Why is it just about everytime somebody rolls out a video game adaptation of a “blockbuster” movie the first thing you do is grind your teeth, and fear for your sanity? Why? Other than the fact that the damn game in question usually sucks more than you can possibly imagine, I don’t see why you’d cringe so… now stop your worrying and swallow your Charlie and the Chocolate Factory PS2 disc already! It’s no good as a game so you might as well eat the thing… well, maybe not since (despite the name) it’s not really made of chocolate. So short of using the disc in the case as a new decoration for your car‘s rearview mirror, or something to practice your sharpshooting skills with, there really isn’t much purpose of owning these failing movie based games (heaven forbid you’d actually PLAY the damn game more than once)!
But because somebody has to earn a paycheck to feed their families, somebody put together a brand new game based on a brand new “blockbuster” movie. And because somebody has to review the damn game I guess I’ll jump on the hand grenade and take a look at the latest theatrical release turned video game.
So then, without further ado, from the people at UbiSoft (who has their own holiday stocking stuffer coming in the form of Prince of Persia : Two Thrones), Wingnut Films, and from the guru of the Lord of the Rings movies (3 movies about the destruction of the one ring) comes Peter Jackson’s King Kong (one movie about the destruction of the one primate, though thankfully you won‘t have to strain your eyes to see if Gollum is clinging onto King Kong as he falls off the Empire State Building screaming “MY PRECIOUS!!”…. stop that! You don‘t know where he‘s been!)

You know the drill, especially since we’re talking the classic amongst classic monster movies, the one and only King Kong. Based on the classic movie (which spawned a remake and lord knows how many tie ins and spin offs including an animated series or two starring everyone’s favorite super sized primate), the movie takes place in the same time and basically is the same movie from what I‘ve seen (with prettier SFX and some changes). It all starts off with a film crew taking a road trip to this place called “The Island of the Skull”, where they are looking for… a movie to film! Yeah… that’s such a good reason to get people you barely known killed via the unhealthy habit of being “eaten alive”!
It’s the year 1933 (same as the original I think) and some nutjob with a director’s title and a lack of common sense has decided to take a film crew out to this distant island to film the next great epic. He’s got no common sense (as I mentioned before), no brains (you‘ll see that in action as you spend several “lovely“ levels having to follow him about), yet he’s got a ship and a crew willing to die for him as well as a screenwriter who seems to have the instinctual screenwriter’s ability to instantly pick up any gun and use it to kill giant flesh eating monsters… yeah, I’m talking about you.
You write movie scripts, you can spell complex words, you can use a pistol, shotgun or sniper rifle to blow flesh eating monsters back to hell… man are you so talented. Me? I personally blame Hollywood for preparing your screenwriter character for things such as this!
Add to the cast the aforementioned crew of misfit sailors and a film crew who you rarely see during the game unless they‘re being chased down and savagely ripped apart for their flesh, and a starving starlet who was truly a starving starlet on the streets before the mad director “saved” her and you got yourself a recipe for disaster -- though this is one recipe that even Emeril Lagase wouldn’t touch with a 20 mile BAM!
And you know what? Now that we think about it, maybe starving on the streets of a big city is indeed a better alternative for that “starving starlet” than being fed to some big monster on a distant island.

As for the Island of the Skull? It looks like the big thing on the island isn’t just the big guy Kong, who has his own personal fanbase of primitive natives who often try to play matchmaker by hooking the big guy up with whatever foreign white chicks land on their island… go figure. Anyway there’s also the many monsters and dinosaurs of gigantic size (from the mansize to the mega size), not to mention the primitive humans that also live on the island who live to be Kong‘s groupies and full fledged card carrying members of the Cannibalism Club of the Atlantic. Yeah. Wonderful. Anyway in this game you’ll take control of the two big characters. One, the human Jack Driscoll, is where the 1st Person shooter levels come in. The other, Kong, is where you’ll be doing the 3rd person action gaming. Got that? No? Me neither. But this is the big selling point of the game, ‘cause if you’ve seen the commercials you know how they’ve hyped endlessly how you can play as “Man”, and play as “Kong” in this game! Yeah… but is that aspect any good?

The game starts with a montage of film footage from the beginning of the actual movie, which is mostly just the first half of the “trailer” played out to intro the movie -- the full trailer is available in the extras once you played about 10% or so of the game. Ok, from there the game rolls right into the game itself, and you are treated to some of the most beautiful game graphics I have ever seen. The people at UbiSoft go all out to make this game look oh so pretty, with graphics that just make your mouth drool as you play a visually splendid game that makes you go “oooohhhhh“. And yes, this means that this is probably going to look even more beautiful on the XBox360 version of the game as it does on the PS2 -- by the way, if this game does turn out to blow severely then that’s going to be a major hardship for Xbox360 fans who bought it when it came out just recently since there seems to be rather slim pickings of first gen games to choose from for the aforementioned XBox360.

