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Game Title: Peter Jackson's King Kong The Official Game of the Movie
Platform: Nintendo DS
Developer: Ubisoft Casablanca
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Action
Age Rating: PEGI: 12+, ESRB: T, Cero: A,
Release Date: 21st November 2005 (US), 2nd December 2005 (EU), 15th December 2005 (AU), 25th May 2006 (JP)
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Game Score: 1.5/10
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Summery:
Kong Kong on the DS is just a poorly designed mess that's very broken and buggy to play.
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The big ape has got it's charm with various remakes including the one by Peter Jackson which was a great film. Ubisoft got on with making video games that would loosely follow scenes from it. The main console versions like the PS2, Gamecube and both XBox and XBox 360 have demonstrated that a good game can come from a great movie depending on the source material. Let's understand something about the capabilities and limitations of the handheld systems. The GBA followed a different perspective from it's other versions, the PSP tried to follow it's console counterparts but however, you should never, ever give it's Nintendo DS version a fought of even playing. Why? Well just look at the gameplay!
In the plot of the movie, Carl Denham takes a cast and crew aboard a ship to Skull Island to film a movie with their leading lady Ann Darrow and screenwriter Jack Driscoll. The island is home to King Kong a 25 foot gorilla who has his interests in Ann when the cast encounter him. The Storyline in the DS version is told through stillframe shots and kind of stupid because the cutscenes deliberately skip a portion of an event of the movie to another with no explanation. This makes the cutscenes present themselves very poorly not to mention that mostly the stillframe cutscenes filter what is supposed to be happening.
King Kong's gameplay perspective takes place in both a First Person Shooter where you control Jack and also a Third Person Beat em Up segments where you control Kong. During the Jack levels you'll explore very linear caves and jungle environments that for the most part look very uninteresting. You control your character with the D-Pad while using the Stylus on the touchscreen to look and aim but on this game the looking controls are broken when turning left and right, this is because of when you touch the left or right sides of the touchscreen the game strangely does the turning. It makes the controls feel very clunky to relay on especially when you trying escape danger from the enemies at later portions. L uses your weapon that you have equipped and you can pick up items from levers, spears and guns by tapping the touchscreen twice.
Jack's list of guns consist of a Pistol, Tommy Gun, Shotgun and a Sniper Rifle. The enemies you'll face during these segments are crabs, raptors, ugly birds and new to this version of the game are Bees that have bee hives to be careful of. Sadly in this version of the game you face crabs more then the other creatures in this game and in some stages they can constantly respawn a few times before they even decide to give up which is annoying.
Like in the console versions you can only carry one gun at a time but in this DS release you cannot punch, so if you run out of ammo you're screwed and you'll have to restart the level. Making the game experience worse is that at the end of each stage the game for no reason takes away your equipped weapons which in my opinion makes no sense cause there are two stages where you're left defenceless against a raptor whilst you search for a weapon to fight back, it's just a really awful design choice. I also find it strange that in spots where the spears are placed you can sometimes get spears that can spawn infinitely whilst in some other places it doesn't.
You do get some puzzles from time to time which are mainly activating levers to open or getting your ally to activate a lever that you can't reach. Your allies are useless cause for the most part they can't defend themselves from enemies so you're left to protect them, that includes Hayes as well. They also do not move or do anything unless you as close that the game wants you to be to command them which is annoying. Much of the game takes place in the Jack levels but much of the mechanics in the linear first person levels are just so awful and are very poorly designed.
If you thought the Jack levels were bad then you should check out the Kong levels as they are worse then Jack's. Every now and then you'll have to play a Kong stage and there are only 4 while there are 13 Jack stages. These take part in a third person perspective where it combines beat em up and platforming, mind you only the platforming works at the very least while the fighting is very lacking and each hit you pull on an enemy gives no proper impact on a defeat enemy. Kong's only puzzle is dealing with a pillar that blocks the path and breaking down doors. The A button swings his arms which kills most enemies in a single hit and the X does a ground stomp which is more powerful. The R button which makes Kong repetively beat his chest is only in the game for show. The only real threat that you'll have are the V-Rex monsters which can knock you back and attempt to bite you. You can shake them by quickly by hammering the Y button. You can't do much to the V-Rexes because they hardly give you a chance to hit them and Kong's attacks are delayed which leaves him vulnerable to attacks. You can only way to fight back is by dodging their attacks with the B button combined with the D-Pad and striking at the perfect timing.
