Buy Gigantic Army

Played the hell out of Cybernator (Assault Suits Valken) on my SNES during my teens. Game's legit. A few key differences are in how the game controls: unlike Cybernator, while you hold down the fire button your aiming is locked. Might be an improvement, but it's up to you. The "dash" move is just a short dash forward, rather than a continuous smooth glide on robo-skates. That aside, this ought to feel familiar if you're fond of the mech action platformers on the SNES. I would say most of those games (Metal Warriors, Front Mission: Gun Hazard, etc.) are better and deeper than this, but Giant Army is a fine homage with some slick pixel art and nicely animated sprites.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Remember Cybernator/Assault Suits Valken?

Well, this is a love letter to that game.

This is such a neat little game, and it's a real hidden gem on the Steam store. If you enjoy the aesthetic of franchises such as Armored Trooper VOTOMS or Front Mission, then you'll love this game. Balls to the wall, side-scrolling action featuring some absurdly large, and very fun, bosses. The only criticisms are that if you're accustomed to side-scrolling games, you'll probably find this to be a little bit too easy, and that it's perhaps a little bit too barebones. However, you shouldn't let that stand in the way of enjoying such a cheap game.

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.

Great throwback action platformer reminiscent of SNES/Genesis era. 1CC enthusiasts will dig it.

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.

Gigantic Army is a throwback to the old arcade shooters like Metal Slug and all that jazz.
Now Gigantic Army and Metal Slug 3 have a lot in common except for a few differences, if you run out of lives in Gigantic Army you gotta restart, completely, there is no stage selection like in Metal Slug 3.

There's also no point picks up or weapon picks up, or even ammo pickups, you get tme, health, and power pickups, power pickups upgrade your weapon, and they stack, but dying will remove some or all of the stacks, however you also won't get instakilled like in Metal Slug 3, as stated above, there's health pick-ups and you even get a shield the completely blocks damage.

You also can't change weapons midgame, so pick whichever you're comfortable with, you get a rifle, shotugn, grenade launcher.

Not much more to say, Gigantic Army is also 40 minutes to an hour depending on how you go through the game. Overall it was pretty darn fun.

GIGANTIC ARMY!
Well as its been said in the other reviews
-Easy controls
-Fun Mech on mech abuse
-6 weapons 3 sub 3 main + melee if you count that haha
-Simple enough to load up while loaded up
- Worth a look (I scooped it on sale, but still worth the scrilla)

Featured in Epsidoe 95 of Bullet Heaven HD!@

***Nyu-Media has released Astro Port's Gigantic Army on Steam! As a sweet tribute to the 90's Mech-based Run-n-guns like Gun Hazard, Valken and Cybernator, just how does Gigantic Army stack up? ***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MhuHbQVCMQ

This game reminds me a game called "Cybernaitor" on the SNES, altough it follow the same mechanics this game is not to the alture of that game.

You control a mecha-robot on a side-scrolling level, defeating all the enemies on your path, watching out for your health and the time until you reach the end of stage. You only have one life, and between levels only a part of you health points are recovered. However, if you die, can use one of the three continues that offers the game, you will restart at the beginning of the current level with full HP.

Before you start you game you can choose between 3-kind of main-weapons and 3-kinds ob subweapons. Each weapon can be trough the game by powerups but is hardly to notice when you weapon gets stronger (needed a little more of exageration on this part), altough some weapons feels unbalanced (cons greater that pros) so is very probably you play with the one you like the most, or at least you want a little more of challenge. the sub weapons have limited ammo, and basically you only will use to do heave damage on bosses or in some areas of the levels that can be problematic.

Sounds are ok, music is ok, sprites of "characters" not bad at all, scenery is a little ugly in my opinon and the controls are good with the exception of the "Dash" command (double tap direcction) where some times will not execute when you want.

The game is short (less than an hour i believe), but have replaybility due achivments, diferent difficult levels and the mix of main and sub-weapons that you can do.

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.