Doshin the giant is an odd game featuring the title character, Doshin (the giant) along with the tribal villagers and animals that populate the lush world that the game takes place in. You start off as quite a small giant, only able to walk around and pick up trees and people. The more you help the villagers build their village the more hearts you will get, if you get an entire screenfull of hearts you will grow. If that sounds a bit too much like hard work, you can change to Joshin, the evil giant, and scare the little people into giving you skulls, which also make you grow, and do you grow! I've grown to the largest height, at which can't actually see your own head!

The look of the game is stunning clouds float by, the sun moves across the sky as each day passes. The time of day actually looks like it would in real life, in the early hours everything had that early morning feel. (Not that I'd know much about that The C-Stick controls the camera which can be moved about freely, a nice touch that i liked is that when you make the camera go under water it gets all 'wobbly' accompanied by the appropriate 'bubbly' sound effects

You can change to Joshin the evil form of Doshin by pressing L, when you do this, the sky turns red and the land goes black. As Joshin, you can throw fireballs which destroys anything in its path, these are bright (obviously) and cause the surroundings to light up.

The sound envelops you in this game, as it should. The birds that fly past chirp and sing, the villagers play music depending on their tribe. When playing this game, I didn't think wow that sounds great, but then I didn't notice anything bad or annoying to listen to. As this is a japanese game, there is quite a bit of tutorial help which is spoken (in japanese) this can be a little annoying if you don't understand it (like me then)

The aim to the game is to get the villagers to make you a monument, each different variation of tribes will make a different monument, and your goal is to 'collect' them all. You don't have to though, and can actually do whatever you want, you can't die in this game! The trouble is, there isn't that much to do.. you can raise or lower land, pick up people/animals/trees/buildings but thats about it. You may find yourself tiring of waking up as the yellow giant. :/

The game is split into days, each day you start at your smallest size, each day lasts around 30 minutes. There are no limits to the number of days you can play, so there is no need to rush around here, also everything you do will remain in place for the following (and subsequent) days. There is a lot to try and play about with in Doshin the giant's world, which the nice thing about this game, however you could get bored fairly quickly.

Conclusion

A different game, one that has some nice ideas and great graphics to show them off. You get a free memory card, (which is almost entirely taken up by the game) You can also save photos that you take to the card. It is playable for non japanese speaking people.

It's a refreshing change to find a truly original game out there.. If only there was more to do.