Gigantic: Rampage Edition review - Bottled up carnage with wonderful flavour

The term "MOBA" can bring your attention to those long-form tactical jousts played out in the most competitive terms. Taking an hour to complete a full game in which you could, realistically, only get into a handful of skirmishes against players. Yawn. 

The original Gigantic found itself dwarfed in the shadows of the monsters of the genre, lacking the depth of games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends, while its hero-based gameplay was also not as refined as Overwatch and even battle royale games such as Apex Legends that leaned on similar principles.

Gigantic: Rampage Edition has attempted to defy that norm by bottling the genre up into a pint-sized all-action title where every sip packs a flavoursome punch. 

Can it finally find its space in the industry and show off its well-thought-out concept and brightly-coloured palette? I think so.

A scythe and sickle to tickle your pickle

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Gigantic: Rampage Edition adheres to some tried-and-tested methods of success in the genre, pitting teams against each other in a 5v5 setting with heroes that all slot into different categories: Assassins, Shooters, Tanks, and Healers.

Yet the gameplay doesn’t force you into needing a beefy bruiser that nobody enjoys playing, and can easily function with five kill-hungry slayers, or five mystical mages.

Instead of the stereotypical jungles, akin to how the original Gigantic was designed, players fight for control of power orbs, leaving most of the action to be strictly PvP, skirting around five objective points on the map which rotate in activations. Rampage Edition ignores the need for the environment to affect the game and just lets players get to business, and it works flawlessly.

In the core game mode, Rush, the jungles are removed entirely aside from a few healing points, and you can rely on your skill to get the job done, rather than waste time on building defences or traps.

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It harnesses everything special about the MOBA genre, stripping away the bore, and activating your imagination. Frankly, more titles could do with adopting this approach.

As for the heroes, they feel balanced too. I've enjoyed getting up close and personal with Tripp, an Assassin with a cloaking device and a homing ultimate which works perfectly for flanks on teams that are weakened or targeting isolated heroes for a 1v1 box.

Other heroes from the Gigantic universe also excel in this all-action setting too, like the well-rounded and bonkers Uncle Sven, Merlin's masterful mage pet Mozu, and the all-guns blazing HK-206.

New heroes have also hit the mark, with Kajir and Roland being added, the latter of which is proving to be a popular choice with one hell of a boomstick shotgun and a devilish sidekick.

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From every background of gaming, whether it is fighting and melee action, shooting and dodging, or casting and healing, there's enough choice for you to have a "meta" character, and that just feeds into the ideology that anyone can play Gigantic: Rampage Edition without having to sweat.

Weirdly, even when you lose, it's still fun. There are few titles I can name which that statement applies to.

Lovely walls and low ceilings

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Now, here's where I was really blown away. At first glance, Gigantic: Rampage Edition looked a bit cheesy. Boy, was I wrong. 

Gigantic: Rampage Edition is stunning, the characters are well-rounded and the animations are seamless, especially in combat when all ten heroes are firing away. The maps draw you in, there's none of that brown-and-beige warfare going on. Instead, my eyes smiled just experiencing the carnage and colour.

There's also no need for complication; everything is simply put together. The beautiful maps are small and easy to move around. The characters don't need deep lore and complicated stories. After all, Gigantic: Rampage Edition is designed to be picked up and put down just as easily as a more casual shooter.

But while the aesthetics are on-point, and the substance is great, I do have some worries that the game doesn't have the legs to stay relevant for the long haul, and the ceiling for Gigantic: Rampage Edition appears to be quite low.

It shows signs of being the kind of game that you could probably toss aside and watch it fall down the pile, unfortunately.

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Abstraction probably understands this, knowing that it will never quite become the Helldivers or THE FINALS type of game that can dent the industry and stay there, but it can be a title that has a hardcore community followed by a lot of players who can dip in and out when they need something uplifting, rather than stressful.

There's not much progression for players, aside from Hero Mastery levels. That's likely not enough to keep a large community coming back for months on end, and there isn't a live-service model for skins and cosmetics (yet), leaving Gigantic: Rampage Edition a little bit repetitive.

As a fun party game, Gigantic is simply exquisite to jump into if you have a spare 30 minutes, but sadly, there's no grind at the moment. I'm not sure how long it takes to go flat, but that beautiful taste shows signs of deflation.

U and I both missed

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There is one obvious flaw when playing, or trying to play, Gigantic: Rampage Edition: the matchmaking sucks.

Time after time, my attempts to find a match were thwarted by other players failing to accept the match, throwing me back to a queue which could either rebound instantaneously or ten minutes later. There are no perks in sitting in your queue either, as it seems you’re forgotten about after three minutes, and could be sat in it for a lifetime. 

Rampage Edition has already exceeded expectations for the Gigantic universe, as the rocket-paced revamp has broken its all-time player count (CCU) on Steam, and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon, which could be why this is so unstable. 

It is fixable though. After minutes of sitting in a queue, I missed a number of prompts to join a match, like many others, having reverted to watching Suits re-runs on YouTube while I waited.

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The notification to join a game is only prompted by an audio cue and would be much more effective with some form of controller vibration. This could easily chop down the unfulfilled and cancelled lobbies significantly.

Other elements of the UI also prevent Gigantic: Rampage Edition from being a complete masterclass. While it is mostly user-friendly, some notifications such as "Ultimate Ready" wouldn’t go amiss, while the minimap also leaves a bit to be desired in terms of locating your teammates.

Still, these flaws aren't enough to put me off Gigantic: Rampage Edition, and given how hard the developers have had to grind to push this awesome title through production, there's enough respect banked to be optimistic that these wrinkles will be ironed out.

The Verdict 

The relaunch of this forgotten IP has tried to tackle the wrongdoings of its predecessor. Despite some easily fixable flaws upon launch, Rampage Edition has burst out of the box with fun, intense, and rewarding gameplay. Similar in nature to a hero-based game like Overwatch, combined with the momentum-heavy push of a MOBA that will scratch your brain and soothe it with a splash of colour at every turn.

Gigantic: Rampage Edition is a pleasure to play, if you can get a game, and even though it has a somewhat low ceiling, there’s no denying that Abstraction knocked this out of the park.

4/5

Reviewed on Xbox Series S. Review code provided by the publisher.