But, you might say, just because the game looks great it doesn’t mean it plays great. True enough, some games can have the most excellent appearance and yet suck so badly I couldn’t fully express how badly they suck. So just because the game is ultra pretty eye candy that doesn’t mean the game is hot stuff, but then again that’s why we’re here -- to merit the game’s worth by the gameplay as opposed to it’s pretty graphics. Now, mind you, I can’t say that I know whether or not the actual cast of the movie has reprised their roles in the game (though it seems that they did), but I do know that you can find a certain Gollum in this game. Featured in this game is one Andy Serkis, he who you probably remember better as Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy… I’m not certain what he does in this game though, think he‘s the nutty director with the obsession for the One Primate…. Only he doesn’t eat fish raw, doesn’t talk to himself in this movie, and doesn’t have an evil side from what I‘ve seen of the game. The rest of the names I don’t recognize though, sorry. Guess I should have

seen the movie before I reviewed the game.

Anyway back to the game. Split into two parts you’ll find yourself challenged in two different ways, starting with the human equation of the game. The human equation, where you’ll go 1st Person Shooter on the island’s monsters, is how you’ll spend a very large chunk of gameplay in this game. As Driscoll, the gun toting screenwriter of vengeance, you’ll be shooting (whenever you can find the guns or ammo to shoot) or spearing via the use of projectile weaponry (scavenging the landscape for spears and bones from neverending carcasses of rib bones that never ever end) the creatures out to eat you. You’ll also be using your stuff to solve simple “puzzles” and retrieve supplies in the form of crates dropped from a circling plane that never seems to run out of fuel… must be solar powered.

Your primary goal is to fight your way through the island’s madness searching first for a way off the island, then for your female love interest Anne who is stolen by the Kong. And that, by the way, is an accomplishment in itself since you ARE playing as a “screenwriter” after all! Apparently the screenwriter’s guild requires it’s members to be trained in weapons and giant bug slash monster killing… must be all the time they have to spend in Hollywood. Ok, long story short you are the anti-Dr. Doolittle as you will walk with the cannibalistic animals, kill all the animals, then feed their bloodied carcasses to other beasts… yes, I’ll stop singing now.

Yes, feeding the animals IS very very important by the way, sorta like Zoo Keeper only not as cute.
Apparently since most of the creatures you are occupying space with on this little landmass are of the flesh eater variety, and since you don’t want them to be eating YOUR flesh, you’ll need to give them an alternative to their diet other than the Soylent Green flavored finger food or super sized take out variety of food you could be feeding these monsters (which would be you and your pals served up sushi style).
So at times you’ll have the chance to slay a creature and use it’s desecrated corpse as a “munchie” to protect yourself from attack, and not just you dropping enemies dead and watching their pals descend on their corpse, you can also find little insects and fish which will be used as bait to draw monsters out into the open (from ambush) in order to nail them. This can also be used to buy you time to heal, scramble to gather a new weapon or more ammo, or distract mega predators while allies open paths for your escape… the food chain is so deep here, and guess where YOU stand on that food chain! Go on, guess!
To do this you’ll need a projectile weapon, like a spear or rib spear. This is, also, the only way you can use the “stab” option since these things blunt quickly if you’re trying to use these as stabbing weapons against the monsters of the island. All you do from here is stab a bug or fish, then throw the spear out ahead of you and see what comes to eat… then you kill it while it eats, simple.

Keeping an eye on your “health’ is quite important in this game, especially since this game doesn’t deal you a health meter as it does a small amount of “health” ala Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon series (which means you can die really quickly in this game if you are not careful).
If you take a few hits the game screen turns blood red, and dire music begins to play. From this point you’ll need to avoid further hits, lest your dead (then the screen really turns red and you hear this DUNNNNNNN sound meaning you‘re dead… then you have to replay the scene all over again).
However if you can stay away from damage for a little bit you’ll “heal” up (the screen returns to normal) and be able to go on again… guess you don’t have to worry about bleeding deaths like in other games since in this game you always seem to recover from the damage as long as it’s not critical (like you being chomped on by a T-Rex for instance, though you can take a hit from a T-Rex without dying immediately).

