Swords of Gargantua Review – Oculus Rift

Back in 1998 Treyarch created what, in my opinion, is still the best sword fighting game of all time, Die by the Sword. It was on PC and you moved your warrior with the keyboard while your sword/arm was freely controlled with the mouse allowing for some truly innovating gameplay.   Even after 20 years nothing has come close to that level of dynamic sword fighting, but when I heard about Swords of Gargantua on the Oculus Rift and the advantages of true motion control with the Touch I had high hopes.

While Swords of Gargantua shows some interesting potential it also fails at just about everything it tries to do and everything I wanted it to do. First, there is no grand adventure waiting once you complete the tutorial. In fact the entire game looks and feels like a tutorial you can’t escape. Designed as an arena combat game you’ll find yourself stuck in only a couple of environments fighting off wave after wave of Gargantua, a race of giants so heavily armored it looks like you’re fighting robots. Objectives are either kill everything or kill everything AND defend something, which gets very repetitive very fast.

The actual swordplay seemed way too scripted to be fun with more focus on defense vs. offense, much like the recent Sekiro game. You can’t go in swinging, even if there is an obvious opening. You have to stand there and wait for them to initiate the attack then block…block…block to stun the guy then move in for a quick attack and repeat. Eventually the large opponents will get these thinner and faster guys to gang up on you, forcing you to backpedal around the arena until you can kill them and focus back on the main guy.

Swords of Gargantua does have a few things going for it. The graphics are nice even if they are limited to only a few boring enemy and arena designs. The motion is smooth and I had no issues with motion sickness. Motion tracking was flawless and the Rift S allowed a greater range of room-scale movement than the original Rift. There are over 30 weapons to unlock and while many feel the same others have some unique distinctions like weight and physicality.

The game tries to mask its shallow core by throwing on a layer of side-objectives and even some leaderboards to encourage additional gameplay. There is a co-op mode that lets you team up with up to three other players, although in my two weeks of playing I could never muster even a single person to join me. The game does have NPC fighters that will sometimes join you but they often go down before you realize they are even there – totally worthless fodder.

Swords of Gargantua almost seems like an Early Access title that is still waiting for a game to be built around its fight engine. But with its bloodless combat, robotic enemies, and scripted swordplay the entire game becomes a tedious and exhausting grind. There is a story that gets you pumped for action only to deposit you into endless arena battles grinding for weapon unlocks and leaderboard scores.   I could cautiously recommend this game to anyone who doesn’t care about story or genuine progress, or those looking for a bit of a physical workout if the game were $10 or less, but $20 is way too much for what you get.   This is basically Sekiro if you stripped out everything but the combat and honestly, I had a much more engaging sword fighting experience with Vader Immortal

Author: Mark Smith
I've been an avid gamer since I stumbled upon ZORK running in my local Radio Shack in 1980. Ten years later I was working for Sierra Online. Since then I've owned nearly every game system and most of the games to go with them. Not sure if 40+ years of gaming qualifies me to write reviews, but I do it anyway.

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