When someone tells me to play a film tie-in game I tell them where to firmly stick it. We all know that film tie-ins are poorly made cash-ins intended on getting kids who like the film to buy the game and vice-versa. However after desperately needing something new to play I decided to borrow Peter Jacksons King Kong off my friend. Whilst he twiddled his thumbs with my copy of RAGE I sat at home expecting a poorly made and even worse maintained version of a half decent film.
I put the game in and booted it up, after an entire 2 levels being cut scenes and 1 of which just being parts of the first hour of the film just put onto a game disc it wasn’t looking up. It all started with the crash of that massive boat thing (I’m too negligent to remember the name) when it reaches Skull Island. You play as Jack (I missed his second name due to immense boredom) who is that hopeless playwright guy who loves that stupid screaming bitch Ann. You venture in to the Island and find the vicious villagers that sacrifice Ann to Kong and then venture into the jungle to get her ass back to glorious NY to exploit her a bit on stage. But of course KK is a love story between a bumbling ape and your stereotypical woman who is incapable of looking after herself, however the game seems to shift this into a bloodthirsty firs person shooter that completely destroys any emotional bond you can have with the characters.
The game plays like a fucking brick. The movement is slow and lumbering, you constantly get stuck on scenery and there aren’t even crosshairs or an ammo counter; that’s just pure laziness. The guns feel authentic for the 1950’s period due to them shaking about more than your Nan in an earthquake and doing bugger all in the way of damage. You can use spears that have the worst gravitational effects I’ve ever seen that do more damage than a gun which is slightly retarded but hell this is a film tie-in I expected no less. You do feel vulnerable though which is what the game does well, it puts extremely strong and monstrous enemies against you and your puny guns which force you to use the landscape to your advantage.
There are sections you play as Kong which are 3rd person platforming sections which lots of dinosaur jaw breaking. They are a nice change but feel tacked on and unfinished, plus it’s all over too quick.
The game looks as if it’s been made by one of the villagers of the game itself. The textures are all rough and strangely shaded. Everything has a jagged edge and I mean fucking everything. The fire looks good but when stuff burns it just shrinks and wiggles a bit. The character animations are undetailed and jerky along with odd looking textures. The soundtrack consists of the same 3 tracks repeated over and fucking over but they add atmosphere to the island. All noises seem to be extremely distorted so make sure you don’t care for your speakers too much as by the end of the game they are going look like they’ve been dragged through a thorn bush.
In short, avoid the shit out of this game unless you are using it for an extremely easy 1000G on Xbox 360.
King Kong – 2/10
+Midly Entertaining, On Occasion
-Everything
