Kabuto’s missions went more quickly than expected, so I managed to finish off Giants tonight, earlier than I thought.

The goals in his missions were all fairly straightforward: smash some things. And then smash a few others. Followed up with a bit more smashing. The main opposition was from dense emplacements of sea reapers and evil raiks with their spells (time slow and shrink were particularly annoying), but there wasn’t really an awful lot of risk. Most of the time I could just run up and do a full adrenaline attack, belly flopping onto the ground and destroying most barracks and towers in one or two hits and then chomp on the leftovers running around.

At a few points I smashed a crystal to get a shard as a magnifying glass and could use it to burn enemies from a distance, but all it was really needed for was to open a couple of gates. There were also two minions I had hatched, but I barely used them either, as regular chomping and smashing and the adrenaline attack were all that was really necessary and the minions were annoying to control.

And finally it ended with meeting the original Kabuto for the final boss fight, except that Delphi got knocked out and I switched back to Baz, one of the Meccs, for the fight. It was fairly straightforward though, just shoot him in his weak spot (the groin, of course) while using the jetpack to avoid the ground shocks he sends out when he leaps and lands, and it didn’t take too long.

Overall it was a pretty fun game with a fair bit of variety to it. The only real weak point was some repetitiveness in Delphi’s missions, with the three base missions that play out pretty much the same way and the four frustrating reaperski races.

Tonight it was time to get back to Giants, and I finished off Delphi’s missions. The base mission I’d left off at was fairly easy, and it was then followed by yet another reaperski race. This one was actually fairly frustrating, since it was difficult to pass the other guys without getting bumped around too much, and once in front I pretty much had to pick up boosts and use them near-perfectly in order to remain in front. It must have taken me a half-dozen tries, and I was starting to wonder if I was going to be permanently stuck there.

Then after that was yet another base mission, again fairly easy. This time the attackers started showing up earlier, so I had to defend the base a bit before the walls were up, but the time slow spell made that fairly easy and once the turrets were down the base could pretty much take care of itself, as usual. After that was the boss fight against Delphi’s mother, Sappho, and again it wasn’t too hard. She kept leaping all over the place, but some sword strikes when she was close and sniper arrows when she was up on high ledges quickly took care of her.

Now I’m starting Kabuto’s missions (though technically I’m still Delphi…), and the first couple just involve a lot of stomping around, bashing buildings and squishing enemies, and eating Evil Smarties in order to gain power. The control is quite different, since he’s a huge monster, and he feels a bit weak right now since he has no ranged attack yet, but he has a ton of health. You need it though, since as a huge monster you can’t exactly dodge the enemies, and there’s no health replenishment. By the end of the first mission I was already down to about half health. (Edit: Oh, reading up elsewhere, eating non-Smarties will replenish health. That’ll be useful.)

I finished off the Mecc campaign in Giants by finding Timmy. I didn’t say I rescued him, though… And coincidentally enough we finally met the titular Kabuto and discovered that they sacrifice people to him. We won’t be seeing more of him until later, though.

The final mission introduced an RTS-ish element where I had to collect Smarties and food so that they would build a base for me, composed of a shop, a command centre, a shield generator, walls, and…a pub for the Smarties. It started off tougher than it should have been since I didn’t realize how to set them to work for a while, so I was a bit behind versus the enemy forces that kept showing up, and died a couple times. Fortunately you keep your base between deaths, so I didn’t have to completely start from scratch.

Then Delphi’s missions started, with some basic tutorials on how to use her spells, long-distance leaping ability, and combat. She doesn’t have as much long-range power as the Mecc, but her close-range sword is pretty powerful. Soon after there was a base-building mission for her too, and it was much easier this time around now that I knew what to do.

Then she stole a ‘reaperski’ and a few vehicle segments followed, including a series of races against the enemy Reapers. The second race was the most frustrating for some reason, requiring about five retries thanks to getting bumped around and losing momentum or missing a boost or something. And then oddly enough I beat the third, supposedly-toughest race on the first try…

And now next there’s another base-building mission for her, and it doesn’t sound any different than the first one so far (build base enough to produce the Tornado spell, use it to destroy enemy’s base, exactly like the first one).

Rock Band 2 isn’t really going to be a primary game for me, so I’m also back to playing Giants: Citizen Kabuto. I had to reinstall it and didn’t save the old save games (there’s some registry dependency that makes keeping them difficult), but it didn’t take too long to get back to where I was.

After that there was still a variety of other MECC missions to go, including collecting 20 pieces of meat (shades of WoW…) for some cranky old Smartie, sneaking into a reaper base by disguising ourselves as bushes in order to rescue his wife (if the Reapers catch you moving around, they often run up and go “hrh?”, but remain confused), and taking out some strategic targets with heavy weaponry in order to break into a prison. And now I’m apparently off to Torture Tower to rescue this Timmy guy.

So far what makes Giants different is a somewhat offbeat sense of humour, and fairly large, wide-open environments. And the three different types of main characters, but I haven’t gotten to the others yet.

Today I got a notice that I had been accepted into the Good Old Games beta, a service to bring some of the older classic PC games to modern systems at a cheap price.

The selection is a bit limited right now, but there are a handful of them that I’m interested in, having missed them the first time around. I’ll probably eventually get Operation Flashpoint, Freespace 2, and Antaeus Rising, but for now I just bought Giants: Citizen Kabuto. The download and install was straightforward and painless, and the game itself works pretty much perfectly.

Giants is a third-person shooter, but it has a couple twists to it. You’ll wind up controlling three different characters during it, one of which is more of a straightforward gun-shootin’ soldier, one a rather underdressed magic-casting “sea reaper”, and the last one a giant monster, each with their own special abilities. I only played through the first four missions or so of the MECC soldier part tonight, and so far I’ve gotten a jetpack, rescued a bunch of annoying kid-like ‘Smarties’, and recovered a teammate that I can control.