Osta GIGANTIC ARMY

Hearkening back to the SNES mecha platformer Metal Warriors, Gigantic Army is a side-scrolling action fest in which you must pilot your heavily-armored stomper mech into the heart of an alien world, blasting endless biomechanical baddies, blowing up enormous warmachines, and blocking, running, and leaping your way out of danger. This is not exactly the most inspired of concepts, but the execution here is intelligent and crisp, with intuitive aiming and strafing mechanics that make for a much more skill-focused game than you might expect.

Carrying the old-school action theme even further, each level is timed. You can (and really should) pick up Timer extension power ups along the way, along with health and damage boosters, but even so, between the enemy forces and ticking timer, you're gonna die more than a few times. Completing a stage merely gives you a tiny health boost, not a full heal, so it's strongly recommended you not let any items pass. You only get three continues per game, an absolutely archaic system to include in a game released in 2014, but it fits well enough and feels natural. Stranger still, while the story blurbs you receive between levels are painfully low-budget, the actual story and writing they throw at you is honestly pretty enjoyable. Regardless, Gigantic Army is a game that'll hit you with a few Game Overs before you manage to take out the final challenge (particularly on the brutal higher difficulties), but you'll enjoy every boss pattern learned and inch of progress acquired. If you're a fan of the old-school, this one's been whipped up just for you.

PLOT: There's a war or something.

Gigantic Army is a love-letter to NCS Masaya and their Assault Suits series. This might be before your time, but have you ever heard of Cybernator? Target Earth? Gigantic Army is designed much the same way. This is a mech shooter, but not that flashy Gundam Wing crap. The kind where all the mechs fly around looking beautiful, while J-POP plays in the background. This is more along the lines of The 08th MS Team. The best words to describe it are a mixture of CRUNCHY and CLUNKY. Let's call it CRULUNCHAKY.

Usually an action game being called CRULUNCHAKY is a bad thing, not so with Gigantic Army. All the mechs in this game have weight. Within seconds of starting the game you really gain an understanding of how the MECHanics work. Every movement in this game is calculated, and playing effectively is knowing when to "lead" enemy fire away. Raw reflexes are fine, but your mech is a bit too slow, heavy, and bulky to make those tight dodges. For the most part, enemies aim their guns at you when they fire, and larger mechs have a plethora of weapons they cycle through. Truly understanding this game requires predicting every possible attack, and then moving into position to do the full amount of damage. The nice thing about all that I just said, is that it's alot easier to figure out in-game. Gigantic Army has a natural level of difficulty. If you play smart and don't rush things, you'll get far.

Upon starting the game you get to choose your primary and limited secondary weapons. What you choose decides your style of play. Do you want good crowd control, don't mind long mini-boss fights, but want to finish end-bosses quickly? Go with the spread shot and laser cannon. For anything that gets too close you've got a pile-bunker. Expect the jump, hover, and dash abilities to see a lot of use as well. When all else fails, bring up the shield to block enemy bullets. An important thing to keep in mind, is that you can't block while jumping. Think of it as a commitment, choose one that suits the current situation.

Unlike Target Earth aka Assault Suits Leynos, the missions in Gigantic Army don't have any real objectives. There's no escorting, protecting, or any of that nonsense. Reach the end of the stage, and destroy everything in your path. There's a time-limit to keep you focused, power-ups along the way, and occasionally there are mines. The bosses are well-designed. Some move around a lot, others rely on their superior firepower, and there are even a couple unique fights. This game moves and ends very quickly. If all you want to see is the ending, this game will last about as long as the average 16-bit action game.

But that would be too easy wouldn't it? Upon completing the normal difficulty you'll unlock hard, and eventually insane. Enemies pack more firepower, you'll run into some new mechs, and the action gets hotter and heavier. Also you're expected to bring your SSS game if you want to get those high-score achievements. Move fast, don't take any damage(NONE), and kill everything. Sure it might be what you've been doing since you started the game, but you've got to do even better.

Gigantic Army is a very solid game. I highly recommend it to fans of the aforementioned mech-shooters, but really anyone can enjoy it.

Remember Cybernator/Assault Suits Valken?

Well, this is a love letter to that game.

Gigantic Army is an arcade style run and gun shooter characterized by its attempt to emulate the heavy, powerful feeling of a gigantic mech suit.

The first thing you will notice about GA is that your mech stomps along at a somewhat slow speed. Your jumps too, also feel heavy and weighed down, even with your jetpack which allows you to continuously ascend further upward by holding down the jump button. All your weapons (including the proximity based melee attack) are balanced in some way too to be more methodical in use, some having brief reload times or requiring to be precisely fired with your 360 degree aim. You also have a ground dash, but it has quite some acceleration and must be used carefully. Lastly, there's the shield which can block enemy fire, but using it requires careful timing and planning as it cannot be brought up mid air, or immediately after landing or firing.

