Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate

Written by Jason Dailey on 8/11/2024 for PS5  

Truthfully, I am not huge fan of the roguelike or roguelite genres as I have yet to find a game of its ilk that has been able to keep me invested. However, I am a major proponent of third-person shooters, as well as co-op games, so I gave Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate a chance to win me over as a mash-up of all those things. I had a similar relationship with mayonnaise for most of my life, until one day in my 30s it just clicked for me, and I now fully appreciate what the condiment brings to the table. So, was Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate my roguelike mayo moment? Sadly, it was not, though I did not hate it.

The setup is simple for Shoulders of Giants – you’re a frog riding a robot on a mission to cleanse planets of entropy. Completing a planet will raise your heat level, which opens additional planets, and eventually boss battles. On the flipside, failing to complete a planet (see: dying) will reduce your heat by that same amount of heat that you would have otherwise earned. Each planet consists of multiple levels to clear of varying mission types, culminating in a miniboss battle to cleanse that planet once and for all. Planets are procedurally generated, so they have a different look, layout, or color palette, but eventually you’ll have seen all there is to see. Even the smash hit Helldivers 2 does something similar, but somehow manages to feel far fresher than Shoulders of Giants in its execution. That notion of staleness unfortunately permeates into the rest of its design, which is intrinsically an uphill battle for the roguelike genre at-large – some just happen to do it better than others.

Combat in Shoulders of Giants ranges from mundane to above average, dependent upon the RNG of your run. There are dozens of abilities to pick-up during a mission, but not all are created equal. However, I applaud the sheer variety of abilities on offer, many of which are a lot of fun to use – auto turrets, garbage truck bulldozers, cosmic bowling balls, sumo slams, ethereal grind rails, and more. Abilities can be offensive, defensive, or support-based, but the random drops mean that you can have wildly different runs, for better and for worse. On some planets, the ability gods would bless me with a perfect combo of abilities to lay waste to whatever alien scum was before me, while other times I would get a bunch of healing or defense abilities, which didn’t suit my playstyle, and truthfully wasn’t very fun. I get that it’s part and parcel to the genre, but something feels off. For instance, in fellow third-person roguelike Returnal, even when I found a weapon pick-up that wasn’t my favorite, I still felt like I could rely on my skill (or lack thereof) to get me out of jam. I don’t think that is the case in Shoulders of Giants, and feel you are at the mercy of its ability RNG more than anything, particularly as a solo player.

Speaking of solo play, it gets old fast; this is a game clearly designed for and at its best co-op play, and that’s fine, but you should know that going in. To that end, myself and the Gaming Nexus crew were able to spend some time together cleansing entropy and it certainly was more fun than going it alone. The game ramps up the numbers of enemies to pure chaos, sometimes to the point that your best bet is to spam and pray – abilities that is. Somehow that feels both satisfying yet hollow. We even tried out Best Friend Mode, which lets one player control the robot (melee attacks) while the other controls the frog (ranged attacks), but I don’t recommend playing that way. Being one or the other means you can only control one set of abilities, since the robot and frog each have their own set, and it feels like you are essentially playing half of the game. All in all, there’s just something missing from the gameplay loop in Shoulders of Giants that holds it back from being truly compelling. In fact, playing solo, I had to limit myself to a couple of planets per play session as to not burn myself out on the game. For a roguelike this is a major no-no, as the gameplay loop is king, and I can’t say that this one pulls it off.

Regardless of the outcome of each mission, you get to retain your earned XP, which is used to buy permanent skills and character stat upgrades, such as increased health, faster reload speeds, and so on. This is done by visiting vendors at the hub world, which are other anthropomorphic friends of yours that offer new cores, weapons, and skills to switch up your arsenal. Like abilities that you collect in-mission, there is a large variety of weapons and cores. Weapons include swords, drills, boxing gloves, disc launchers, shotguns, pistols, and plenty more. Cores are suits that your robot can equip to give different starting abilities and stat buffs. For instance, the Mecha core makes you look like a Gundam while allowing you to triple-jump and comes with the Deflector Pulse and Web of Fate starting abilities. My personal favorite was the Shogun core, which deflected an enemy attack with an ethereal sword every few seconds, and visually looks quite slick.

As you can see, one thing Shoulders of Giants does not lack is variety, and yet I could never shake this overarching feeling of staleness in its gameplay. Even the minibosses at the end of each level couldn’t move the needle enough to keep me truly engaged, and of those there are dragons, wizards, octopuses, and many more. But it got to the point that I would just run by entire swaths of enemies to beeline it to the next objective, which you almost must do anyway because they never stop spawning.

Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate attempts to stand on the shoulders of its third-person roguelike forefathers but simply cannot. While its dozens of unique abilities create moments of fun, its random, roguelike design means there are no guarantees between each planet. That would be fine if the core gameplay loop were satisfying and compelling, but that isn’t the case. It is elevated slightly by playing in co-op but only just so, and honestly that is probably more attributed to good company than anything the game does itself. It’s not a bad roguelike, but it certainly isn’t great.