So the game is basically a Darwin-esque tableau of the theorem of “Survival of the Fittest”. Heck, some of the mediocre “puzzles” in this game uses the feeding aspect as a requirement to solve said puzzle! For example sometimes you’ll need to draw out attackers from ambush in order to proceed (so you can kill them before they kill you), and in order to do this you need to bait them into the open so you can blast them.
At another point in the game, while pursuing Kong and the captive Anne, you’ll need to play bodyguard to two guys (the mad director and the Captain of the ship that bought you to this forsaken land) trying to open a gigantic gate, simple right? Well, not really since you’ll wander into a T-Rex who’ll try to eat the captain (since even the T-Rex draws a line on eating mentally unbalanced people). Obviously you need to keep the T-Rex away from the duo so they can open this gate, so you’ll need to FEED the T-Rex… now look up and notice the flying things (what the captain mis-identifies as “bats“), see them? One on each side of the clearing you’re in? Yeah, they’re not flying monkeys, and you’re not Dorothy, but they’ll do in a pinch for instant T-Rex Helper, that helps your T-Rex help keep your pals from being mistaken for a great meal.
Oh, but that’s not all. Mind you once you feed the T-Rex the two flyers in the area you are going to end up short some food to keep the thing occupied, and those two working the cranks are DAMN SLOW! Well you did pick up a tommy gun in this level and by the time the T-Rex comes about you should have found refills to your gun so you can work it. You’ll need to shoot the T-Rex in the head (no I’m not kidding you) and keep it occupied. You won’t kill it, mind you, but you can keep it’s attention by firing short bursts at it’s head which will compel it to focus it’s dim attention on you, causing it to stay away from the two working the gate. You should be able to buy enough time for the gate to open up then run through and finish the scene. Simple.

Ok, there’s another important thing about the human equation, and that’s the need to listen. And by that I don’t mean listening to the urge to turn this game off and go back to playing Resident Evil 4. I mean listening as in you listening to your companions who’ll give you hints as to what to do, and you listening to your environments as you’ll often hear potential enemies before you see them (just like how you often can hear people‘s car stereos pounding away some (bleep)y loud thumping song before you see said car in question. Yeah, I know, you actually FEEL the music before you see them however I wouldn’t rely on feel if I were you). Listening will reveal things like footsteps (island natives), roaring (monsters), crunching (feeding monsters), chewing (the sound guy walked over to the food tables with the sound mike), and heavy breathing (just don’t think too hard about who they got to do the heavy breathing for this game).

Now after all that you’d think a game like this

would be cool, right? Well it does have it’s faults as well as it’s -- well -- it’s “pluses”. One of the few bright points that should have shined better, mainly the puzzles, is also one of the biggest disappointments of the game. On an island that you would think should be filled with Indiana Jones meets Myst style death defying puzzlers the game is rather dim on the depth of the puzzles. Sad but true, the so-called “puzzles” are way too simple for anyone, coming off more as no-brainers as opposed to well thought out puzzles. For instance… you can turn switches to open gates (or wait for your female love interest or some other companion of a male variety to open gates for you), and if you’re down with that you can test your brains by setting bramble ablaze with a flaming spear in order to move through, (or by knocking down conveniently placed torch skulls which set bramble ablaze) or something equally simple and pedestrian to move forward. Apparently this is the short bus of ancient island civilizations.
And, worse, sometimes you need to combine some of these “puzzles” to get somewhere.
For instance you would need to burn bramble in order to clear a path for an ally, or to reach a lever to work a gate. Or you need to feed flesh eating spiders a prey to reach a lever to open a gate… damn, it seems quite a few of the so called “puzzles” -- OK, ALL of these puzzles -- revolve around feeding things or burning things. Talk about a sad sad state of affairs.

Another sad thing about the game is that the game is supposed to be SOOOOOO realistic! Sure, the animation is damn pretty and everything looks just nice, but a taste for the realistic also means that the sense of “reality” removes the potential fun that you should be feeling out of the 1st Person Shooter slash 3rd Person Action this game should be providing you. Taking up a gameplay engine feel similar to The Getaway : Black Monday, you find yourself playing a game with no health meter, no ammo meter, no GPS system to keep track of where you’ve been (or where you’re going), no targeting system to make it easier to hit what you’re aiming at, nothing. And while you can track your ammo by pressing the circle button you’ll find that you run out of ammo way too fast, often having to scramble to find bones and spears to defend yourself by throwing… yes, forget jabbing since it only works for bait gathering.
That means you can die way too easily in this game, which is a drag! Because you have no health meter that means you find yourself dragged right onto Death Jr.’s door almost immediately once you get hit a few good times by a creature, and once you get cornered expect to die almost instantly since you‘ll have no way to get clear to “rest“ a few seconds! That means you constantly find yourself in danger of dying over and over again which makes the game harder than it should be, especially if you run out of ammo way too fast (which you’ll do often) and have to scrounge for projectile weapons which take forever to kill these things!
But, then again, that does also provide some challenge so if you are up for abit of a challenge to your reflexes and your skills you might actually cherish this “situation” more than I did.

