Review by: Brandon "Swamp King" Cackowski-Schnell

One would think being a giant mutated insect would be fun, what with all of the stomping and mandible grinding, but in the world of Battle of Giants: Mutant Insects, being a giant bug translates into a giant bore. Living in the post-apocalyptic world does not appear to be any fun at all, even for giant, mutated insects. With all of the tasty humans long since wiped out, your day is filled with nothing but roaming around, busting up giant ant hills, hitting the occasional switch to move a piece of a bridge and fighting other giant, mutated insects. And for what? So that you can become king of the mutated insects for as long as it takes another young upstart to come and knock you off your perch? No thanks, I'll take the asteroid fueled dirt nap.

Each of the game's several stages all play out the same way with only the environment changing. You'll take your insect on a path through a level stopping to bust up nests of bug eggs or the occasional left over fuel truck for coins and health. Sometimes tiny spiders will stream out of what looks like a termite mound requiring you to bust up the mound and stop the damage dealing little buggers. Eventually you'll get to a part you can't pass - meaning you either have to search for a switch to hit, or find a burrow point to go underground and traverse yet another path strewn with switches and ant hills. Oh, and fog. Can't forget about the fog.

Along the way you'll also come across other giant bugs that require a sound thorax thrashing so that you can move forward. Battles are conducted in real time and use touch controls for pulling off moves. Each of the four playable insects can use their head, abdomen, right claw and left claw to attack as well as pull off blocks and sideway dodges. Touch the head and slide it towards your opponent and you'll headbutt the other bug. That is until the game's frequent lack of touch screen recognition causes your bug to stand there instead of headbutting and instead take a giant claw on the chin, or whatever passes for a chin on a mutated praying mantis. The battle system has a mildly interesting see-saw approach where the goal is to land consecutive hits until you can pull off one of two power moves, both engaged by connecting dots by drawing on the screen. If your opponent hits you while you have a hit or two stocked up against them, their hit guage will go down meaning that you need to blast them again to pull off the special move.

With all of the possible hits and dodges you'd think that each battle would be a complex, pitched affair but the reality is that with the dodgy input recognition and the amount of time it takes to attack after dodging or blocking, each fight is best conducted by picking a move and just doing it over and over and over. Usually you'll land a hit, or at worse hit the other bug the same time they hit you. When your combat system can be bested by pulling the same moves off over and over, you've got problems. Even more worrisome is that the larger boss battles are winnable only by using this strategy as frequent blocks and dodges give no time to attack before they smack you down.

As you progress through the story and earn coins for each completed battle you can upgrade your bugs with damage and health upgrades for each body part as well as special powers that take effect once you pull off a special move. Abilities allow for things such as slowing down your opponent, leeching health off of them, or doing fire damage. The upgrade system is a nice touch but given that you can only have one upgrade active at a time it makes the most sense to pour your money into one special power however doing that makes your battles all comically easy. Once you pull off your first special move and your ability kicks in, it's all over but the crying for the other bugs. That is if bugs can cry. I know doves can cry but that's another point entirely.

Once you battle through the game's four areas and take out the king of all mutant insects you get your fourth insect unlocked and, well, that's about it. You can take the other insects through the same story you just played through but there's really no reason to. Sure the bugs all play a little differently, but not enough to make a real difference in fights. The story is exactly the same, the environments are the same and the abilities and upgrades are all the same so why bother? The game offers a couple of multiplayer modes allowing you to take your leveled up bugs in one on one battles against other players or in a four person tournament so you can always beat up on someone else for a little variety but it's nothing that will hold your interests in the long haul.

I hoped this game would be full of schlocky, 50's style monster movie fun but it ended up being a tedious, strategy-less brawler. Other than the occasional building in the background or fuel truck to run over there's not much about the game to give you a sense of scale or any indication that these are giant bugs. In the game's desert and jungle environments there's nothing at all to let you know that you're playing with a 50 foot tall spider. Maybe younger kids are better suited for the ease in which you can plow through the game, but I suspect the novelty will wear off for them soon enough leaving the notion that in this case any way, giant bugs are giant duds.