Oh no! A movie licensed game, it’s bound to be complete trash because they always are, right? Well, prepared to be surprised, King Kong (I refuse to call it by its ridiculously long name, and you can’t even shorten it to PJKKTOGOTM because that looks silly too) is a superb game. It’s so good in fact, that I am wondering whether the movie can match the quality of what we have here.
The game is split into two parts and you play as two characters. In the first you play as Jack, a character from the movie who must help save Anne from the dangers of the island. This is set up like a traditional first person shooter. The second part of the game has you playing as the awesome Kong, and this is set in a third-person viewpoint, and you must run, jump and swing your way through the jungle and battle dinosaurs, and of course man.
King Kong is a rather unique game, as it has no on-screen display. There are no health meters, no score or timer, and no display telling you how many rounds you have left in any of the weapons you use. Instead your health is presented to you in the way of blurring and colour loss on screen. If you get attacked badly you will find it hard to see, so you must find somewhere to hide so your energy can replenish itself. The game’s music also changes accordingly, so you always know when you’re in trouble. It’s even cleverer when playing as King Kong himself, as you get to see scars, cuts and scratches over the Ape’s body and face, which show off the injuries inflicted on the character. This is all done to create good atmosphere, and to pull your mind away from the fact that this is a videogame. Intrusive on-screen displays are constant reminders of that, so the developer got rid of them. It works beautifully, and I hope more games follow suit in the future.
After a short time of being on the island, Jack (the player) and Anne get captured by the rather unfriendly locals, and you must escape. Luckily your friend Carl Denham turns up to untie you. Unfortunately big boy Kong has taken Anne, so you must chase after the huge gorilla and rescue her. During the next few levels you must protect Carl from attacks from all kinds of enemies, ranging from the angry locals to huge V-Vex’s (like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, but its called V-Rex here). You can only carry one firearm at a time, and there are various types in the game such as handguns, rifles and snipers, and there is only a small amount of ammo available at one time, so you have to be careful how trigger-happy you are. There are ammo crates doted around the game, which are dropped by your friend circling the island in a small plane, but you need to find other means of attacking enemies, or not...
Throughout the world are spears and bones, which you can pick up and use as thrown weapons. It normally takes at least a couple of spears to take down a medium sized enemy, as they aren’t as powerful as a gun. But if you were to set fire to the spear (using the burning lanterns around the game) and throw it at a creature that was near some bushes and long grass, you would set fire to the bush and burn it to death. However, what is even cleverer than that is the food chain system in the game. At the bottom of the food chain are huge grubs and dragonflies. Next up are flying bat-like creatures, then small dinosaurs and so on.
The game presents you with events in which you must use the food chain system. You could get to an area with a spear lying on the ground, and nearby are some maggots, so you spear the maggots and throw the spear at a bat. The bat will come tumbling to the ground, but instead of attacking you, it will feast on the maggots. Whilst it’s doing that, the medium sized dinosaur will pounce the bat and start chewing on it. Whilst this is happening, you can leg it past and they won’t even know you were there. It’s a really simple but clever system, and it works really well. There are various set pieces in the game too, which use the system. There is one later on where you have to distract a huge V-Rex from attacking Anne. You must spear down the bats at the right moment so the Dino notices them and she can get away to a safe point.
For the majority of the FPS sections you’re following Carl or one of the other characters around. There is only ever one set path to take, although it looks like there could be many by the way the levels look and feel. Puzzle elements are very few in the game, and consist of finding wooden levers so you can open the huge wooden gates, which separate the main areas of the game. They are always hidden very close by, but some times they take a bit of searching out, and it often requires you to set fire to bush. However later in the game you have to figure out how to get a burning spear past a waterfall. Obviously you cannot walk through it because the fire will go out, and you have to be very careful where you throw it because it might end up in water. It’s small features like this that break the action up nicely, and get you thinking a bit instead of guns, guns, guns all the time.
The parts of the game where you play as King Kong are outstanding. You run along, press ‘X’ to jump to ledges, platforms and so forth, and you can run along walls too like spider-man. It’s really dramatic, and you very rarely fall and die. You’re being totally guided and pushed by the game through these sections, but it feels like you have control, and it looks fantastic. When you get to gates you can smash through them, and fallen debris must be lifted at times by hammering ‘B’ to push them out of the way.
When you come to the combat sections the fun really starts. ‘A’ and ‘Y’ are attacks ‘B’ is for grabbing and throwing, and ‘X’ is used to dodge fast moves. It feels really like you’re just button bashing at first, but you really do have a lot of control over the fights. Soon enough you’ll be dodging attacks, knocking the enemy to the ground and ripping their jaws apart with the finishing move. When you do dodge attacks and parry, you get some incredibly cinematic slow motion moments and all the colour is drained out of the picture for a few frames – it really does look very special indeed, and the atmosphere is amazing.
The game is graphically very impressive. The jungle and ancient ruin environment is full of life, with huge trees and winding paths. Caves under the ground have moisture over the walls, and water moves realistically. The weather system in the game is really well done, with rain that really comes down hard on you, and it sounds like rain too. After it’s stopped the rocks and ground all look damp, and get lit cleverly by the shafts of lighting poking through the forests canopy above you. It’s such a convincing world that you play in, and its very difficult to fault. Texturing is really high quality, the environment has tonnes of detail, and the human and creatures character models are simply outstanding. Running under a stampede of dinosaurs which tower hundreds of feet into the air is an incredible scene, and the game runs very smoothly too. Fog, mist, fire, water and smoke all look excellent. What's even more impressive is that this is a multiplatform game – the developer really has made a lot of effort here to use the 360 hardware well. Run the game in 720p mode and it looks even more impressive.
It’s hard to fault King Kong as it’s such a well-made game. There are never any moments of annoyance or frustration, and every single chapter in the game is enjoyable, with only the very last level (unsurprisingly in New York City) being a bit of a disappointment. The game is very short, with a completion time of around 8 hours, so it wont last you forever, but I’d much rather have a superbly made game like this lasting that length of time over something much poorer taking me 20 hours to complete. So to conclude, forget what you think of movie licensed games, King Kong just changed everything. This is an excellent game and deserves your attention.
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