Long-term readers and viewers will know I love a minigame collection or an Olympic-style sports game pack. Gigantosaurus: Dino Sports is one of the more leftfield entries into this subgenre, and it’s a real mash-up of ideas. Some of them work well, whilst others feel like filler afterthoughts. That said, it is a fun use of the Gigantosaurus franchise and characters, and you can see care has been taken to try out something new.
Gigantosaurus: Dino Sports is split into three distinct parts, and they are not made equally.
The first is a single-player campaign that plays out like a short movie. There are proper cutscenes using in-game graphics, full voice acting, and some ACME-styled slapstick humour as various characters are hit by boulders or chased by lava flows. This isn’t going to change the world, but it sets up the Olympic-like challenges as you move through the different minigames. Minigames pop up on repeat, with some minor variations to them, but they will help you get used to the different challenges and either hit high scores or beat the AI. I quite enjoyed the single-player campaign, as it felt like a complete package. There was personality and not just soulless menus. Cut scenes go a long way to making this feel like a mid-tiered PS2 licensed game, reminding me of Buzz Jr titles.
The problem is that there are only 8 minigames, no matter how many times the game says “27 challenges”. Those 27 challenges are almost all slightly reskinned or remapped versions of the same 8 games. At least the 8 games are somewhat varied. One is a “What’s the time, Mr Wolf” running race, where you button mash when Gigantosaurus is asleep. Move when he is looking and you’ll get rawred at and blasted back down the track. Running pops up elsewhere in a triathlon of sorts, involving swimming and hurdle jumping. A bobsleigh-styled racer is mildly fun but lacks precision in the controls. A 2D flying collectathon has different layouts but rewards whoever dares to fly closest to the screen edge. Skydiving is a rhythm action game that lacks difficulty for experienced gamers. A waterskiing stunt challenge is quite fun but lacks any trick variety, so it’s just about chaining jumps and log balances. The rock climbing minigame is a fun challenge as you have to make quick choices about where to climb next, without hitting falling debris. The biggest issues are saved for the FPS minigame, where the controls sometimes don’t work at all or are so delayed in firing that you’ll miss your shot.
All these games appear in the second section, a challenge area, where you’ll be trying to beat gold times or scores. This is the only part of the game that requires skill and a bit of luck for the controls to work. As you beat challenges, you’ll earn currency to unlock jigsaw puzzles of Gigantosaurus artwork that are laughably easy to solve. In fact, there’s a whole area dedicated to jigsaws, and I don’t understand why. It feels like they wanted to include some brain puzzles, but they didn’t fit the theme, so they became an optional extra. You can choose to ignore all of this and just build custom cups of all the challenges, and a few special chase games for your 1-4 player local battles, and sometimes that might be your best bet. Even then, you’ll have parts of the game where you’ll be able to spam and abuse the controls for multiple seconds before your AI rivals can start or stop something, meaning you can outscore them with ease. Some minigames will literally come down to who abused the transition scenes most. Again, I love the idea, but care needs to be taken in making the game fun and fair for all.
Outright Games are always producing licensed titles on a budget, and occasionally they punch above their weight. Dino Kart was actually fairly decent, but sadly, Gigantosaurus: Dino Sports is a bit of a misstep. It feels like lots of smaller ideas cobbled together to create a £35 whole, and even though I bought this for £9.99, I still felt like I’d had a rough deal. I commend the approach to the single-player campaign. It just needs tighter controls, fewer bugs, and more meaningful variety next time around.
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