Survive the movie's Skull Island as man, and rule it as giant ape. King Kong is a sadly short, but fun adventure.
The Bad: Graphics aren't quite "Current-Gen"; Short game; Not enough chances to play as Kong; Dull story; Limited actions; Unfitting dialogue; Non-attainable bonuses; Not much replay-value.
Ubisoft's release of Peter Jackson's King Kong: Game of the Movie serves up to be one of the very few game's to break the movie-game curse by giving out an enjoyable and sometimes epic experience. Based on Peter Jackson's King Kong movie, with the collaboration of both Peter Jackson and Michel Ancel (famed developer of Beyond Good and Evil), an interesting journey to the movie's Skull Island has been created. Throughout the adventure, players will fight to survive the island as they encounter a small variety of creatures, mostly prehistoric, and usually from the role of a human, though sometimes being given the opportunity to take on the role of King Kong during some fun and chaotic moments. An interesting attempt is made here to be an amazing game, but it falls just short of reaching such success. The problems encountered here are caused mainly by there not being enough of what's given, but despite the game's shortcomings, a fun and worthwhile experience can still be found here.
The story follows that of the movie's in a less revealing way than the motion picture. It is 1933 and you play as screenwriter, Jack Discoll as you accompany the soon-to-be-out-of-the-job filmmaker, Carl Danham, and some other crew to film a movie on the mysterious Skull Island, all in a desperate attempt to save Danham's dying career. But soon as they head to the island, things quickly go awry as the ocean thrashes the boats across it's treacherous waters and you land ashore to find prehistoric creatures, amongst other things, all of which are violently after you, and your crew. You soon encounter one of the islands more dominant forces and the game's main attraction, Kong, and take on the role of the giant ape as you battle your way through creatures usually in an attempt to protect danhams female movie star, miss Ann Darrow who is captured by Kong during the story. You then overtime somewhat see why it is that Kong has Ms. Darrow and the lengths he's willing to go to protect her throughout the well known tale of King Kong. However, the tale is not told so well through the game's translation.
A lot of things regarding the story is left out from the game and expected that players have watched the movie to really understand what's going on. The game starts with a brief movie trailer to explain the reason for the journey to Skull Island and then everything else is told slightly in-game as you and your crew explore the island. There's enough shown for you to get the idea of what's going on, but not enough to make you feel all that involved. Things just kind of happen and you just deal with whatever is going on at that time, and you don't really have much care for what goes on during most of the game's story. Some character's make dumb choices through that force your team to split up. The story picks up a little bit more about half-way in as you and your crew battle to survive, but it still serves up nothing to remember, leaving the rest of the game's area's to pick up where this one falls and it partly does so.
Gameplay as a human is handled from the first-person-perspective, similar to an FPS, but it manages to feel a little different by presenting a bigger focus on survival rather than running around, guns blazing. In-fact there's very little gun-play in this game, while you do find guns from time to time, your real weapon will come in the form of spears and the game's food-chain system. Mostly all the enemies you encounter are just hungry creatures that want to eat anything it can, whether it be you or other creatures. Kill an enemy or find a lesser creature like insects and watch other creatures as they come to feast upon it's corpse allowing you to use this concept as bait or as a distraction to get by to the next desired area. It's a neat idea that play's out nicely, but doesn't feel as necessary as it should in some situations, but it's still pretty cool. The gun's that you find include a pistol, a shotgun, and a Thompson machine-gun, and while they do work, they usually tend to feel ineffective against Skull Islands creatures, and they don't last long, as ammo is scarce. Ammo is scattered in small amounts throughout the game from care packages sent down by a crew member's fly by over the island from a plane, leaving you to use spears when ammo is depleted.
There's two type's of spears that can be found, actual man-made spears scarcely scattered throughout and than the sharp bones of fallen foes, which are more commonly found, with the difference between the two being that the bones are less effective than the man-made spears. With the spears are given two options, one is to weakly thrust the spear at an enemy, which does nothing more really than slightly push the enemy away, and then the second thing you can do is throw the spears, a much more effective tactic. As you throw spears at the enemies, you'll see it stick out of them allowing you to pull it out and re-use it if you can get close enough, though using the spear too much will cause it to break, proving useless. One thing worth mentioning is that if you find small insects or larva, you can impale them and then throw them away as use for distractions as mentioned above, but aside from that, combat feels slow and very limited, mainly in the melee department by not providing many actions to use, with the ones available feeling useless, and it pushes you to run more than to fight. Realistically though, most of the enemies are creatures that you would probably rather avoid than fight anyways, things like raptors, V-Rex's(otherwise known as T-Rex's), and other horrifying creatures, that will chase you around throughout the island. There are parts where you are forced to fight, and that's where the combat just feels clunky, but aside from that, the other parts either have you running for you life, or solving puzzles. The puzzles usually consist of finding a lever to open a gate or lighting a spear on fire to clear the dry brush blocking your path, which the fire effects are pretty cool as they burn through, sometimes killing your foes, but they're nothing to brag about.
