If you want to disguise a must-play game from me, just give it an absurd title that gives no hints as to what's going on within, like third-person shooter Giants: Citizen Kabuto. I have had this for some time now, but haven't ever touched it because the name does nothing for me. Not only does it not entice me, but it goes so far as to not even urge me to look for curiosities sake.
Until now.
Five alien lads on a holiday find themselves eaten by a space fish and deposited on an island that is home to creatures big and small. Mostly one very big one - a giant, if you will - and a lot of smaller ones.
Can they get their trip to Planet Majorca back on track, or will the islands' defence system - a whopping great big giant - get the best of them?
Fun Times
I've said that I haven't expected this and that for games before, but I most certainly did not expect spacesuited cockney goldfish-looking things in slapstick comedy routines.
This intro alone is enough to raise a smile. It's stupid, but it has caught me off guard in the right way, and I still don't know what kind of game I'm getting into.
The first mission gives us some hints, as well as some clues as to what's going on. We need to find a Smartie Boy. Right. Ok. Let's WASD our way around this little island looking for him then.
Scattered throughout our route are Rippers of various sizes, which either scuttle towards and then leap onto you, or burrow through the topsoil before bursting out and shooting some kind of fireball in your direction. Your infinite-ammo pistol will dispatch them in short order, as will finding their nests to stop them from spawning.
Ahkmed - aka Timmy - is a Smartie whose voice you will most likely correctly recognise, and in just a few lines he furthers the comedic tone of Citizen Kabuto. Hearing Pinky of Pinky and the Brain in conversation with a right lad isn't something you hear every day, and they don't fail to raise more smirks as the plot unfolds.
You're drip-fed your equipment, and the first is your jetpack, which makes navigation quicker, but has a limited tank that requires recharging between uses. The first test is to save some Smarties from falling from a great height into piranha-infested waters.
Frustrations
It took a while for me to get the hang of the jetpack, which is fired with the right mouse button, and as a result, a few Smarties will be sleeping with the fishes tonight. Speaking off the fishes, they pack quite a punch. I managed to complete this section with so little health I had to question what the point of the health bar was - I couldn't see anything left in it.
After being rewarded with a rocket launcher, I could put it to use in the next section as I fought my way through Rippers trying to reach my mate Tel. The mission objective, in a similar fashion to the first few, prompts me to hurry - Tel is dangling from a ship singlehandedly, after all.
After consulting the map - and yeah, that's the map - I elected to just leg it and get to him as fast as possible.
Further Fun Times
Citizen Kabuto isn't just a third-person shooter. When you've got someone else capable of shooting running with you, you can command them to move to or attack whatever targets you want, allowing you to let them loose and open fire while you stay back in safety.
The controls for these actions are on the control and shift keys, which is a tad tricky when you've got movement on WASD and the map on C and the weapon selection on Q and tab, I think, by default, but there's generally enough open space to get what you want set up before your opposition are upon you - and if not, your buddies will fire at nearby threats anyway.
They're not invincible, but when they do succumb to the onslaught of fireballs or sniper rounds, they'll sit out of action for a short while until they decide they're ready to return to the action, so it's not too drastic if you hurl them into the fray. More of a setback, if anything.
After reuniting father and son, and then farming an awful lot of food for the father, we're tasked with finding his wife, who may or may not know the whereabouts of another cockney character. It's another trek across the map, shooting whatever gets in your way, or if you want to, hiding in a bush, a la Metal Gear's Snake and his cardboard box, and hoping not to be seen.
Further Frustrations
There aren't too many screenshots of my approach to this base or the dispatching of its guards, and after the humorous cutscene, there won't be any screenshots of my daring escape. I could stop and shoot everyone in the way, or I could just run past and get this Smartie back home.
Some species of enemies drop health and the other drops grenades and the like, but if you can avoid the entire problem in the first place by running away, why wouldn't you?
With the distances involved in these missions, I often found myself just wanting to get to the important part and ignoring everything else. It was bad enough to have to spend a minute or two moving to an objective, I didn't want to double it by defeating pesky opponents.
