Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie

"Not only did this game stink, but it also augmented my fear of bugs and pond water"

I'm not going to lie. I'll say it now--I played this game purely for the one-thousand achievement points.

”But Eric, if you played it for the achievement points, your view of the game is skewered! You just want the achievement points and you don't care how bad the game is—you just want it to end so you can go play Call of Duty 4 or something!”

And yet, for the whole six hours that encompassed the game, there was plenty of room for improvement. Feeling more like a loose clone of Half-Life and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, several design issues became prevalent. In other words, if you like playing as an annoying 1920's American badass while constantly throwing bones and spears and bugs and dinosaurs, while at the same time reliving the experience of a hip, popular feature film, then this is your game.

In Peter Jackson's King Kong, you fill the shoes of the characters from the aforementioned movie. You'll play as two characters—Jack Driscoll, a run-of-the-mill sailor from a FPS perspective, and King Kong, an abnormally large gorilla with his cinematic, beat-em-up sections. The story in a nutshell is that some kooky filmmaker (played by Jack Black, who unfortunately doesn't slay dinosaurs with his Tenacious D album) suckers a bunch of sailors into landing on the island from hell, a jungle paradise with bloodthirsty dinosaurs, squishy bugs, deformed natives, and the big man on campus, King Kong himself. Your rowboat immediately wrecks as you find yourself (Jack) trying to gather your friends and get the heck out of there, while occasionally playing as King Kong in a few dispersed action sequences. The story is akin to Half-Life in the sense that the stages all take place in one long storyline as you clear obstacle after another in a big romp on this depressing hell-hole.

Of course, in cinematic fashion, the game's best point would be its exposition. From time and time again, you'll encounter your friends, each of which will holler at you with decent voice acting and cinematics. The actors were called in to do the voice acting and they do so convincingly. Seldom will a cutscene interrupt the action, so this Half-Life homage is arguably well done. Even the King Kong fighting segments actually look okay as he leaps from the side of cliffs, swing from tree logs, and busts T-rexes over the head.

For a majority of the game's story, you'll play as Jack. Jack is your typical FPS hero, and you'll be killing wild animals and solving puzzles ad nauseum. Enemies include large millipedes, scorpions, bat-like creatures, ichthyosaurs, and t-rexes/velociraptors of all sizes. To fight the hordes, you can gather spears (which can be thrown for maximum effectiveness), bones, and even firearms spread in crates throughout the island, such as a luger or a tommy gun. Most enemies usually take one or two hits to kill, while others, particularly the nagging velociraptors, are more resilient and usually require you to stand in a pile of pointy bones and impale them repeatedly. If you take damage, your screen turns red in a Call of Duty fashion as you must take cover or die.

The combat does have some apparent problems. First and foremost, shooting guns is incredibly rudimentary and made simple by the game's liberal auto-aim function. You can, however, aim through the iron sights, but it's literally disadvantageous to do this, especially with the sniper rifle. If you want to shoot stuff, go play Halo. Ammo is very scarce as you must hunker down on “bone piles” frequently so you can repeatedly lunge them at enemies. Grab a bone, throw it, grab a bone, throw it, etc. The unchangeable aim sensitivity is abnormally low as well, so if you start to get attacked from behind, you'll be dead before you can do a 180. The enemies in this game are incredibly limited as you'll end up having to fight the same lunging beasts over and over again. As an FPS, this game is rather mediocre.

The puzzles aren't that great either. There's only two puzzles—“burn the unpassable prickly bushes with the fire” and “find the lever so you can open the wooden doors.” To light the bushes, you'll need to light a spear on an existing fire and bring it to the bushes and watch ‘em sizzle. Variants to this challenge usually involve moving the fire an incredibly long distance from the bushes or putting a waterfall in the way, which will douse the fire unless you throw the spear elsewhere and pick it up later. As for the lever, generally, it's a hide-and-seek mission each time and usually used in conjunction with the prickly bushes—“burn the bushes, get the lever, open the door.” After about the fifth puzzle, you'll grow weary of it, but the fact that it's imposed so much on you is terrible. Worth mentioning is the “use the grubs to lure away the spiders from a stationary location” puzzle, but obviously my disdain for the little bloodsuckers meant I was only required to do this puzzle once. As an adventure/puzzle game, it is also mediocre.

To break up the bulk of Action Jack's adventure, the quick King Kong segments appear now and then. On one hand, playing as King Kong is pretty cool and the hud-less screen and cinematic angles make these parts fun to play. On the other hand, combat usually degrades to button mashing, which is about as bad as Jack's segments. Usually, on these segments, you must jump from cliffs, tree branches, and other stuff as you approach the final boss, which is usually a T-rex or big bat monster. Of course, because these segments are purely cinematic, they're all easy for anyone with a brain as you can follow a fixed course with just a few button presses. The bosses are usually difficult because you must first subdue them, then rip their jaw in half by mashing another. Once again, all cinematics, no gameplay. I didn't find Kong's segments very fun either, as the most involved you can get in this portion is throwing a log at a bunch of natives just to solve a puzzle.

As you can tell, the game design is the main culprit. The sequence of events is usually this: find a weapon, kill a millipede, wade through waist-deep water, kill a velociraptor, light bushes on fire, get the lever to open the door, do it all over again. Boring combat, boring puzzles, and bland King Kong segments don't make this game very interesting, especially for repeated plays. The prize for beating such a game is a brief, mediocre New York stage and handful of art galleries. You can play the missions again and try to get “high scores,” but there's no real incentive to do this.

The game's visuals aren't that superb either. This is a 360 launch title, so the environments looks suitable for the good old Xbox, but with slightly sharper textures. Most of the game's animations are choppy in some way. Generally, when capping enemies or watching your friends flail in danger, they tend to warp in some abstract ways. A lot of little effects, such as gun shots and water effects, come off as bland and not very interesting. The game's atmosphere is rather dark—almost too dark to the point it depresses you. The cinematics really help out here, as seeing King Kong on the Xbox 360 is the greatest thing this game has to offer. The audio is arguably better as most beasts let out massive roars or even a little “screee” for the nasty bugs. The voice acting is quite good. Some orchestrated music plays during the tense scenes, and it helps to make the game more tolerable. This is also probably the only FPS where the main character actually tells you how much ammo he has left. Listening to a little nerdy Jack say “Two magazines on backup,” when you have a hud that tells you all the info you need to know drove me over the edge.

I had some fun with King Kong, but after a few hours in, the monotonous layouts, simple game design, and silly graphical hiccups made this a very disappointing game. A lifespan of six hours with no difficulty settings or other options is even too long for this game. The action-adventure FPS genre is so saturated nowadays that this game is typically undesirable today. The only reason to play this game is if you're a big fan of King Kong or you're looking for a quick 1000 achievement points.

Now if you excuse me, I need to go decompress and play a happy game, such as SimTown! Doo doo doo…..

Presentation: 7/10 – Well, the title screen looks rather interesting.
Gameplay: 5/10 – Shoot bugs, light bushes on fire, do this over and over again. Kong segments are incredibly plain.
Graphics: 7/10 – Not mind-blowing, but as a launch title, it gets a pass.
Sound: 6/10 – Three magazines on backup. Two magazines on backup. Last magazine on backup. Oh, it's also got Jack Black in it (THE PICK OF DESSTTINNNYYY!!!!).
Replay Value: 4/10 – No real incentive to play it through more than once.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/25/08, Updated 05/01/08

Game Release: Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie (US, 11/21/05)