Gigantic Army is a great new entry for Astro Port's line of shooters. If there was one complaint to be had, the game does stand on the short side of the spectrum although there is a refreshing lack of filler.
Gigantic Army is a breezy retro-style shooter that STG enthusiasts would do well to check out. The tiny doujin team at Astro Port have created something special, hearkening back to the games of yesteryear with a well-crafted dose of nostalgia.
It's simple arcade action game. If you're a kid who grew up with modern games or a hipster gaming journalist, you won't like this game.
However, if you grew up playing games from 16 bit era, you'll enjoy Gigantic Army. This is pretty much a modern version of the old classics from the SNES, Genesis and Neo Geo. The controls are very good, the game is full of awesome bosses and the level of difficulty is decent. The doesn't have a save feature, so you're gonna have to beat in one go, just like the old days.
And that means you're gonna die until you memorize the game and figure out the best strategies to beat. However, the game is not that hard. It took me about 2 hours to beat it on normal.
Pretty good game.
I really enjoyed this game, I played 3h of it and I had a ton of fun, this game is pretty difficult so I must confess I finished it on Easy since I was exploding too much on Normal. I find pretty fair the $6 price since you can replay the game on varied difficulties, equip your robot with 1 of 3 main weapons and 1 of 3 special specials and try to get higher scores with faster runs.
If you liked the old school arcade 2d scrollers you might like this, it's a bit like Metal Slug or Contra but with its own flavor, the robot is pretty slow but you can dash and you will need to master the jetpack too, in the end the most fun is with blowing enemies up, destroying mini bosses and huge bosses is also quite gratifying.
If you expect more bang for your buck despite its budget pricing, then you might be left feeling a little underwhelmed by this short-but-sweet adventure.
My first impression of Gigantic Army was not very good. But the longer I played, the more I enjoyed it. I realized how much I missed such games. [05/2014, p.61]
The story and design may not be unique enough to allow the game to stand out and be a hugely memorable experience, but the gameplay itself is very satisfying and not purely a nostalgia trip.
I understand the desire to create games which hark back to the days of arcades. However there are games out there that just do it better than Gigantic Army.
First Impression:
It's difficult not to compare this to Metal Warriors for SNES, but that was the experience that I was looking for when buying this game. I feel it was a step back mechanically from SNES. Mainly the button mapping. It's great that you want a retro feel and you allow button mapping, but we've had 6 button controllers since the **** don't need to bind melee with shoot. I would also like to have a seperate hold button for my fire arc rather than holding down my shoot button to do that, forcing me to time my jumps and movements with my gun's rate of fire. This makes me feel like I have less control of my mech.
Movement of this game is very slow. You are walking everywhere. Yes, Mechs are slow, but every game usually adds something to help out. I am not always boosting up, can't I boost forward in the air (like the SNES)? Or something like the 'skates' from Heavy gear? I have 8 more buttons on the 360 pad. That won't happen, though, because the levels are very small and faster movement would reveal that.
These problems could actually be ignored if the story were less boring. But it's a Japanese game, and that's clear with the ****'s all about the score.
Overall, it's good. $6 is a fair price. It was worth skipping a Starbucks coffee.
+ It hits the retro feel without being cheesy about it.
+ Good character design.
+ decent weapon variety (6)
- Sloooooow movement (not sluggish)
- Music is alright, but nothing that I will be whistling on my way to work.
- 6 actions tied to 4 buttons.
- One mech, no customizing
- Single Player
If you are looking at this game and haven't played Metal Warriors, I also suggest finding a copy of that.
There's talent behind the graphics, but I didn't feel compelled to replay the short campaign, even though I only made it ~30% through. I feel like the game could be completed in an hour or even less. The gameplay is slow moving spectacle action, with a few platforms thrown in.
Cybernator Lite – is how I can sum up this game in two words.
Being a clone of old-school mech action games like that of Assault Suit series is pretty much what this game had intended, so the developers have succeeded in that regard.
However, make no mistake, it falls just about short of Cybernator in almost all regards – the production value simply isn’t there compared to the originals and while you can’t hold an indie developer to have production value of a AAA title, it just feels a bit lacking in most regards.
The graphics, while it starts out vibrant, falls a bit flat and is dull as you progress to the stages, and enemy designs are much the same. I can’t help but feel that the team started to run out of steam as they got along deeper in to the development.
There’s nothing too much standing about the music, though I couldn’t peg it for being bad either.
The controls and movement are essentially exactly like Cybernator, so no issues there, except locking the gun angle is not as intuitive, but nothing that’s a deal-breaker.
Getting through the game and blowing everything up feels pretty good, and it offers a decent enough challenge to get you trying a few times. In all, it held me over for a good indicated 4-5 hours of playtime, but it’s a short one-and-done game for me.
It’s not a terrible game by any means – I got exactly what I paid for – a Cybernator clone. But the execution of everything is just about average, so that’s the score that I will be giving this title.
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