Still lots of fun, but I think it may have lost some of it's greatness over time.

User Rating: 7.5 | Giants: Citizen Kabuto PS2
Giants: Citizen Kabuto is an entertaining title where you take on the role of 3 different characters (well technically 2, but it's more like 3).

You start off as Baz who comes from a race of partying soldiers called Meccs. He's a sort of space marine that crash landed on an alien planet who's trying to regroup with his comrades who have suffered the same fate as him. Along the way you meet some of the native population on the planet called Smarties. These short eccentric little fellows rope you in to doing a number of tasks for them. These include saving family members and protecting their land. Eventually you feel a sense of duty to stay and help them defeat the evil force on the planet known as the Reapers.

The action is setup in a 3rd person shooter fashion. You get a nice selection of weapons as you progress, including a chain gun, sniper rifle, RPG-like weapons, as well as a jet pack, energy shields, grenades, and more.

The variety in weapons is welcome; unfortunately I didn't find a large difference in the damage some of them created. It seemed like the distance from your target made more of an impact to the damage inflicted than anything else. There is one undeniably noticeable difference in weapon power with the pop-up bomb, as it is used to destroy buildings.

You won't be alone with your weapons in the action. As you locate your team mates (4 in total) they'll join you and provide support in fire fights. They're usually quite effective at aiming, keeping close behind you, and taking orders. They're not all that great at avoiding enemy fire but will re-spawn if they're killed.

After tearing up the landscape for a third of the game as a Mecc, your perspective on the story changes when you're thrown into the role of Delphi. She is a Sea Reaper, but unlike the other reapers in the game she sees the error in the ways of her mother, the Queen, and wants to stop her plight of torturing and killing all Smarties.

Unlike Baz, Delphi flies solo and doesn't wield any guns. Instead, she has a sword and access to a variety of bows and arrows. Some arrows shoot multiple targets, some have a longer range, some track, and some explode. She also learns the ways of magic and picks up several nice spells. These include weather attacks (hail or tornadoes), clouds of light balls (the best way I could describe it), the ability to light the ground on fire, healing spells, time prisons (to slow down enemies in within a certain area), and more. For much of her campaign however, I found myself using the sword the majority of the time.

The variety in playable characters doesn't stop there. Eventually you must stop the evil giant Kabuto (who is controlled by the Queen). To do this you must become a Kabuto yourself. Delphi uses the magic found in a crystal to transform herself into one of the colossal beasts, and thus begins the last third of the game. Controlling the Kabuto is just like getting the option to play as a third character, although technically it is still Delphi. You begin as a relatively small Kabuto, and have to eat evil Smarties (you didn't know that a witch was making them evil did you) to grow in size. You can of course eat other bad guys too, but they just serve to replenish your health. In addition to eating people, you can also claw and step on them. As you grow your special attack move will become stronger and stronger until you can destroy a building with one big belly flop, or take out a massive steel door with a well planted elbow drop. After you reach full giant size, you'll be able to give birth to a team mate who will help take down the enemies. Unfortunately I found Kabuto's offspring got lost and caught up behind trees and rocks too often to keep up with me.

That sums up what there is to do with Kabuto. Most of her missions are eating, and breaking through doors to get to the next area. The other stages aren't that much more varied. Delphi spends a lot of her time protecting a Smartie called Yan while she brings him rescued Smarties to help build bases. After the base is built and you've help defend it, you get a Tornado spell to destroy a building (usually a reaper army barracks). The Meccs spend a lot of time going from point A to B, rescuing someone then bringing them back to point A. Despite the monotony in the levels, as least they were fun enough to want to keep doing to reach the end of the game.

Mission goals feel even more repetitive when you're confronting the same bad guys in the last mission that you were going up against in the first. There's not a large variety in the enemies you'll face. There's the reapers, which all look the same except some carry different types of weapons, a couple flying creatures and a big and small version of an underground tunnelling monster. I could probably count all the enemy models off on my hands and still have fingers left over. Maybe if I used some to count the one-off boss fights (of which there are 4 that I can remember) I would run out of fingers.

The level of difficulty the missions provide isn't linear, but in a good way. It's not a constant ramp up but fluctuates up and down, giving some intense moments followed by a chance to relax, which I appreciated. They also of course have to adjust the learning curve with each new character you portray.

The campaign length is of fairly good size, and can go on for even longer depending on how much you want to fight. There are times where you can take short cuts to make good speed runs. In some cases where you just need to get from point A to B, you can run past the enemies and as long as you don't die before you get to your destination then you win. Playing as Kabuto, you can bypass half a map if you find the right spot to climb up on a mountain wall.

One of the most defining parts of the game is the script. It won't win any awards for gripping or epic writing, but it is quite a lot of fun, littered with low-brow humour. When playing games I often find myself hoping cut scenes will end quickly, but the ones in this game were enjoyable to watch. The accompanying voice acting is equally entertaining.

There's also a feature which I can not recall seeing in any other PS2 game I've ever played, except for the Sims titles. That would be the option to save your game at any time. And it's not that you can save at any time and reload from your last check point. This is like a save state. When you load you are exactly where you left off. This was a nice feature to see on a PS2 title.

A fun script, multiple roles to play, and lots of action makes this game worthy of a recommendation to play. However repetitive game-play elements and a sense at times of quantity over quality of action keeps it from getting a "MUST play" recommendation from me.