‘Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate’ is a third-person, action roguelike looter shooter published and developed by ‘Moving Pieces Interactive’. Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate has taken players by storm with its quirky characters, bright colours, and action-packed adventures. Follow along as we battle across multiple planets against the ever-growing forces of ‘Entropy’.

Set in a sci-fi land, you play as ‘Froggie’ and ‘GERM’. You are tasked with clearing the galaxy from the dark forces known as ‘Entropy’, which have turned the lands dark and gloomy, and restoring the planets to their bright and colourful landscape. Helping you on your travels are Owl, Panda, Baboon, and Dr. Chameleon. These friendly characters all provide you with weapons, power-ups, and skills you need to defeat the dastardly entropy, having simple names makes it a walk in the park to know and remember allowing you to focus on honing your skills and completing the tasks at hand.

Launching things off with a bang, you control two characters simultaneously. A sword-wielding robot called GERM and a little gunslinging space frog sitting between your shoulders known as Froggie. Moving around or shooting is your traditional keys and mouse buttons while your four special abilities all have individual keys such as Q, E, R and CTRL. Cleansing planets increases your ‘HEAT’ level which allows you to venture to additional, more difficult, planets and eventually mini-boss battles after you complete the various missions.

However, if you are unsuccessful the planet will lose the same amount of HEAT you would have earned if you completed it. GERM and Froggie both have a vast range of individual abilities that you can pick up mid-game such as auto-turrets, healers, shields, giant bowling balls, and garbage truck bulldozers to name a few.

These abilities range from offensive to defensive, and healing. Completing these planets also grants you rewards such as weapons that you can equip by visiting Baboon, cores for GERM that you can equip by chatting with Panda, and of course XP that you can use to purchase a plethora of colourful skins or upgrades within the skill tree by seeing Owl. While you can play solo, it does tend to become a little old and repetitive but thankfully there is a co-op allowing you to play with another friend in ‘Best Friend’ mode or with a party of four.

Best-friend mode? What’s that? Well, I am glad you asked, best friend mode allows you or your friend to control Froggie while the other controls GERM. Beware though as if you do want to exit best friend mode you are only allowed to do so before or after a mission, not mid-game.

Slashing entropy was quite the journey with certain bosses varying in difficulty and often having to pray to the RNG gods to give me good abilities, the majority of it is just spamming melee attacks with some use of Froggie to either heal or shoot flying targets.

Apart from the game getting a little stale in solo play I did have numerous hours of enjoyment in best-friend mode or co-op with my friends all trying to get the most crowns on the leaderboard after completing a planet.

Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate greets you with vomits of wild bright colours and environments that are filled with plenty of quirky shapes and villains. Before restoring planets to their former colourful glory you must clear the entropy first which has turned it into a dark colourless wasteland, while a majority of the enemies are dark colours they still have various spots of colour that add to the quirky, fun feeling of the game. Having such wonderful scenery and colours helped amplify the fun with my friends and me having hours of enjoyment.

The sounds of the sword as it slashed through the entropy to the gunshots from Froggie’s little laser pistol all aided in the fun while also having an upbeat arcade-like soundtrack that also provided a relaxing yet fun feeling while you hack and dash your way through the planet.

Overall, “Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate” is a thrilling experience for the whole crew but in moderation. I had hours of fun thanks to its easy controls, colourful landscapes, upbeat soundtrack, and a wide variety of weapons, skins, and abilities. This sci-fi roguelike is sure to be the spark you are looking for.

Written by: Larry