But that’s not the only part of this game. We have the flip side of this coin to look at, the Kong equation.
It’s the reason you’re playing a game called King Kong after all, the chance to play as the major primate himself King Kong. When you finally have the chance to play as the ape you’ll find the gaming aspect changed, as you’ll switch from 1st Person Shooter to 3rd Person Action mode here… which is going to take a long while since you have to muddle through quite abit of the human side before you FINALLY FINALLY get ahold of Kong! First you have to explore the island, then Anne has to be kidnapped, then you have to follow Kong, then (FINALLY) after what seems like forever you’ll finally get to the point where Kong is available for you to play as. The first chance you get to play as Kong you’ll have to chase down a runaway flying monster to save Anne, which is more of a pain in the rear than you can imagine!

Unlike your human counterpart who fights 1st person shooter style (in a system ala The Getaway : Black Monday), you’ll control Kong in 3rd Person Action mode using him to bash and smash your way through your enemies with your Primal Rage style of beatdown… only the game seems reluctant to teach you how to make Kong go, dropping only the most minimal of instructions which will make you mastering the primate that much harder! Almost immediately you’ll find the game has it out for you once your Kong since it’s not going to make it easy to master Kong, which means you’ll see Anne die several times over before you finally get the hang of making the primate do your bidding.

One important thing to remember here, about Kong’s part of the game, is that between battles you should start rapping on the triangle button to build up your “Rage” meter… “Rage”… “Primal Rage”… uh, never mind. By the way don’t bother doing this while you’re chasing the flyer, especially since time is of the essence and powering up your rage ability eats away valuable time. Do it once you catch up and Anne gets clear so you can fight without worrying about the thing biting her head off.
Yeah, did I mention there are a few “escort” missions (human and probably Kong alike) and if your companion is killed you automatically “fail” and have to repeat over and over again until you save your companion? Yeah. Don’t you just love “escort” missions? I don’t.
Back to Kong. Apparently this “Rage” meter of Kong’s boosts the power of your attacks, HOWEVER it also leaves you open to attack so the game recommends that you should be sure you are not running the risk of being attacked before you go rapping your “anger mis-management” button -- but that’s not always possible since it also heals you quick so you really should be risking it during battle since (once the world turns red) you need to go “rage” quickly in order to regenerate. Oh, don’t worry, you’ll know you are “raged” since the world turns this bright yellowish or so color and you start to have “dramatic” killing moments whenever you strike monsters down (you suddenly “FREEZE” as your blow connects showing a “fatal” blow, and it’s so “dramatic”). Speaking of dramatic you also have the ability to pull off “fatalities” as Kong, which is basically a button tapper to decapitate, snap necks or rip the wings off of flyers.
Oh, and then comes the suck (once again) because once you master Kong and catch Anne? You‘re done, and you go back to being a human after a short level as Kong… damn! You barely get any time on Kong it seems and already it’s back to 1st person shooting! What the heck!!
Yeah, there’ll be more levels as Kong but somehow I wish there was more Kong (or the ability to play through one whole sessions as either Kong or human and not bounce back and forth between the two).

Obviously this means the game is by no means a slam dunk by any stretch of the term, but it’s

also not a horrible game either. I know, I know, I’m being middle of the road here but it is kind of fun -- and kind of pissy too at the same time. I guess if I have to feel sorry for someone concerning this release it has to be XBox360 fans since it’s one of the opening volley of games available on the XBox360, and from what I‘ve seen there just isn‘t much to choose from concerning that new console! Alright, you do also have choices like Dead or Alive 4, Kamino and Perfect Dark Zero to fall back on so it’s not like your shafted if King Kong doesn‘t float your Fellowship. Still, though, they could have put out a few more good pickings this holiday season for the premiere of the XBox360.

Yet another mixed bag of good and suck is the extras.
On the good side we have WETA created galleries which actually play out as REAL GALLERIES! When you choose these you’ll find yourself transported into a gallery area where you can roam about, seeing the exhibits in museum quality set-ups that really put a sense of interactive-ness into this extra which just rocks.
On the suck side we have extras that can only be unlocked with… what the… online codes? Online codes?!? What the…!! Then there’s stuff that only can be unlocked with a certain score -- funny, everytime I check in the game swears I have earned ZERO points… how the hell do I earn points in this game!!
That and the game seems rather stingy with it‘s cutscenes, sharing very little actual scenes from the movie.
But how does the game roll overall? Let’s break it down.