Do these limitations make Gigantic Army feel slow paced? Not at all. GA shows that player move speed and pacing are two completely different things, and that seemingly cumbersome controls can feel profoundly smooth once fully mastered. While your mech may at first seem like a big clunky hunk of junk, mastering the subtle physics and techniques of jet packing, landing, and dashing will allow you to pull off rad dodges and close calls as you blast enemies.

The level and boss design is also quite solid, with the bosses being a major highlight and the most enjoyable part of the game. The levels offer great variety, making up for your slow move speed by being tailored around quick dashes, jumps, and fending off enemies from both sides. They also do a great job of mixing things up with frequent mini boss encounters. The bosses, especially the later ones, are the real show stealers though. Each of them has a number of attacks which are tricky to dodge whether on the ground or in the air, and will have you weighing the strategic benefits of attempting to out space them on the ground or out maneuver them in the air, two options that require very different technique but are both challenging and rewarding.

The game does a good job in terms of replayability, too. There are two extra difficulties, which feature much more challenging bullet dodging action, and the game has a scoring system in which you are rewarded a bonus for how fast you can speed run stages. Each of the three available weapons also causes you to use a slightly different playstyle, so attempting to master the game with all three should add a lot of replay value for anyone who enjoys the game enough to do so.

I generally prefer more nimble, ninja like controls for my action games, but Gigantic Army shows that a methodical, heavy metal shooter can provide an awesome change of pace.

It would be very generous to call this game a shadow of the greatness that was Metal Warriors on Super Nintendo.

In that game you could fly and dash non stop around the battlefield like a gundam, you had several different mechs to choose from, several different weapons and special weapons, you could EXIT your robot to infiltrate the enemy base/ship etc, and the story was epic for its time.

This game you get one mech, 3 different weapons and 3 different secondaries, once you choose, that's it for the whole game, mobility is slow, sound design is atrocious, graphically far far inferior to Metal Warriors on the FU**ING SUPER NINTENDO almost TWENTY YEARS AGO, and the story is non existent, unless you count a bland pda with grey text slowly scrolling down before each mission a story.

I was so hyped to play this, and I am so glad I got this basically for free in a humble bundle. DO NOT buy this game, it does NOT deserve your time, much less your money.

GIGANTIC ARMY is a great classic arcade style game.

The timer is a very welcome feature (if you are no pussy) and makes you play the game like these games are meant to be played, so no wandering around, no checkpoints, no savegames and no stupid interruptions.
You go forward, destroy anything in your path and blow-up the bosses in one single time.

I liked the controls too, the aim lock while shooting gives you a nice control over where you are firing when you dodge the bullets in mid-air and about that the bullet-hell elements are good but maybe this game needs more bullets (though I'm looking forward to Insane Mode about this).

Here and there I'm reading complaints about the game being too hard... honestly on normal mode I found it quite enjoyable (but satisfying) and played so far a couple of times on hard mode and it's not impossible at all, so you better refine your skills you... complainers!

And this is one of these games with a great set of very fun (and not unreasonable) achievements.

A great platforming shooter based on classic arcade games. With old-school time limits, graphics and giant bosses, and general being a badass, this game is great. However, its short length may make it better to wait until it is on sale to buy.

No on the fly upgrades, only 3 weapons and 3 sub weapons to pick from, very slow placed with the mech clomping around everywhere adds up to a pretty simple game. On the other hand I got in in a Humble pack so it cost practically nothing.

Its a decent, shallow, arcade mech shooter. Its exactly what you think it is. If you own it its worth a spin some time. If you don't own it just be aware of what you're getting and pay a price that's fitting.

This game is ok I guess. it's nice to pick up and kill some time, but I never really got an urge to want to complete it. So for 1 or 2 dollars I would say it's an ok choice, but for 5 dollars your money can be best spent elsewhere.

This game really brings back to Front Mission: Gun Hazard on the SNES minus the depth of the story.

This is Gun Hazard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcgsEd1hfvo


Pros:

• A fine 2D shooter
  
• Challenging
  
• Great visual effects
  
• Selective weapons

Cons:

• Basic Control bindings are a bit of a mess
  
• Aiming feels kinda wonky and it needs a bit of getting used to
  
• You need a gamepad to play this game a lot better
  
• Volume controls between sound effects and music are imbalanced so...
  
• You need to set the settings first but that's not much of a con actually
  
  So yeah for those who like Gun Hazard you'll fit right in but please practice a bit of patience for this game because the aiming needs a bit of practice and practice makes cookies :P.

Fun little game, really has a nice solid arcade feel to it.

If you're craving a good arcade like experience this is a good choice.

