[b]Completed with 100% of achievements in 19 hours, with kids in tow. (more on that below)[/b]
[h1]Overall[/h1]
Gigantosaurus is a pleasant, open-world, 3D platformer to play with your kids. It's not groundbreaking, nor a must-have, but if your kids are fans of the show, they'll have a good time with it. My kids enjoyed it enough to play through its entirety with me. However, note that there are some minor annoyances (listed in the "cons" below) that could be a deal-breaker.
[table]
[tr]
[th]Pros[/th]
[th]Cons[/th]
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[tr]
[td]
✅Animations and graphics are all true to the show.
✅Guide rails to help steer children through game.
✅Narrated cutscenes means that the child doesn't need to know how to read to follow along.
✅Low difficulty makes it appropriate for younger kids.
[/td]
[td]
❌Gamepad recognition issues.
❌No control over camera angles. They shift automatically and often.
❌Mechanic for keeping the group together mostly works, but has some flaws.
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
The meat of the game is a series of small open-world 3D platformer levels, with vehicle races between them. On the open-world levels, the tasks are primarily about wandering through the land, and collecting various items. Once you collect a minimum number of items, you have the option of continuing to the next area. You can also stay where you are to finish collecting all items in that area (for the young, blossoming 100% completionists out there). A racing mode acts as a segue to the next open-world area. There are a few items to collect during the race, but it is otherwise a straightforward 3rd-person view racer. You basically continue this gameplay loop until you've met the minimum requirements for each area, and finish the game. All the videos on the store page are from in-game, so what you see is what you can expect to get. The 3D models and animations are identical to what is on the TV series, which gives it an authentic feel.
In the timeless local multiplayer question of "Do I split the screen, and let players wander freely? Or do I have them share one big screen, and keep the players together somehow?" the devs of Gigantosaurus chose to keep players together. It's accomplished via a "bubble" mechanic. If one player falls too far behind, or wanders too far away from the group, a bubble surrounds that player, and transports them back to the leader of the group. It works for the most part, but has some hiccups here and there. This can make it a tad frustrating if you're playing with uncooperative kids, or kids still learning the ropes of gaming. The main problem is how it determines the "leader". It's pretty simple: whoever has the highest altitude is the leader. So if 3 out of 4 of you decide to jump down from a hill, you will continually be teleported back to the 4th person who's standing there, simply because they have the highest altitude at the top of the hill. There is no setting, nor identifier for who the leader is, unfortunately. You only notice when the bubble mechanic occurs. It would be so much better if a player (i.e. the parent) could assign them self as the leader, and all other players who wandered off would get automatically teleported to that person. I doubt this feature will ever be added as the devs haven't updated this game in a few years now.
Another minor gripe I have is that the camera view rotates around automatically, depending on which area of the map you are on. It might be a bit disorientating for a kid who's still trying to figure out which way is up. I wish there was a way to manually adjust the camera view, but it probably would make things too complex for the kids game. Sometimes I just wanted to look in a different direction to see if I could locate any items, but alas.
The game is a bit touchy with recognizing gamepads. A look on the community forum shows it's a somewhat common issue. I encountered two separate issues myself. The first involved getting the controller to be recognized at all on first play. It required a Steam restart before it recognized my controllers properly. My next issue was with how the game recognizes controller #1. Only controller #1 can access the map. If you have multiple controllers connected, a random one is assigned controller #1. My workaround was to always start the game with only one controller connected (to ensure that it would be first player), then once you are loaded in the world to plug in the other controllers. If the wrong controller was recognized as player #1, the only fix is to restart the game. My kids have personalized controllers, so they didn't want to simply swap controllers. If you want to read more, you can check out the community discussion thread here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1177020/discussions/0/2143091512089298113/
[h1]Parental notes on difficulty and age appropriateness[/h1]
Gigantosaurus is workable for any kid four and up, with adult guidance. A child six and up can probably handle it on their own. Map reading skills would be handy for a solo player, otherwise your child might wander aimlessly a bit. Speaking of reading, the cutscenes are narrated and instructions are animated, so the child doesn't need to read to follow what's going on. The only exception is the controller mapping which you just need to look at once before starting your first session. If hearing is an issue, the cutscenes are captioned as well.
The difficulty is light. It's mostly a mellow, low-intensity experience. Adversaries are few and easy to avoid, or dispatch. The most difficult part of the game is really just finding the items you are looking for, and perhaps a specially timed jump here and there. An adult may need to guide a young child through a few obstacles, but there's no harsh punishment for failure.
There's a fair amount of guide rails built-in, that point you in the right direction, without forcing you down a linear path. For example, subtle pink sparkles light up to gently suggest which direction you should be heading. As mentioned earlier, the "bubble" mechanic works to keep the group together. On the racing mode, you could literally just hold the throttle the whole race, never steering, and let the edges of the road guide you to the finish. Granted, you won't win doing this, but it allows a child with basic skills to finish the race at least.
The violence is minimal. It mainly consists of hitting the sparsely appearing adversaries with your tail (to stun them). If your character takes too much damage they disappear into a timeout for a while until they revive.
[h1]Achievements[/h1]
I finished the story in about seven hours while playing with the kids, however it was a bit longer to get all the achievements. We earned all achievements after 19 hours of gameplay. Keep in mind, that's 19 hours of playing with small children who are frequently distracted, and sometimes content just wandering around aimlessly. A seasoned gamer could probably complete it in a fraction of the time.
Another important note is that you won't sabotage yourself by continuing to the next area before you've collected all the items. Even if you complete the game, and finish the final cutscene, you are still allowed to continue playing. You can loop back to those earlier areas, and finish finding any items you skipped over before (earning any achievements associated with them).
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