For a particular brand of TF2ber comment section dweller, Gigantic was a golden goose. For years, you'd hear whispered tales of a mythical shooter that was everything the community had ever wanted. A game with an infinite skill ceiling, euphoric movement, a colourful cartoony personality, and a perfect midway between the flashy abilities of Overwatch and the customisability of Paladins with legitimate accessibility for both the competitive and casual scenes. It was the perfect game. But most of us (Heathens) were blinded by humanity's ego and allowed this perfect artefact of humankind to crumble into the aether, destined to exist only in the squalor of secret community LAN matches and seedy dive bar discord servers.
Egads, the Son of man returns! While I am no longer the kind of hero shooter acolyte itching for this game's revival, my younger brother is, and he shattered glass with the screams of excitement when he found out this was coming back. How could I not join in? Immediately, my eyebrows were raised by a few things. Gearbox has somehow got their name on this now. Abstraction Games are 'developing,' probably in the same way they developed Baldur's Gate 3 by helping with the Steam version and then plastering it on their website's front page. The original creators, Motiga, are nowhere to be found. Their name isn't on the game at all. Interviews indicate some of them had a small advisory role in this project. Still, I've found no evidence they'll be receiving compensation for their work in, you know, making the game, so hopefully, this kind of post-mortem revival project doesn't become normal. It is a situation pungent with the scent of an executive getting too excited about social media analytics and the quick buck he believes could be acquired. The continued server issues do not help the case.
But the real story here is none of this. I played this game for the first time yesterday. This shit is a fucking MOBA! How could you guys lie to me like this for years? Gigantic originally shut down in July 2018, and for over half a decade, people told me how exciting of a hero shooter it was and how it revolutionised movement shooters as a genre! It's a fucking MOBA! You sit there in a shitty team fight, and everyone sprays everyone else with multi-coloured goo, and the people who've played the game before run away, and the people who actually want to have fun die. Like every other fucking MOBA! I have been the target of one of the longest and most effective psyops in history and I am distraught!
Egads, the Son of man returns! While I am no longer the kind of hero shooter acolyte itching for this game's revival, my younger brother is, and he shattered glass with the screams of excitement when he found out this was coming back. How could I not join in? Immediately, my eyebrows were raised by a few things. Gearbox has somehow got their name on this now. Abstraction Games are 'developing,' probably in the same way they developed Baldur's Gate 3 by helping with the Steam version and then plastering it on their website's front page. The original creators, Motiga, are nowhere to be found. Their name isn't on the game at all. Interviews indicate some of them had a small advisory role in this project. Still, I've found no evidence they'll be receiving compensation for their work in, you know, making the game, so hopefully, this kind of post-mortem revival project doesn't become normal. It is a situation pungent with the scent of an executive getting too excited about social media analytics and the quick buck he believes could be acquired. The continued server issues do not help the case.
But the real story here is none of this. I played this game for the first time yesterday. This shit is a fucking MOBA! How could you guys lie to me like this for years? Gigantic originally shut down in July 2018, and for over half a decade, people told me how exciting of a hero shooter it was and how it revolutionised movement shooters as a genre! It's a fucking MOBA! You sit there in a shitty team fight, and everyone sprays everyone else with multi-coloured goo, and the people who've played the game before run away, and the people who actually want to have fun die. Like every other fucking MOBA! I have been the target of one of the longest and most effective psyops in history and I am distraught!