It would be nice to see some more content added to the game in terms of weapons.

Very excellent game. I'd nominate it for best indie title of 2014. It may not be the most original, but it has the heart and soul of Cybernator, metal Suit Valken, and all those older games, and you can tell they really put effort into making this game a fine experience. Would gladly recommend.

This game will not try to be your friend, this game will greet you with a mech that is much weaker then what your enemies have and the bosses are huge and difficult. it's a good difficult tho. the controls are tight, you have a shield that can block anything (limited uses), you can find power ups lying around to make your gun better and if the game feels nice enough it will drop you a little amount of health. It is also not one of those games that gives you infinite lives. you got three, and if you die you start back at the beginning of the level and your gun is back to it's weakest form. it will most likely turn away alot of people due to it's difficulty even on normal mode, but for those that like a good and fair challenge and don't mind short but replayable games, this is for you.

it's like an old sidescroll arcade shooter and it's pretty cool

A good coffee break game. You can play for a half hour and be satisfied, and it feels very tight and not so cheap or overwhelming when it comes to difficulty.

That said, though, it's pretty much recommended that you play this game with a controller.

The Full Screen option isn't nice to use, but playing it windowed is fine.

This is a great game. At first the game felt a little slow and weird until i found out about the shield and how to dash. I like the different main and special weapon styles you can choose from. I would recommend playing this game with a gamepad or arcade stick because i tried to play with the keyboard and it was a horrible experience trying to aim.

Tengo sentimientos encontrados con este juego.
Cybernator es uno de mis juegos favoritos, y este es un claro homenaje a ese juego, aunque a decir verdad se queda bastante corto en varios aspectos:
-Es bastante plano, no tiene la misma variedad de misiones que Cybernator (aunque no he pasado de la 3a misión, espero que se vuelva un poco más variado en las siguientes misiones)
-No guarda los avances. Ya sé que hay una tendencia a idolatrar la vieja escuela, los juegos difíciles en los que si pierdes tienes que iniciar desde el principio, y aprenderlos de memoria para poder terminarlos, pero los tiempos no son los mismos, y al menos en mi caso particular, ya no tengo el tiempo que tenía cuando era un niño para jugar, perder, y comenzar desde el principio, así que (aunque amo este tipo de juegos) creo que debería tener la opción de guardar avances.
-En gráficos también, al menos hasta ahora, no tiene la misma riqueza y variedad de cybernator o metal warriors, y ambos son juegos que tienen alrededor de 20 años de haber salido.
-La historia es inexistente, se presenta por medio de anotaciones en un tipo de bloc de notas antes de cada misión, aparte de ser confusa, no tiene ningún atractivo.

En fin, a pesar de estas fallas, creo que es un juego disfrutable para los que gustamos de la vieja escuela, en especial para los fans de cybernator, aparte de ser relativamente barato.

For those of us old-schoolers who mastered Cybernator and Metal Warriors, this will take you back to good times.

Pros:
-Nostalgia City
-Multiple weapons-systems
-Mixes the grand-scale and grit of Cybernator (SNES) with the "badass-hero vs maveric" feel of the Megaman Series.
-Seperate HP, Manual Shield, and Thruster gauges.
-Multiple Bosses per level.
-Keypad config.

Cons:
-Japanese key-pay control system..... really not use to it. After I changed the controls to WASD movement, SPACE for jump, and JKL for Weapons, it made a massive difference. If you're already use to the Jap system, you'll love it right off the bat. And for those of you not use to it; BEFORE YOU CHANGE THE KEY CONFIG, "Z" IS ACCEPT, "X" IS CANCEL. Very important.
-Playing this style of game on a computer is different for me. Difficult to get use to the controls, even after changing to WASD & JKL. Playing on a gaming system would be far better.

All in all:
It's not as hard core as Metal Warriors (but then again, nothing is), but it's a great game in it's own right, even better if you grew up loving the side scrolling mech games.
7/10

Pretty great game. Controls are a bit clunky, but ti comes across as a design decision, since you're piloting a big clunky mech, rather than a maneuverable one like you might see in Gundam. 3 primary guns and 3 special weapons to choose from. Some very nice animation, especially in the background as you fight. Challenging enough you should get your money's worth.
However, you can't change the resolution, and I would definitely recomment a gamepad.

I don't know about Metal Warriors or the glorious SNES age or retro stuff or whatever. I just know that I'm having tons of fun with this game. Great arcade sidescrolling shooting action. I like how different the 3 weapon and special choices feel, shooting all of them and destroying mechs upon mechs is really satisfying, especially using your special to finish off a boss. The story could have been presented better, I found the slowly scrolling PDF tale boring and skippable, but the game itself is a blast. For this price, I think it's well worth it.