I never played Gigantic when the team-based MOBA shooter was active from 2017 to 2018, or when it was briefly revived in 2023. Now, publisher Gearbox and developer Abstraction Games are reviving the Motiga shooter as Gigantic: Rampage Edition, and when I played a few rounds via a remote preview event, I wondered why the team thought it might find more success today. The sense I got was that the devs no longer consider the hero shooter genre to be as oversaturated as it was seven years ago, and after Overwatch’s gradual decline in mindshare, maybe they’re right to no longer view it as such a threat.
Gigantic: Rampage Edition is starting off on a different foot than the original game, as it won’t be a free-to-play shooter reliant on microtransactions to stay afloat. Everything, from heroes to cosmetics, can be unlocked by playing, rather than by having to invest money beyond the $US20 “premium” asking price. At the moment, Gearbox says all its post-launch support will be free to all players through updates. But Rampage Edition isn’t just repackaging the old game; it’s adding new modes, mechanics, and heroes as well.
One of the major changes is the inclusion of a progression system similar to that in other MOBAs. This allows you to customize your hero’s build so you can personalize a playstyle, much like Overwatch 2 was going to have in its PvE modes before Blizzard scrapped them last year. I didn’t get to mess around with these too much in my playtime, but seeing Gigantic return as a premium game with customizable playstyles after Overwatch has pivoted into a grindy free-to-play game with expensive microtransactions and no progression system is intriguing to me. It feels like Rampage Edition is making calculated moves to not be the game that was once its biggest competitor.
I still play Overwatch 2 almost daily, but if Gigantic is going out of its way to not fall into the same traps the once-megalithic shooter has, I have to respect the boldness. Gigantic’s entire business model is shifting to the inverse of what it once was, and what the game that stomped it and several other hero shooters out of the market has become. Gearbox and Abstraction Games think shifting to a premium game model will help it keep its head above water this time around, and even if it doesn’t work, I have to applaud the guts it takes to try. Live-service games are dying out as quickly as they sprout up, and I’d like to see more games survive without having to milk their players’ time and money.
Gigantic: Rampage Edition is launching on April 9 for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One. In the meantime, a closed Steam beta will begin on Thursday, February 22 at noon Pacific Time and last until Friday, February 23, at 9 a.m. Pacific Time.
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