Giants Uprising by Varsav Game Studios has an amazing concept when it comes to what you get to play out. The ancient race of giants is becoming extinct and with that so is all of their History From the kings of old to their once great cities which now lay in ruin and in return are slowly being devoured by time and elements.
Their former friends and allies, the humans, have betrayed them and now have enslaved any of the surviving lineages to serve as workers and terrible machines of war. You play as a giant that gets to go around smashing human settlements and decimating armies, bringing me back to the old arcade game of Rampage. And if it could have that much potential as Rampage did, then I could see this becoming a great button smasher game as well.
As a runaway giant slave accompanied by the fellow human convict that escaped the gladiator arena with you, your character will carry out the wrath, anger, and lust of your people for revenge on your former oppressor’s villages and townships.
You will reclaim your right to freedom no matter how many human lives that you must take so you can figure out what happened with your enslaved kin. With your revenge in motion, you will smash your enemies and be the spark of the Giants Uprising!
Giants Uprising begins with you as a giant in captivity and you are being held and forced to fight in gladiatorial battles against other giants. You and your human friend don’t want to be a puppet on strings anymore and he concocts a brilliant and unstoppable escape plan: to just leave. I mean if it wasn’t the actual truth of how this motivation makes you escape, I would still be laughing.
With that, your first mission is quite simple. You literally are breaking down doors and exiting the prison. I was looking for so much more to happen, but yeah that was it. You escape easily, and as a gamer, I am confused as to what in the hell is keeping these giants contained in the first place. The humans don’t fight and stop me from escaping, so why couldn’t I be the one to ever come up with this plan? I guess that was an idea that could only come from my human cellmate. Better yet when I left, why didn’t I take anyone else with me?
When it comes to fighting, the game is very basic in that arena. When I am forced to use combat against other giants, the overall battle is very lackluster at best. You can punch, block, slam the ground with your fists, stomp on the ground, pick up and use (or throw) weapons, and dodge. So I was expecting a fast beatdown of grabbing weapons and whatnot and duking it out like on Rampage. Unfortunately, this was not the case at all. I found out quickly when fighting other giants, you just wait for your opponent to strike, then you block the incoming blow, and then punch them in the head until they go to attack again. Then just rinse, lather and repeat.
I found out a lot of problems in Giants Uprising that were noticeable from the get-go. For one, this game has some of the worst performance issues. I haven’t experienced this many issues in a game on my PC in forever. After lowering the settings and the resolution clearing down to almost nothing, I was getting between 14 and 23 FPS here. Now, I can play COD: Vanguard or Battlefield 2042 with everything maxed and run easily at 70-140 FPS. Even if that wasn’t a huge issue, the gameplay is very sluggish and most of the time felt like it was rubberbanding back and forth.
Giants Uprising also looks and feels like the game is not made to be a Giant. I honestly felt like I was normal size at times and was just walking around the world of miniatures. I guess to give a comparison for someone to understand, I would say I felt like Gargamel in Smurf Village. The trees and everything was the same sizes as normal, but the people I was attacking were just smaller. It didn’t give me the feeling of “I am a Giant, fear me”.
When it came to the gameplay, it is basically a checklist per level of what you need to do. There are markers that will tell you to destroy specific things or kill a certain number of enemies. The game can be compelling at times, as the human forces are huge, and smashing them to pieces while throwing weapons to demolish catapults is pretty metal. But due to the awful framerate, poor controls, and ancient graphics, it’s hard to stay enthused. I honestly wanted to put this down after the first 3 hours of playtime, but I was hoping that the game got better with time. It did not.
For being a giant, you take way too much damage when in battles and the damage comes quickly and overtakes you in a blink of an eye. Luckily when you are smashing things, this in return heals you. However, when the armies come at you with their catapults and ballista, you are more trying to stay alive rather than fighting. Then with the controls being subpar and unresponsive, I hardly was able to do what I wanted him to do with my character and I died a lot just because he didn’t respond the way I wanted him to.
Now, I read that this game is far from being done. I think there is like another 8-12 months of building before the final release. I truly want to believe that if the game’s performance and controls are sufficiently improved, there could be fun to be found here in time. I am not saying to rewrite the game. I think they have a decent foundation to build on.
However, I do not think this game is ready yet to even be considered for a release now. I hope with all my heart that they take all the information provided to them from the bug reporting and that they fix all that they can. I really want this game to be something that could be considered an awesome button smasher/storyline. Giants Uprising is available now on PC through Steam for $19.99. And I truly believe that once they get a lot of this fixed, this game would be a great addition to anyone’s gaming library, but at this time, I can not say that.
This preview was written based on a preview key of Giants Uprising for PC provided by Varsav Game Studios.
