game with real-time strategy elements. It was the first project for Planet Moon Studios, which consisted of former Shiny Entertainment employees who had worked on the game MDK. Giants went through four years of development before Interplay Entertainment published it on December 6, 2000, for Microsoft Windows. A Mac OS X port was published by MacPlay in 2001 and the game was also ported to the PlayStation 2 later that year. Players take control of a single character from one of three humanoid races to complete the story or to challenge other players in online multiplayer matches. They can select heavily armed Meccaryns equipped with jet packs, or amphibious spellcasting Sea Reapers. The game's subtitle "Citizen Kabuto" refers to the last selectable race, a thundering behemoth who can execute earthshaking wrestling attacks to pulverize its enemies. The single-player mode is framed as a sequential story, putting the player through a series of missions, several of which test the player's reflexes in action game-like puzzles. Game critics praised Giants for state-of-the-art graphics, humorous story, and success in blending in one genre with another. Criticisms of the game centered on crippling software bugs and lack of an in-game save feature. The console version rectified some of the flaws found in the PC versions, at the cost of removing several features. Giants sold poorly initially for both Windows and PlayStation 2; however, it sold well afterwards and the game has gained a cult following.