Gaming Target - GameCube: Doshin the Giant

Written by Mariadele Arcuri on October 15, 2002

Full Review: Size does matter.

According to the guys at Param, somewhere in the tropic seas there is an island that is not found on any map. This island is named Barudo Island, and wouldn't be any different from any other tropical island if it wasn't for a yellow giant that every morning appears at its shores. This giant, Doshin, has the ability to grow taller by absorbing the love or hate exuded by the native inhabitants of the island. On the island there is in fact a sparse bunch of lightly clothed humans who pray to Doshin as if he were their god. The tasks they require from him are rather simple and include carrying trees to their villages, raising or lowering the terrain, and removing obstacles. However, Doshin is required to do much more than that if he wants such civilizations to survive. The natives are totally unprepared to fight natural disasters such as fires, tornadoes and volcanic eruptions, and these are quite common phenomena. It is up to the giant to stomp on the fire and blast away the tornado, and afterwards prevent such catastrophes by raising mountains and creating rivers. Doshin surely takes his duty as a caretaker of Barudo Island seriously. Among his abilities are jumping, picking up objects, carrying stuff, raising, lowering or leveling the ground, and also taking naps! Another special feature that characterizes Doshin is his ability to transform into Jashin, the evil red giant. Jashin is a destructive giant, and he seems incapable of acting like a nice guy. Apart from flying, all he does is shoot fireballs and pound the ground. But even such cruel behavior can be justified if one considers its purpose. By shooting fireballs Jashin scares away tornadoes and quells volcanoes, and by just showing himself in town he scares the inhabitants into working harder.

After this description you might have started to reconsider whether Doshin the Giant is a true benefactor. The answer is Е. No, he is not! In exchange for his good deeds, he demands the construction of a monument from each tribe. If they dare to construct a Уnon-listed monument,Ф Jashin makes sure to rain down fireballs on the monument until it is no more.

As for the natives, they are initially organized in four tribes and live in four separate villages on Barudo Island. They all look alike from a giants perspective, but their clothing distinguishes them from one another. Green, red, blue and yellow are the symbolic colors of the four tribes. Each tribe constructs a different monument, but Doshin is not content with so few. To obviate this problem, the giant makes sure to create other villages where a mixed population can be bred. A village composed by both yellow and blue inhabitants, for example, will create a new monument that the other four tribes cannot build. The goal of the game is to create up to 16 different monuments.

This videogame surely sounds very weird, and when you get to play it, it turns out to be exactly that. Once the game has started, the player finds himself in control of an absurdly slow and clumsy yellow humanoid, and is immediately counseled by the wise Sodoru, an unidentified fellow dressed in exotic garments. This tribesman will follow the player throughout the game, and tightfistedly parcel out bits and pieces of information vital for the completion of the game. This can either be identified as a weakness of the game or a nice addition, depending on the player's personality.

Right off the bat, Doshin easily spots a couple of natives waving at him and emitting a bubble. If the giant gets closer, the bubble will show a picture of a tree. As said before, this means that the humans are praying their god to fetch them a tree from the nearby forest. Picking up the tree, Doshin will notice that the area surrounding the tree becomes suddenly more desert-like as soon as the tree is uprooted. When the tree is re-planted in the spot where the humans are waving, the grass of that area will become a richer hue. The energy transaction that just happened is explained in the game with the term green-energy. This energy is contained in trees and intensified by the presence of water. By carrying trees to the villages, and by creating rivers around them, you will deprive certain areas of green energy to the benefit of other regions. Once the first tree is planted, the village will officially be started with the creation of the first house. It is very important that Doshin keeps a close eye on the nature surrounding the villages, because trees wither and die every now and then, and a building deprived of green energy for too long falls into disuse. Once Doshin has performed a good action, the natives give out their love in form of little hearts. These cute bi-dimensional hearts fly around you for a few seconds and then settle into your love/hate meter. Once the meter is full, Doshin grows into an even more impressive giant. This also happens when he has been nasty and villagers have given out their hate in form of skulls.

The game is structured into days. Doshin appears with the rising sun and disappears at sunset. One day lasts approximately 20 minutes and often is not enough to complete all you wish to do. The area that Doshin surveys is huge, and it takes a good five minutes to get from one end to the other. However, it is also true that travel time is much reduced if one switches Doshin to Jashin and makes use of his powerful wings. Noticing that time might be a stress factor for the player, especially if combined with the laziness of the giant, Param has made sure that the number of days is infinite. This allows the player to take it easy and actually enjoy all the secrets and the wonderful sightseeing that the island has to offer. As well, the player is encouraged to experiment with his surroundings and with his devoted villagers, and in the beginning a wonderful sense of curiosity should settle down on most players. The feeling of being intrigued doesn't last too long, however, mostly because of the lack of diversity when it comes to actions to perform and goals to accomplish.

The graphics in Doshin the Giant are not especially nice, due in part, to the expanse of the area and the fact that Doshin the Giant is a project born on N64's DD. However, Param's Spartan way of depicting the tropical paradise of Barudo Island has a charm of its own and will soon captivate the player's heart. The game also offers a very nice menu and entertaining options. Especially well-thought is the idea of snatching pictures anytime during the game, but there are also other insightful features such as the Уbook of giant,Ф complete with comparative graphs of the different days' work.

When it comes to the controls, though, Doshin loses a great deal of sympathy. The movements of the giant are a little clumsy, especially when Doshin has grown a few times. If one gets closer to buildings and humans when Doshin's size is too big, one's good intentions result in a massacre of genocidal proportions. This can be utterly frustrating, especially because once the population recovers from the shock, which is a matter of seconds, the love/hate meter is bombarded with skulls and Doshin starts to grow another two sizes before one can even have a remote chance of steering him out of the village, thus increasing the giant's dangerousness in a horrible never-ending circle. This can at times become extremely funny, a bit like in a Looney Toons episode, but surely not at all times. As previously stated, it really depends a lot on the player's personality.

The only other annoyance can perhaps be the sound effects: not the music, mind, but the noises of Barudo Island. The native birds have the upper side when it comes to the soundtrack, and they are 2-3 times louder than the melody itself; and although the melodies are actually relaxing and enjoyable, the birds' cackle is way too high pitched and unrealistic. It's a sad thing that the sound options do not offer a solution to this problem.