Giants will make you laugh.

And that's saying an awful lot, because in the world of game design, humor and gameplay just never seem to mix very well. All those attempts at funny cleverness in adventure games like Space Bar and such always fall flat. The problem of course is that most games are written and built by refugees from the high school math club who still consider Monty Python and Douglas Adams the only comedy gods worth imitating…usually badly, I might add.

As everyone knows, however (well, everyone but the Poindexters in Comp Sci), humor is not about obvious jokes and gratuitous absurdity. More often, it's about timing, delivery and a light winsome touch. That is what the designers of Interplay's upcoming third-person action/adventure Giants seem to understand. Developed by the publisher's subsidiary Planet Moon Studios/Digital Mayhem, the game starts with a bit of planned R&R for some intergalactic “Mecc” marines on the planet Majorca. En route, the mothership needs to stop for repairs on a strange planet that seems to be in the midst of a silly turf war. Your team ends up getting separated, so now you need to search for lost members as well as spare parts on a planet of offbeat races: the Smarties, Sea Reapers and Kabuto, who is not so much a race as the enormous giant of the planet.

Developing some of the comic stylings and gameplay conventions of the under-appreciated MDK2, Giants relies on well-timed exchanges between characters like our Meccs and the Smarties chief for its lightsome spirit. The chief is starved, we find out in an early episode, and demands that you blast some gigantic lamb-like Vimp beasts for his chow and rescue his wife to cook it up in exchange for information about your lost comrades.