Peter Jackson's King Kong Review

Now we come to one of the better parts of the game; playing as Kong. The life of an average oversized male ape consists of several interesting activities. Things like swinging from tree to tree, crawling across cliff edges and fighting gigantic monsters... Ah, the life of a huge gorilla! These segments of the game were presented brilliantly, managing to convey a sense of Kong's enormous size. When Kong takes on a bunch of dinosaurs, it's surely a sight to behold. Gameplay wise, it all works quite smoothly. All you have to do is perform a few combos using the mouse buttons and the space bar. Regrettably, fighting sometimes turns into a bit of a click fest, particularly when Kong grabs hold of a huge T-Rex and attempts to crack its spine (that's when you have to keep pressing the right mouse button like a madman, until the creature's back snaps). The cool part though is when Kong gets to ravage the streets of old New York. He climbs buildings, tosses cars at soldiers and cops, making his way towards the Empire State Building. (That's your whole story right there, Vader. - 2Lions)

That's one way to end your life.

Spielberg, eat your heart out!

Visually, Peter Jackson's King Kong is truly impressive. The game benefited greatly from Weta's artwork and PJ's cunning eye for detail. It was important to offer players a cinematic feel to the whole experience. Convincing and carefully directed action scenes convey a sense of dread as the main character dashes through dense jungles in a frantic effort to avoid getting eaten by some huge horrid thing that roams the wild. Jack's eyesight becomes hazy the moment something gnaws at him or knocks him down. This has a tremendous effect on the player and it helps set a genuine mood as you explore Skull Island. The game also features brilliant use of lighting effects and excellent character animation. Although, I was a bit disappointed to witness occasionally inaccurate lip-synching, but that wasn't much of a downside given the whole spirit of the game, as well as the fact that there's a small amount of dialogue present.

The good news is that the game worked smoothly all the way. I ran it in high res (1280*1024) and with FSAA set on x4. The frame-rate was rock solid while playing on my office rig (AMD 64 3000+, Radeon 9800 XT and 1 GB of RAM).

When it comes to the audio aspect of King Kong, there's nothing I could characterize as being bad or insubstantial. Ambient sounds are perfect, the music sets the proper tone for the game and each creature has a unique growl or cry that literarily scares the pants off you. Furthermore, the three main characters were excellently voiced by Adrien Brody, Jack Black and Naomi Watts, who also appear in the upcoming movie.

Unfortunately, it's not hard to predict an extremely short lifespan for this one. King Kong's fluent gameplay keeps you hooked until you finish the game. But, the primary disadvantage is that it takes one evening to complete it. There is no replay value, unless you prefer experiencing the game through the old movie filter which will be unlocked after you've completed the last level - yay!

We've all asked ourselves many times over, why the hell did PJ choose to direct a remake of King Kong? I mean, King Kong, Godzilla, T-Rex, The Giant Squid, George W. Bush... it's not like we haven't seen it all before. (I'd like to see G.W. fight a giant squid. - 2Lions) Still, that's not the point. I believe it's all about the thrill of the ride, and the game has many cool and exciting moments.

Also, Peter Jackson entrusted the game to Ubisoft instead of EA this time around. The question is: Did Ubi do a better job? From Peter Jackson's point of view, they did. From a gamer's point of view... not really. This is yet another movie-based game that offers next to no replay value and is extremely short. But, like I said before, the game will scare you when you play as a human character and when you're Kong you get to battle huge monsters in a captivating action-packed Jackson-flavored ambiance.

Nonetheless, I don't recommend buying it. 50 bucks is way too steep (60 if you want the Xbox 360 version). Just rent the game instead.