Want to raise a kaiju and raze cities to the ground? This is your chance.
While screenshots may give you the impression that Gigapocalypse is a Rampage rip-off, in reality it’s more of a clicker game. Rather than having direct control of your chosen kaiju, of which there are nine, you instead simply move a cursor around the screen, directing ranged attacks while your kaiju moves ever forward. And so to survive, you need to pick your targets effectively, and also make efficient use of the skills you have available.
Dive into Gigapocalypse and you’ll find that it’s a game of two halves. When you’re not out causing destruction, you’ll need to pet your kaiju and meet their other needs – namely feeding them and cleaning up their poo. It will keep them happy, and also earn you some valuable mutation points. These can be used to upgrade your kaiju in numerous ways, such as increasing the amount of damage one of their attacks does, or increasing their passive HP regeneration.
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These points can also be used to buy decorations for your kaiju’s abode. Aside from making it look less barren, these also boost your kaiju’s abilities. Other features of your home include a place to manage the pets you’ve acquired. Up to five of these can eventually be equipped, each offering addition firepower and other bonuses. There’s a place to look at and manage kaiju variants, too, each with their own unique perks. And let’s not forget a skills section where you can use skill points earned by levelling up to learn new skills and make them more potent.
Eventually though, you’re going to run out of things to do at your kaiju’s crib. Without an abundance of mutation or skill points, your options are limited. And so you’re going to have a spend a lot of time terrorising (innocent) folk to continue your development. A handful of locations are available for you to visit, each with their own theme. There’s a modern city, for example, and the Wild West. Each has it own variety of enemies and obstacles for you to overcome, as well as a quirky boss.
Chances are you won’t complete a location the first time you visit it. Gigapocalypse is all about doing your best, admitting defeat, and then using the points earned in your endeavours to improve your kaiju and have another go. You’ll find a checkpoint about halfway through each location, however, meaning you won’t have to start at the beginning again should you reach it.
Overall, Gigapocalypse is a rather unique game with a charming art style. It can start to feel repetitive after a while though, and having to move a cursor around the screen throughout the experience also causes some frustrations. It makes the game’s myriad of menus clunky to navigate, for example, and adds difficulty to some boss battles. Take the floating head boss of the medieval world which challenges you to match the cards they’ve just shown you: doing so is made tricky to do in the time provided as you need to move the cursor over each card and then tap a button repeatedly to cycle through the cards available.
Gigapocalypse isn’t for the masses. Those who don’t mind hammering buttons to destroy towns and their inhabitants, however, are likely to have a fair amount of fun with it. It has its issues, but developing kaiju is a rewarding affair. And once they’re powered up there’s a lot of pleasure to be derived from causing mass destruction. Add in the fact that there are nine kaiju to develop overall, each their own unique appearance and skills, and you have a game that will have lasting appeal to those who gel with it.
Gigapocalypse Review – GameSpew’s Score