King Kong Breakdown the Peter Jackson Version
What’s Hot?
Now that’s a hard one… what is so damn good about King Kong… oh, wait, Peter Jackson’s King Kong? What is good? Well there is the graphics which is damn good to look at, and then there’s the WETA galleries which allows a little bit of interactive exploration of the exhibits of the stuff that went into the look of the game. And I’m sure there’s more extras too that I have yet to unlock, which should be nice too.
Otherwise as first person shooters slash third person action games goes it does have some bite to it and I can’t proclaim that I was bored by the game, because I did have fun playing it. So I guess I did like it, though I wouldn’t compel people to drop a $50 spot on this game either.
Other people seem to have liked this game better than me though, like X-Play, so maybe it does have more merit than I give it credit for. Ah, you better check this out yourself if you think it’ll suit you. Rent it out and give it a spin, you might actually like it.

What’s Not?
The gameplay, however, drags at times in my opinion. I had fun, but it could have been better.
Adapting the restrictive feel of The Getaway : Black Monday you find yourself without any way of tracking your health or ammo, find yourself short on life and shorter on ammo count, and basically find that if you were looking for an all out frantic shooter to roar through then you’ll be greatly disappointed.
The restrictive element of the game does add quite abit of challenge, and considering the whole game is beautiful visual eye candy that really looks swell you could do worse for a place to do your 1st person shooting in, but if you are like me and like to have a all out shooting experience then you’ll find the way too restrictive element of this game is not going to be your cup o’ tea. Still it’s a fairly good shooter so it’s not all that horrible, but it’s no Resident Evil 4. Then there’s the Kong levels which are too short and too few, which is a bad thing since you did come all the way just to play as Kong only to get less than what you probably expected from your ability to play as Kong!
Add to that the “online code” thing, the point meter that doesn’t seem to ever grow past zero points (which means more extras are hard to unlock) and a game that is a mix of good and bad you have yourself one mixed bag of a game to look at here.
Whether you buy it or not is up to you, but for me it’s not worth the $50 they’re attempting to milk you for to buy said game. Wait until the price is knocked down.

Moments to Remember?
The game is pretty. The graphics is quite nice and the game has such a beautiful look to it, and everything is so damn pretty in this game! But, then again, being pretty is not being good, it just means the game looks great visually. The extras are a mixed bag, and the gameplay is easy enough to pick up and play so you won’t struggle too hard, expect in Kong’s area but once you master it you should be able to swing with it (pun intended).

What to Ignore?
Let’s see… I’d like to ignore the fact that there’s as much flaws or bads about this game as there are good things. The whole Getaway : Black Monday “realistic” feel of the game drags. The fact you don’t get to play with Kong as much as you should have in this game sucks. The fact that the game is so damn stingy with cutscenes from the movie sucks! Basically it’s a give and take here. The game gives some interesting gameplay, but it could have been abit better. The game has nice extras, but it shouldn’t have been stingy with the extras. And so on and so forth… so I guess the real question is whether or not you can ignore the bad about this game and focus on the good. Can you?
Ok, ok, real ignores…

Ignore the fact that when the T-Rex attacks the character of the director glitches.
Apparently he and the Captain of the ship is working the two gears to draw open the gate (which takes far longer than usual) while you have to distract a T-Rex from eating them. And should you fail the T-Rex will eat the Captain and you will have failed… how do you know you failed? The director calls out “You ready?” as if waiting for you to come up and grab the winch to keep it spinning… guy? The guy next to you is being devoured whole by a T-Rex, stop being so damn calm about it!
Oh, yeah, if you are not a fan of escort missions you’ll find something else to disagree about with this game. It has those in a few instances during the gameplay.

Overall?
Mixed bag. I’ve seen positive reviews of the game but I am not so sold on it as others are. It’s good, but it’s not perfect. I don’t know but for me I’m just not really hyped about this, especially to the tune of purchasing it for $50! But if you want to give it a spin why don’t you go out, rent it, play it, and see what you think. If you like it? Buy it (though if you can maybe you should hold out until the game drops in price and becomes more accessible to your pocketbook). Of course you don’t need to wait for it to drop if you really really want it, if you love the game enough it might be worth even the $50 price tag, but that’s your choice.
Otherwise if you rent this out and don’t like it? Well then don’t get it, get something else. Nuff said.