You do get to see King Kong finish off his opponent by breaking their jaws which although is very awkward looking. Once you deal with V-Rexes you would hope for a Triceratops or a giant predator insect but however all you get are small raptors, birds and then a V-Rex, that's it. One of the worst things that can possibly happen in this version of the is that you can't play the stage where King Kong goes on a rampage through New York City nor the stage where Kong climbs the Empire State Building to fight the planes, I'm not even joking and I'm dead serious about this. It's a tremendous insult when these scenes are some of the moments that everyone would remember fondly about the movie. Once you wrap your head around that part in the game you've completed it and it's a shame that you can't unlock the bonus ending because again there's no replay value and the game only lasts about 2 hours.
On to the fatal flaws of the game, the game's graphics are absolutely horrible. Pixelated jungle and cave environments, random map textures that are badly used on each stage and well as having each texture flicker. Various objects like switches, a tree branch or a gate is left suspended in the air and the watery rivers tends to twitch randomly. The character models are the worst as they almost look like zombies and the model lining is worse then on Sega's first House of the Dead game on Saturn and PC, the same thing fares with the enemies in the game. The animations on both the characters and very terrible and horrible to look at. The worst thing about the graphics is the fog distance that doesn't even stop the enemies from exposing it's full body even if it's absolutely far away, that's some lazy programming there. The framerate is stable until there are about 3 or more character or enemy models appear on screen that the frame rate drops down considerably.
The amount of bugs and glitches shows of a lot of lazyiness in programming and polish. The ones I had were one time I killed a crab as it retreated away and it placed itself near it's spawning point, when I came back to it's respawn point it played it's death animation again. Another one happened when I picked up a spear and noticed a gun strangely placed on the floor, I threw the spear only that it makes the gun disappear, I even tried to pick it up and while I can pick up the pistol if it appears as one but I couldn't pick up the Thompson when it appeared as one. Another one I hate is that if you're too close to an enemy your spears and bullets go right through them and does no damage unless you move back from them. The worst bug you'll have in the game is falling through the game's environment which causes you to die inside the game's polygonal abyss. I had that happen on some occasion once during on the Jack levels and once during a Kong stage which caused my game to crash, I'm serious the game is so badly designed that the game decides to crash when this bug happens. Thankfully I was playing this game on my Nintendo 3DS so I was able to close the game and return myself to the 3DS Home Menu. I even had some crabs get stuck on a wall or even fall through the walls whilst playing.
The only thing I can say about it that's good is the soundtrack and the sound effects which are good quality through the DS speakers including the 3DS speakers. Although short looped it's decent to know the music is fitting to the game's environment.
Other then the soundtrack there is nothing redeemable about King Kong on the Nintendo DS, the Graphics are absolutely terrible and ugly with really bad animations, the FPS levels on the Jack stages are horribly designed including it's poor controls and the Kong stages are very, very lacking. It has plenty of bugs and glitches and no unlockable content for even beating this completely broken port. This is clearly an unfinished mess of a game and should have spent more time polishing and how it past game testing is beyond words. Metroid Prime Hunters Demo and the full game as well as other FPS titles on the DS like Call of Duty and Goldeneye Rouge Agent are far better games on the Nintendo DS then this short unfinished waste based on the Peter Jackson movie. If you see the XBox, Xbox 360, PS2, Game Cube, Game Boy Advance and PSP versions of the game, play those instead and toss this pile of rubbish back to skull island where it belongs as it stands as one of (if not) one of the worst action games on the DS.
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The Good Points:
1. The soundtrack
The Bad Points:
1. No unlockable content or any replayability and the game's too short
2. Slow paced linear First Person Shooter levels and are poorly designed
3. Kong's fighting controls are monotonous to handle and also very limited
4. Loads of Bugs and glitches show of the game's lazyiness in polish
5. Very, very ugly graphics
6. A very unfinished and broken port
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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