The original Gigantic blended MOBA and hero shooter ideas together at the height of the gold rush in both genres, but failed to carve off a large enough audience of its own and sadly shut down in 2018.
As of today, it's back as Gigantic: Rampage Edition, with new characters, a new mode, and an upfront fee in place of its former free-to-play model.
If "MOBA" and "hero shooter" mean nothing to you: Gigantic is a team-based, 5v5, third-person shooter in which you select a character that has special abilities and can be upgraded over the course of a match. Each team is fighting for control of a map, ultimately leading towards a fight with their opponent's gigantic (yeah) enemy Guardian.
Rampage Edition maintains all of the above in its newly named 'Clash' mode, but also adds a new mode, Rush, alongside. It's designed to be more fast-paced and allow players to get into the action quicker, with presumably less knowledge of map tactics and upgrades and so on required. You can also set up custom matches where you can pick a map to play on, rather than surrending to the matchmaking.
Although no longer free-to-play, Rampage Edition will still get some post-launch support with a ranked mode and new hero skins due to be added for free via updates.
Rampage Edition was a surprising announcement back in February, but it's a welcome one. The last ten years are littered with free-to-play games and multiplayer games which were good, and well-liked, but which didn't attain the critical mass necessary to support their developers in perpetuity. It's nice to see Gigantic get a second shot, for its fans to get another chance to play it, and with a business model that doesn't require it to be everyone's forever game.
Gigantic: Rampage Edition costs £13.59/€16/$16 with its 20% launch discount.
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