One-Trick Pony, GigaBash Review

The elevator pitch for GigaBash is delicious. It’s a game that lets you play as giant monsters and mighty heroes in highly destructive environments. And Passion Republic Games has delivered much of what it promised, but its very few shortcomings aren’t enough. Unlike other brands, GigaBash is a classic pony.

GigaBash is a booming arena machine in the vein of something like Power Stone and your objective is to kill your opponent with a hard-hitting attack that will ultimately knock them miles away from the arena. Immediately after loading GigaBash, you will learn a complete guide on how to fight these giant monsters. The square and triangular buttons are used to present the normal and special attacks, and they keep them as the strongest variants. You can also execute these attacks by pressing them in the air.

“GigaBash is an arena brawler similar to Power Stone. Your objective is to force the enemy off their land, which will send them flying miles away from the arena.

The left trigger is used to block and parry moves and can be chained with the attack buttons to unleash defensive attacks. The right trigger acts as a quick denp, which can be quickly chained together with an attack to push the enemy. Let’s play the liar on the table – but the ball is hard, and it’s thrown by your opponents by pressing the circle button; hit or throw them accordingly, or rip buildings and structures like a flower and smash them with it.

While it all feels overwhelming at first, it doesn’t take long to try to get through it – so you’ll be teeming with heavy and light moves, dodging strikes and immediately following up with a dashing attack, and so on. The combat system is large, but unfortunately when I didn’t have access to a mechanic, it was very difficult. I often find myself trying to get up a bit when my opponent wasn’t an arm’s length away because some characters and attacks can have very little range and if they don’t they’re still not not really able to create a pair of shampoos / the same problem / the obscene ones that never stand up with their opponent. The problem becomes more acute when there are 3 or 4 fighters on screen. You have to hit from one side, but you can’t hit just one attacker per day.

Fortunately, the roster of characters in GigaBashs is modest but very varied. Take, for example, Gorogong, an angry beast who is skilled in close combat and uses heavy fists and ground slams to fool his hard-working opponents. This is very different from Pipijuras, a giant alien crab that uses its projectile beams to defend its opponents. There’s Woolley, a cute giant yeti who can swallow opponents or engulf them in a rolling snowball, so they’ll move to the edge of an arena.

“GigaBashs’ character roster is modest, but has the diversity to keep fights interesting.”

It’s quite disappointing compared to several competitors with different titles that offer different meanings. The likes of Mario or Bugs Bunny also lacked charm. While I was limited when I had the game, the balance was broken due to certain tactics that work especially well against opponents who can and will endlessly pass for a cheap win.

GigaBash offers two main options for couch play, a free brawl mode, which can have up to four players, and a team battle. For this fight you get a special currency called GigaEnergy, you damage your opponents or cause damage to the environment. Once this is achieved. You can transform into an enlarged version of a character called the Titan. Despite his progression and his possibilities of mobility, his attacks take over and he brings down the enemy’s balance.

You can also take a power-up that ends your opponent’s ultimate battle. This helps us balance your opponents’ focus against the damage you deal and collect GigaEnergy so quickly you can use it. Additionally, knowing when to transform and having synergy between teammates is key to winning battles; he can turn the tides of victory in your favor. By all means, GigaBash strikes a good balance between skill and strategy while allowing newcomers to the genre to be more approachable.

“GigaBash strikes a good balance between skill and strategy and allows newcomers to bother.”

There are many arenas where you can do it against friends or against the CPU. These range from a tribal village to a general training area in the center of the bustling metropolis. Some of these arenas have their own gimmicks: having a river that splits the arena into two halves or a sandstorm that flows in an instant and obscures your view of the arena and the enemy. Other people are pretty standard for comparison, but the sheer destructibility of the environment makes them look different every time you brawl. For example, there are many buildings that cover the start of a fight, but as soon as the cover is destroyed, you are forced to stay close to your opponents.

There’s also a Mayhem mode that uses a variety of minigames, but only in couch co-op with no ability to invite friends through online play, I couldn’t find out what that mode looks like. GigaBash features 4 short stories based on 4 of the characters on the roster. In this game, it’s not particularly gripping, but it’s a good way to learn about these characters as you face off against different opponents that require different strategies to defeat them.

Except for Story and Mayhem Mode, Team Battle and Free-For-all can be played over the internet. Besides that, you can play 1v1 unranked battle in online mode. In two attempts to find a match, after a month, with post-launch and post-launch in my thousands of attempts, I’ve yet to jump into an online game on PS5. Hilariously enough, I even tried to find a match online while writing this review.

“But in my many attempts to get into a game over a period of more than a week, from pre-launch and post-launch, I have yet to find a match online,” John said.

But even if you exclude the horrible matchmaking experience, it’s hard to overlook the fact that GigaBash is very busy. You earn XP by completing matches, but this only unlocks extras such as additional lore or background music. The difficulty of playing as a certain character also adds Titan Points, but it doesn’t seem to have any significant effects on the actual gameplay experience. There are no battle passes, no new online upgrades or to continue the game, or exactly anything else that would want you to come back for longer.

In the current situation, GigaBash is really something that will serve you as much as a fun time with friends for a few hours. But, it is nothing more than that. And that’s a shame. Since the foundations are great fun. With major updates (both in content and game fronts) and better internet infrastructure, GigaBash can be turned into something special.

The game was tested on PlayStation 5.