Heres the deal, i own Skylanders giants, but i dont play it much right now so i wanted to lend it to my sticky, messey break everything cousin until i get the time to play it, obviously i dont want to risk lending my giant to him, i have game protection, not giant protection xD so are you able to beat the game or at least advance a good bit without one? he would probablly buy his own giant after awhile but i dont want to lend him something he cant play till he buys his own giant xD

I'm not sure, actually. The intro stage seems to teach you a bit about what the Giants are capable of versus the regular Skylanders... And every copy of the game comes with a Tree Rex... I would assume they would make the game under the assumption you had a Giant at some point. It would be an interesting experiment to run, though.