Gigantic: Rampage Edition Review
Abstraction's re-release brings a wave of nostalgia with fresh heroes and maps, but it struggles to address some key issues that fans were hoping to see resolved.
When Motiga’s Gigantic launched in 2017, it aimed to carve out its own niche in the crowded hero-based game market. Released as an Xbox console exclusive at a time when Microsoft desperately needed standout titles (a need that, in hindsight, would persist), Gigantic stood out with its bold, vibrant art style and unconventional gameplay. Its unique cast of heroes, massive beasts serving as mobile home bases, and smaller creatures functioning as healing stations or enemy detectors brought fresh ideas to the genre.
However, Gigantic struggled to compete with heavyweights like Overwatch and even Battleborn in terms of player numbers. While it arguably surpassed Battleborn in quality and polish, Motiga wasn’t aiming for the same audience. Instead, Gigantic offered a third-person experience blending shooter and hack-and-slash mechanics, with a heavy focus on teamwork. Success required precise hero selection, strategic positioning, and knowing when to push, retreat, or support allies, making it a game of depth and coordination—albeit one that never found the widespread audience it deserved.
Perhaps due to the overwhelming hype surrounding Overwatch at the time, Gigantic never managed to capture the audience it deserved, despite launching a year later. The game shut down in June 2018, seemingly disappearing forever, even as it cultivated a small but loyal community. However, in October 2023, a surprise invite-only event hinted at its return. Shortly after, Abstraction Games and Gearbox Publishing (now Arc Games) officially announced its revival as the Rampage Edition.
Is this a triumphant comeback for Gigantic? In some ways, yes—but with concurrent PC player peaks at 6,112 via Steam, it’s not exactly a blockbuster revival, even if that number surpasses the original’s peak. The Rampage Edition feels tailored for long-time fans, a chance to relive and enjoy the game while it lasts. The bigger question is how newcomers should approach it in today’s gaming landscape. After spending time with it, Gigantic shows promise but stumbles in key areas, leaving its potential future in question.
Set in the vibrant world of Gig, Gigantic pits two houses—Daevaedra and Aurion—against each other in epic battles involving massive Guardians. These colossal creatures descend onto the battlefield as players work to gather Power Orbs alongside their teammates. Once enough charge is amassed, your Guardian goes on a Rampage, pinning the opposing Guardian and exposing its weak spot. Players must then deal damage during this window to progress toward victory. If the opposing team gains enough charge, however, you’ll need to defend your Guardian from their onslaught. Alternatively, players can delay their opponents by disrupting their Orb gathering efforts.
In the neutral phase of gameplay, players can summon creatures to assist their team. These creatures provide healing, attack enemies, or even create portals to help players traverse the battlefield quickly. Summons can be upgraded using Focus, a limited resource also tied to a player’s Ultimate ability. This forces a tactical choice—should you invest in game-changing team fights or bolster your team’s infrastructure? Adding to the complexity, summoned creatures can be destroyed by enemies, making their defense a critical part of the strategy, especially since some spawn Power Orbs during the late-game Clash phase.
While Gigantic offers an engaging mix of mechanics and a solid foundation, it’s clear that its success hinges on whether it can refine its weaker elements and capture a broader audience. Whether it gets that chance remains to be seen.
The heroes in Gigantic each bring five unique abilities to the table, alongside a talent that unlocks at level 5. Experience is earned through a variety of actions—assisting teammates, earning badges for feats like saving allies by slaying their attackers, killing creatures, or collecting Power Orbs. Leveling up grants Skill Points, which can be used to upgrade abilities in one of two distinct ways. Once you unlock talents, you can choose one of three options to further customize your build. Overall, it’s a fairly standard take on MOBA mechanics, albeit with Gigantic's unique flavor.
Unlike traditional MOBAs, Gigantic lacks farming mobs, and while creatures can serve as “towers” to destroy, the maps are otherwise open for traversal. There’s an element of lanes, as team fights tend to center around key positions for gathering Power Orbs, but the real focus is on direct battles with other players. You could theoretically run up to the enemy Guardian outside of a Rampage phase, but they’ll quickly obliterate you unless you’re invisible.
Visually, Gigantic is striking. The Guardians and heroes are distinct, with smooth animations that bring them to life, and the environments feel organic and lived-in, giving the game a vibrant, cohesive aesthetic. Each hero is as unique in design as they are in playstyle. There’s Tripp, the brooding assassin wielding lightning powers, and Queen Zenobia, a serpentine menace who inflicts elemental statuses on foes. Some characters, like Uncle Sven or Pakko, lean into a more whimsical design, but they still fit seamlessly into the game’s world.
It’s a testament to Gigantic’s design that every hero feels distinct to play. While some abilities might remind players of mechanics from other hero shooters—Rutger’s wall creation and underground burrowing, for example, may evoke memories of certain Overwatch characters—they still feel fresh and fun. Heroes like Tripp shine in their ability to disrupt enemies, delivering devastating bursts of damage before slipping away into the shadows with invisibility. The combination of unique character designs and fluid mechanics keeps battles engaging and memorable.
That is, of course, unless you find yourself crowd-controlled into oblivion. Thanks to its MOBA roots, Gigantic leans heavily into crowd-control abilities, status effects, and damage-over-time mechanics (referred to as "degens"). Entering a team fight often means getting slowed, poisoned, bled, burned, having your healing reduced, your damage output crippled, or even being immobilized or ensnared—the list feels endless. In fact, an Overwatch 1 player might look at this and feel like they had it easy. While positioning matters, the third-person perspective limits your viewing angles, making it harder to avoid getting caught in the chaos.
The sheer number of effects also creates visibility issues. A top-down perspective might have helped mitigate this frustration, but as it stands, the screen can quickly become overwhelming. To counterbalance this, most heroes have an escape ability to help them disengage, and there’s also a stamina bar for fleeing. However, stamina is shared with side-dashing and jumping, so it’s a limited resource you’ll need to manage carefully.
On the one hand, I appreciate how this design forces you to think critically about your engagements and adds a layer of tension when trying to escape and find healing. But it also creates an odd dynamic—a tug-of-war where both teams try to burst each other down as fast as possible before anyone has a chance to retreat. This isn’t always the case, particularly in smaller skirmishes, but more often than not, this "burst or be bursted" pattern defined my experience—unless I was playing a hero with long-range capabilities.
While Gigantic has support heroes capable of providing healing, the game doesn’t enforce the traditional tank/damage/support meta. If your team wants to run two ranged damage dealers and two frontliners, you can give it a shot. That said, success is far from guaranteed, especially if the opposing team sticks together and has abilities specifically designed to neutralize your composition. Crowd-control effects and status ailments can feel oppressive at times, and some heroes—such as Tripp, Wu, and T-MAT—could use balancing tweaks to feel more fair.