Giant Killers

aka: GK
Moby ID: 3308
Windows Specs

Description official descriptions

Giant Killers is a text-based football management game, and as such the focus of the game is on the statistics and not on the action.

Based on the 1999 UK season, the game allows the player to take control of any team in the UK's Premier league, Divisions One, Two or Three, or the Conference league. The game has three levels of difficulty. In the easy level the player's club has a wealthy benefactor who makes £25m available, in the medium setting £25m is still available, but two other clubs in the league also receive the same cash injection. In the hard mode there is no extra cash available.

Having started the game and selected a team, the player is presented with the game's main menu. The options here allow the player to access a quick overview of the club's status, fixtures, results and league tables. The main menu also allows the manager to access the transfer market, where players can be bought and sold, and the manager's diary, where messages, such as the success or failure of a transfer bid, are received. It is through the manager's diary that game-time is advanced through to the day of the next match.

On match day the player selects their team from the available squad, and decides the formation to be used and tactics - long ball, direct or passing - for the upcoming match. The game offers many standard formations as well as offering the player the chance to create their own.

Having decided how the game is to be played, the player starts the match. As this is a management game, there is no game play video to watch; instead the player receives match highlights as though on a teleprompter. At any time during the game the player can pause the match and change the team's tactics and / or make a substitution.

At the end of the match the player can view a range of stats on individual performance e.t.c.

The game is entirely mouse controlled, though a keyboard is required when entering names for save games.

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Screenshots

Credits (Windows version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 56% (based on 2 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.7 out of 5 (based on 6 ratings with 2 reviews)

Can you spell 'A.r.c.h.a.i.c'?

The Good
see main review below

The Bad
see main review below

The Bottom Line
If you've loved Championship Manager and their ilk on any system you care to name, then you would be right in expecting a football management game for the Dreamcast that is worthy of this systems' awesome ability to entertain. Unfortunately, Giant Killers looks like it was coded in 1985. As management sims go, this has the least likely looking, and most maddeningly unsatisfying payoff, ever (perhaps) devised.

Management sims are a rare breed of game where the graphics and usual accoutrements you automatically expect of other games, are not supposed to matter. Thing is though - they do matter. Simple text only games died out for good reason decades ago and thought this one features 'scrolling text' (ooooerhhhh!) during matches, it struggles to look even passable amongst all other management sims that have been created for consoles since. Post the most recent crop of playable, deeply involving and quite beautifully animated console sims (LMA and their like), this one looks and feels like it belongs in a museum - out there with Donkey Kong and Scramble!

Should I go through the game play and options with you? God, if I must, to fill some required space, then I must. But trust me - it will be as tedious for you to read how creaky and cob-webbed this game is, as it was for me to play the damn thing. I'll concentrate instead I believe on describing why, in just one more paragraph, this game is such a lame duck. From there, perhaps you can make up your own mind.

Lets get to the guts of any football management sim then: the matches. Training players, spending money on transfers and choosing tactics: Blind Freddy can do that in any sim created. Giant Killers, too, has all the usual options and graphical introduction screens for each of these options. And they don't look half bad. In fact, the whole game (everywhere but where it most counts) has a nice look to it and is somewhat contemporary. But what really sells these sims is how the match, when actually played, is displayed to the player and how that involves them after their often hours of pre-preparation. In GK, a player can choose how much detail they want reported to them. There are NO graphic representations of players whatsoever, not even little coloured dots running around a green coloured square. Instead, even on the highest detail setting, the commentary never varies from a too-quickly scrolling list of fouls, missed shots and eventually, of course, goals scored. Text - all text! It is, not to put too fine a point on it, completely boring to involve yourself in, and the equivalent of shooting a dud bullet: all that build-up and then…pffffttttttt! No payoff. I have played mobile phone management sims in fact that look better than this, and were more involving.

Even in 2001, this game played like something that had been kept around for 10 years after its first coding (I suspect that’s exactly what the Developers did!). Now, its nothing more than a curio, and a rather boring one at that. Competently handled, but simply outclassed in playability and interest by every other management sim I have ever played.

4/10

Dreamcast · by jon scanlon (3) · 2008

Good entry-level management game

The Good
I've been interested in management games for a while. I like to think I know a bit about football but I'm no good at playing it either in a game or in real-life, so a management game should be the ideal option.

All other management games I've looked at seem to require an immense in-depth knowledge of the game and I've given up on them because the scale and depth of the game just overwhelmed me. This game didn't do that. I was able to set it up, select a team, twiddle with the controls and lose a couple of games in under forty minutes. It was so easy and intuitive to play that it didn't occur to me until I sat down to write this review that I'd actually played the game without really using the manual.

There are plenty of teams on offer so I could take over either a giant club or a lowly minnow like Woking who were my eventual choice. Whatever the team there are enough stats available so that I could influence the tea's performance and effectiveness relatively easily. I could see that the team had a very low level of overall expertise and so I went shopping for a goalkeeper, made a bid which was accepted, and played him in the first match.

The transfer process was straightforward, as was the team setup, and is a good illustration of how easy this game is to play. This made it a pleasure to play and I enjoyed dabbling in the transfer market.

The game teleprompter-like commentary was excellent and I liked being able to alter the level of detail provided. How many games I'd watch the commentary remains to be seen. I have noticed a few recurring phrases after only three matches, which makes it no different to the televised commentary in that respect, but in the last match I did turn down the level of detail just to get through the match that much faster because my team was losing.

There is sound in this game but not much. I remember noticing a tune with a beat when the main menu is displayed and there's the roar of the crowd during the game. Nothing that's intrusive or out of place and about what I'd expect from a game like this where numbers & tactics are the focus and where sound is not required to create an atmosphere.

This is the first football management game I've long enough to get through more than one match. The statistics on offer don't feel as complicated as other games I've tried to play but there's still enough of them for a novice like me to get to grips with. Having tried other games of this type I know 'Giant Killers' is a less complex game but I didn't feel that I was being patronised or that the game had been dumbed down to the point where its ridiculously easy. Whether I'd outgrow the game over the course of a season I can't say but I doubt it - there's that feeling that there's another level of information hidden behind the numbers and that if I persist a while longer it will all become clear.

The Bad
The game has an on-disc manual that was originally designed to be accessed via Internet Explorer. Not only is it not installed with the game but when I tracked it down and tried to access it I got a message to the effect that at the last minute a .pdf version had been substituted. No problem with that but with the way its been done. The manual is one of those small affairs which has been transferred in a form that shows two pages at once. However only some pages are numbered and the page sequence runs like this ; 3, 17, 5, 15, 7, 13 ... which makes finding information harder than it should be.

The Bottom Line
Easy to pick up.
Lots of game play - it will still take a long time to play through a season.
No action.

Windows · by piltdown_man (232822) · 2011

Trivia

Sales

Within two days of release the Dreamcast version of Akaei's enduring football franchise, Giant Killers, entered the Chart Track Dreamcast Top Ten and kept climbing, swiftly topping the Gameswire Dreamcast chart.

Analytics

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  • MobyGames ID: 3308
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kic'N.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger.

Game added February 13, 2001. Last modified February 22, 2023.