Giants: Citizen Kabuto (2000)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a 2000 shooter video game made by Planet Moon Studios and MacPlay.
Three factions compete for control of a remote island dominated by Kabuto, a colossal giant created by the matriarchal Sea Reapers as a guardian who has since gone rogue. The Meccs, tech-armed spacers searching for lost colleagues, share the island with the Smarties, tiny survivors who wield magic. Giants: Citizen Kabuto switches the player between all three perspectives, each playing in a completely different style, from third-person shooter to city-stomping giant, tied together by irreverent humor and a game world that never takes itself seriously.
Quick answers
What is Giants: Citizen Kabuto about?
Three factions compete for control of a remote island dominated by Kabuto, a colossal giant created by the matriarchal Sea Reapers as a guardian who has since gone rogue. The Meccs, tech-armed spacers searching for lost colleagues, share the island with the Smarties, tiny survivors who wield magic. Giants: Citizen Kabuto switches the player between all three perspectives, each playing in a completely different style, from third-person shooter to city-stomping giant, tied together by irreverent humor and a game world that never takes itself seriously.
When was Giants: Citizen Kabuto released?
Giants: Citizen Kabuto was released on 6 December 2000.
Who made Giants: Citizen Kabuto?
Giants: Citizen Kabuto was made by Planet Moon Studios, MacPlay and Interplay Entertainment.
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A few thoughts on Giants: Citizen Kabuto
If the tonal absurdity is the draw, Portal 2 channels a similar energy: its test chambers are designed around a narrator who treats the player's survival as a minor administrative inconvenience. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas covers the genre-chaos side, shifting between heist, driving, and combat modes across a single campaign without stopping to justify itself.
Absurdist records that treat rock and roll as one big joke
Giants: Citizen Kabuto never lets its city-stomping colossus or its bickering factions get self-serious, and these albums share that same comic instinct. Frank Zappa's two most gleefully weird records, Tenacious D turning arena rock into full-blown parody, and Puscifer's oddball detours all treat music as something worth laughing at without ever giving up on the craft.
Comedy that piles on the absurd without ever slowing down
Kabuto's campaign swings between a city-smashing giant and wisecracking little Smarties without ever asking permission, and these picks share that same anything-goes energy. A gadget-obsessed kid inventor, a slapstick mad scientist and his sci-fi contraptions, a troublemaking five-year-old terrorizing his neighborhood, television's longest-running satire, and a horror spoof that skewers every genre it can find.
Stories where three or more factions fight for the same turf
Kabuto's island is fought over by three completely different kinds of combatant: tech-armed spacers, magic-using Smarties, and a rampaging giant who answers to no one. These picks split their conflicts the same way, a witty interstellar war spanning several species, a resistance fighting an occupying force, a fractured cast of supes and the suits who control them, and a galaxy still divided between empire, rebels and bounty hunters.