Environments are fun to navigate but leave you wanting more as wish you could explore through your own paths instead of the linear ones that are given. There is an optional HUD in the options menu that shows current weapon info and a reticule, but by default they are missing and your health is monitored off screen and damage is represented by flashes of red pulses through the screen, and if you take too much damage you'll die and in sometimes brutal manners like seeing the inside of a V-Rex as it eats you, and if you get away to find somewhere safe to be, your health will eventually restore. There's some interaction with the enemies as they attack you, as some may grab you and pull you away, giving you one last chance to fight them off, which is neat but the real moments in this game are when you play as Kong. A true feeling of power is given as you are thrust into the role of the giant ape, set loose to wreck havoc in a 3rd person styled beat-em-up. You'll sometimes have to protect Ann Darrow from harm by storing her in some place safe while you deal with nearby foes, or sometimes be given chase segments where you'll run through environments, swinging from tree branches, and running across walls, jumping around the island, feeling like a true gorilla. Though the whole time you'll be bashing dinosaurs, and other creatures with a small yet powerful move set, including some grapples that have you ripping apart a V-Rex's jaws are slamming it to the ground. The only problem with these levels are there is just not enough moments where you get to play as Kong in what is already a short game, and there are not enough moves to use as the move list becomes repetitive after one or two levels, and the game leaves you with a desire for more of not just Kong but Jack as well since his parts of the adventure are short too, and the game can be completed within one afternoon.
The world of Skull Island and it's inhabitants look interesting at first glance, but the sights wear down over time. There's not really any glitches that can be seen, but the game does look dated. When it first released on the 360 as a launch title, it was considered "Next-Gen" (What is now considered the current generation) and it looked amazing, but now it doesn't look much up to par with today's gen as it looked before, and it now looks like the middle point between that last generation and the current one. Things have that current generation feel of scale, like with the environments and some of the massive creatures you encounter, but they feel dragged down by some not-so detailed and sometimes dead looking character models, that are somewhat edgy or stiff looking animation wise. Kong himself and the creatures look awesome, but they still suffer from the same issues. I wouldn't say the graphics are bad, but they are certainly not amazing, they just look alright.
The sound area of this game is actually done quite well. Orchestral themes play accordingly to what goes on screen and helps bring out the tension and excitement of the game. The sound of creatures signify danger and give a real sense fear, pushing you to want to find safety. Kong's footsteps sound loud and powerful as does his roars and attacks. To top it off, the game has the character's voices done by the actors seen in the movie and they sound right, aside from some questionable dialogue, and the weapons sound fitting. Overall, the sound is done very nicely and proves to be an area that shouldn't receive any complaints.
One of the main issues with Peter Jackson's King Kong is that there's just not enough content here with the game being a short and linear experience that can be completed in one afternoon, and while you'll have fun during that afternoon, they'll be not much reason to ever go back to it again. Once you beat the game, you'll unlock the ability to re-play levels while earning points to not only achieve a high-score, but to unlock new extras. The unlockable's in the game consist of things like making-of videos and concept art to see in a first-person, explorable museum, which is fun to look at, but once you see it, there's not much else to do. One unfortunate thing about the extra's are, to unlock two of the extra's, you have to have a computer and go online to register your high score on the leaderboards via the online code the game gives you in order to get a code to unlock the bonuses, problem is that the site doesn't seem to work anymore, so it seems there's some extra's you'll never be able to unlock. Why the game didn't incorporate Xbox Live for the leaderboards and why you have to unlock the extra's in such a dumb manner, I don't know. One cool thing though is that you can unlock a cool alternate ending to the game, which includes an extra level, but just as the rest of the game, it ends quickly, leaving you unsatisfied.
Peter Jackson's King Kong could have had a lot more to it, and it should have. It proves to be a fun game all the way up until the ending, and then that's pretty much it. Besides the 15-20 minuets it takes to unlock and play the alternate ending to an already barely told and thus forgettable story, the extra's just don't provide enough to spend any more time with the game. It proves to be a good rental, but not much of a buy unless you can find it for a cheap price. If you can do that, then this is an adventure worth having, so check your bargain bins people!
Verdict: 7 out of 10