The next objective would have me trek all the way back to where I'd just come from, this time armed with a nitro boost for my jetpack to enable me to awkwardly zip up cliff faces.
The map is still clumsy, as is my approach to these Ripper nests, but I've got company and weaponry and Citizen Kabuto can get back to the action.
Further Fun Times
When you're stuck in the action, you really are stuck in. Enemy barracks will spawn a finite number of enemies, so it's best you hit them first, by either sending your mate to chip away at it or asking him to attack all kinds of attention from the enemies while you fire rockets at the barracks from a distance. Whatever works for you, you keep doing it again and again until the threat is gone.
It's a slick shooter, and as you can tell, playable in absurd resolutions. It looks both really good and really basic at the same time. It's not going to win any awards for dazzling graphics, but I still like the aesthetic enough to keep playing, although it's really the writing that keeps me invested.
All good things must come to an end, however, and this is the story of my end.
Further Frustrations
Taking out barracks isn't new. I'd just taken five of them out for the Rippers, and now I had another teammate to help take just three barracks out for the Sea Reapers, some aquatic fish-folk who carry guns and are a lot harder to deal with than the Rippers, in my opinion.
I actually had a good first stab at this, destroying two barracks in quick succession, until, almost out of nowhere, I got exactly what I didn't want - I got hit.
Everything in Citizen Kabuto seems to hit hard. I've not come across a difficulty setting yet, but if I do, I'm making sure to drop it down, because in just one hit I was reduced to a pixels-worth of health, in the middle of an active warzone. The first attempt would fail.
On the second, I would put my 8 sniper rifle rounds to use. The first enemy was silently picked off, but walking into an area to get eyes on anything else alerted the guards, and the attempt was reduced to another loud run. It would also, obviously, fail.
A third attempt would see a slightly different approach, as I hopped up onto a wall in order to tackle the compound from behind. After using up nearly all of my sniper rounds, mostly unsuccessfully, I went even louder with the rockets. Once again, that didn't last too long. In just a few hits, I was out of action, and I wasn't in the mood to retry.
Final Word
My opinion on Giants: Citizen Kabuto might look like I flip-flop between loving it and hating it at first glance, but it's actually a case of really liking it, but...
I really like the ridiculous story. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, it actually lost me a bit with the whole saggy testicles thing, but it's so unexpected that it stands out and sticks in the memory. I can now put a game to the name, and the game that I can put to Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a daft third-person shooter with cockney aliens saving Smarties from sea monsters. It's not the type of game that gets copycats, is it? You don't mistake this third-person shooter for any other, and that's great.
But the difficulty, and the trudging from one side of the map to the other each and every time you fail, which you seem to do rather quickly... that grates on you. It's not a slog, but a bit of a hassle to get places. The game can have you run around for minutes doing absolutely nothing until you find your target, and seconds later you've completed another objective and can watch another barmy cutscene.
There is, from what I've read, much more to this game. You don't just control cockneys, for a start, and that's another reason why I want to push on. I want to see where this nonsense plot goes. I want to see what other insane characters they thrust into the spotlight. I want to find out what kinds of missions we need to get our heads around to make progress, because even now, these feel like lengthy tutorial missions, letting you get to grips with equipment or mechanics one step at a time.
At the end of the day, Giants: Citizen Kabuto has made a lasting impression on me. It's not perfect and I'm not great at it, but it does enough of the job to really stick in my mind as something I want to play again. Ideally on an easier setting, if possible, but if not I suppose with a guide of some sort. I don't want to resort to YouTube unless I'm hitting my fishy-looking head against a wall again, so here's hoping.
If you passed over this game because you didn't know anything about it, go back and try it out. I'd have never known about it were it not for the 1001 list, and once more, I'm glad that it righted that wrong.
Fun Facts
The music was going to see a signed physical release for those who wanted it, but emails asking for when such a release would be available were mostly only interested in a date they could put in their diaries for going onto Napster to pirate the audio for free, and so nothing came of the offer.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto, developed by Planet Moon Studios, first released in 2000.
Version played: PC, 2000.