Gigantosaurus: Dino Sports

I'll be straight with you: I review shooters for a living and nothing about Gigantosaurus: Dino Sports was built with me in mind. But I've got a kid, I've got a couch, and I've got opinions about whether a local party game actually delivers. So here's the unvarnished take. The game puts up to four players through eight sports minigames styled as an Olympic-type event called the Giganto Games, featuring the four dino heroes from the animated TV series: Rocky, Mazu, Bill, and Tiny. The event lineup is more varied than you'd expect. Dino Fruit Blast is a short on-rails shooter where you lob coconuts at hungry plants, Raptors Triathlon chains together running, swimming, and hurdle-jumping with button alternation, Stop and Go is a freeze-dance-style race where Giganto blasts you backward if you move at the wrong moment, Jump Dive plays like a rhythm action game requiring timed button presses, and Ice Dash and Stunt Surf are basically fast-reflex racing events through obstacle courses. A Challenge Mode adds 27 timed variations of these same eight games, plus the exclusive Giganto Mayhem mode where you control Giganto himself and wreck things. Custom mode lets you string up to ten events together for a curated local session. Two difficulty settings - Kids and Grown-Up - mean an adult can turn the dial without crushing a six-year-old's spirit entirely. Here's the problem, and it's been noted pretty consistently across reviews: the eight games are the eight games, full stop. The 27 challenges are almost all reskins or remapped versions of the same core events, so the variety ceiling is lower than the marketing suggests. Controls have been called laggy and abusable in places - the AI in Stop and Go can be gamed easily once you clock the timing window, and the overall control responsiveness feels tuned for small hands rather than precision. There are also some tacked-on jigsaw puzzles in the Extras menu that are genuinely trivial and serve mostly to pad the content count. Total completion time for a solo player running through everything lands around three hours, which is a real concern given the standard asking price. Where it earns some credit: the story mode is delivered through proper cutscenes with full voice acting that matches the show's tone, and reviewers who brought younger children to the couch consistently reported good results. The visuals are bright and the character designs are instantly recognisable to any kid who's watched the series on Disney+ or Netflix. From a multiplayer standpoint, the split-screen local mode is the only way this game makes sense - four players tapping buttons and arguing about who got blown back by Giganto is genuinely fun for the age group it's designed for. From a competitive standpoint, there is no online play, no ranking system, and no reason for anyone over about ten to pick this up solo. Bottom line for my audience: if you're a PC shooter player with no kids in the house, move on immediately. If you need something to burn an evening with young children on the couch and want something lighter than Mario Party, the Giganto Games setup works and the two-difficulty system is genuinely useful. Just catch it at a price that matches the content on offer. Fred, Scout Team