Developed and published by VARSAV Game Studios, Giants Rising is a game about giants being oppressed by humans and being used as slaves for sport and killing. The game lets you take control of a giant, escape the clutches of humanity and find out what happened to your race, and eventually decide their fate. Giants Uprising is currently available on Steam in Early Access and the developer aims at proceeding with the development with the help of the community. Since the title is still in development, this review represents the current form of the title. This is our review of the Early Access build of Giants Uprising in which we destroy everything that comes in our path and take out entire human armies.
Giants Uprising is an adventure game where you play as a giant who must rise up against the cruelty of humans. The story follows the journey of Rogbar and Kielbasa who are both captured and enslaved by humans for entertainment purposes. Both of them fight in a ring where giants fight each other until one of them dies and humans take it as a sport. Your journey begins in one such fight however you manage to escape your life and reach the safety of the forest where you plan your next move against the humans and earn back freedom for the giants. There are slight RPG mechanics thrown in the game but mostly you can consider it a third-person medieval fantasy action-adventure.
The story is presented in the form of cutscenes however they are not fully animated ones and are presented in the form of a visual novel rather than a video. The dialogue is fully voiced for nearly all of the major characters in the game and this is a good aspect because it completes the feeling of the cutscenes as a visual novel. You primarily play as Rogbar the giant however your journey is accompanied by Kielbasa the slave who ran away with you and remains your guide in the game as he tells you what to do and where to go.
Giants Uprising is played as a third-person title however the camera is not directly behind your giant but a little to the right and up higher to give you the view that the camera is from the right shoulder of the giant. You can land various attacks depending on your playstyle. You have a normal attack which can be chained into a simple attack combo to deal damage to enemies that stand a chance against you. Then you have a heavy attack that is slow, but it lands a powerful slam attack in front of you which has an AoE as well. Apart from using your fists, you can use your legs for a stomp attack as well which is great when you are surrounded by human armies.
Since you are a giant, you can naturally pick up and throw various items in the game as well and this is a necessary mechanic since some of the enemies can only be destroyed in the game with thrown items. You can also block incoming attacks and dash to sides to avoid damage. Keep killing enemies and you can enter the Rage Mode as well once your Rage meter is filled to cause absolute chaos around yourself. You also have various weapons at your disposal in the game such as boomerangs, spears, javelins, and more. Each of the weapons in the game has a durability meter and it will break once it reaches zero.
You can also use various environmental elements to take down your enemies in the game such as explosive barrels. These are not too much but you will find them strategically placed in various places that can come really helpful. Some of the weapons can also be used as melee weapons and you can swish them around to destroy buildings, crush armies and even take out towers. For towers that are much higher, and you cannot reach them, you can always aim and throw the weapon in your hand at them to take them out easily.
However, even with all this might, your giant is not invincible. Humans have tons of force that can easily kill you if you are not careful. For most of my gameplay, I was carelessly just swooshing around and not caring for my health but it turns out that your giant can sometimes be soft and brittle. Towers can easily mow you down and since the giant flinches, having 3 or more towers shooting at you makes you stuck at the same place resulting in certain death. The humans look puny in the game, but their sheer numbers can quickly trickle your health down.
For recovery for your health, you can eat meat or anything that is made up of meat. I preferred picking up cows and eating them up whole for a quick burst of health. If you cannot find fauna around and are out of meat, you can destroy buildings and everything that comes in your way as that recovers your health. There is no auto-recovery of health in the game and if you run out of meat, you need to ensure that you do not take too many hits because you will go down really easily.
To make your giant better, you have a skill tree as well where you can activate various nodes to get different abilities or buffs. There is no restriction on these and you can easily activate and then deactivate certain nodes to activate another node at any time you want. All you need are skill points, and you can activate as many nodes as possible on the skill tree to get different modifiers. The skill tree however is only present on the main menu of the game, and it would have been a little more convenient if you could do this on the fly while playing a level. These modifiers range from adding a new skill to increasing the effectiveness of your current attacks. Depending on your playstyle, you can create your own build.
Coming to the visual design of Giants Uprising, the game looks really good even in Early Access. The level design is good, and the destructive environments look really good as you smash through them. The sense of demolition is really satisfying however there are a few issues such as being a giant, sometimes you are unable to break things that are much smaller than you. This creates gameplay inconsistencies and sometimes just looks odd. Apart from these moments, the game looks really good and the ability to run through villages, settlements, and running over entire armies is really satisfying. The charge ability is really the best thing in the game as it really makes you feel invincible.
Giants Uprising is a fun title and offers some great destruction opportunities as well however at this point, my main concerns are with the performance of the game rather than additional content added to it. The game is extremely unoptimized at this point and even with a 3080, the frames drop below 30 FPS occasionally and the gameplay is choppy all around. The developer has shared a roadmap for the title however all it includes is new content such as new enemy types, new tower types, and new levels but I will prefer that the next updates focus on the title’s optimization and making the gameplay smoother. The gameplay is not that bad however the controls need to be tightened and more responsive. I understand that giants are slow and large, but the controls need to be tightened.
The controller support needs more work as well. I was unable to pause the game with my Xbox Series X controller while playing on PC and had to press Esc on the keyboard to pause the game. Switching to the controller also does not change the controllers to represent the controller but rather a small strip appears at the bottom of the screen detailing the mappings on the controller. It is not a very neat presentation especially for a title coming out in 2021. The visuals are very pretty, and I loved how the game looks however it needs optimization as well so it can manage the hardware resources more effectively. Because of the stuttering, in some instances, I noticed that the audio was a little out of place as well.
I was really excited about Giants Uprising ever since I first received its press release, and it has been on my watchlist ever since however, the game requires a lot of work in its current state. Under all the bugs and poor optimization, the title packs a lot of potential, and with the new content on the way, it is surely going to expand to great extents however before expansion, the game needs to be technically sound because new content will not be any good if players with even $4000 rigs are unable to play the title properly. Optimize the game, balance it out and make the controls tighter and you have a solid giants title where you can unleash pain on the puny humans in more ways than you can ever think of.
Final Verdict:
While bugs and glitches are common in Early Access titles, Giants Uprising is still a rushed release even for the Early Access program. In its current state, the fun factor of the title gets shadowed by the poor optimization, plenty of balancing issues, and other bugs that it has. During my playthrough of Giants Uprising, there were plenty of times where I was left frustrated due to various reasons be that gameplay or bugs. At this point, I will recommend that you wait and give the developers a little time to release a few more updates because the game needs optimization badly. Bugs aside, the optimization is really poor. Overall, I loved the premise and the concept of the title and if the developers are serious about the title, it can be a really fun game. However, we will need to wait and see for that to happen. If you still want to give it a shot, you can get it on Steam.
Final Score: 5.5/10
