GigaBash is a 3D fighting game developed by Passion Republic Games.
Each of the ten kaiju and giant characters has a distinct look with clear inspirations such as classic rubber suit monsters, anime, and designs inspired by modern monsters. Each character also has a distinct silhouette, making it easier to find your character in the chaos of a fight. In addition, their unique abilities and types of attacks make each character’s fighting style feel different.
While their move sets are unique, the total number of attacks is limited. You only have a light and heavy attack, which do different attacks depending on if they’re neutral, charged, used when blocking, used when grappling, or used while jumping. While each character doesn’t feel robust, switching to another character for your next match changes up your moves, lessening that feeling. There is some depth to combat with timing and chaining moves, which was easy to see every time I set a CPU opponent at max difficulty and they destroyed me with ease.
The graphics are delightfully stylized and marry the collection of characters from different styles and time periods wonderfully, both with each other and their environments. The sound design is clear and fitting. The music offers fun tunes with songs that pay homage to iconic music, such as Godzilla’s theme.
Story mode took three hours to complete. You get to play as four characters – Gorogong, Pipijuras, Wooly, and Thundatross – and each has five missions. The stories offer context, lore, and some character-building. While the dialog is brief, too much of it is relegated to reactions and superfluous phrases rather than character building. The missions are simple but fun, offering a small collection of things to do, such as defeat an empowered monster or destroy buildings while avoiding the puny tanks firing at you.
Game modes and options are lacking. Online, you can play public, private, and ranked fights. Couch play offers free-for-all, 2v2 team fights, and Mayhem, which is a collection of party games. Unfortunately, all modes have minimal customization, even lacking things like adding environmental hazards such as the military, changing individual character power levels, or character speed.
Only a few issues were present, such as the camera not zooming out fast enough to show my character as they flew across the screen and not knowing which way my character was facing when standing behind a large enemy, but they were infrequent enough that they didn’t sour my experience. Online play was mostly smooth, only noticeably staggering when playing with someone in Australia.
GigaBash is charming, fun, and well put together. The lack of customization weakens the game as a whole. However, it’s still a fun game with a delightful aesthetic servicing a genre that doesn’t get enough love. If you’re craving something akin to the old Godzilla games on GameCube and PS2, War of the Monsters, or PowerStone, or if you want a new multiplayer brawler, GigaBash will likely provide enough for you to pick it up.
GigaBash is available now for $34.99 on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
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