Game Story

• For those who aren’t familiar with the story of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the game’s story follows the movie’s very closely.
• It starts with a clip from the movie showing filmmaker Carl Denham feeling the pressure from the film studio who is threatening to pull his next project.
• It turns out that Carl finds a map to a lost island were there might be a lost civilization.
• Carl thinks that it’s the perfect setting for his movie and after finding a leading lady for his film, they head off by boat for the island.
• Unfortunately there are heavy storms as they approach the island and wouldn’t you know, Carl, desperate to shoot a blockbuster movie won’t turn back and they end up crashing into the island, leaving them stranded.
• From that point on, it’s all in game cinematics as you play as screen writer Jack Driscol.
• Your first interaction with the game is while you are on an escape rowboat with Carl and Ann, heading towards the island.
• Once on the island, it’s not long before they realize that the island is full of restless natives, dinosaurs and one giant gorilla.
• If you’ve seen the movie then, the game doesn’t offer too much more in terms of a storyline, but by itself, it is a good story full of dramatic moments, decent cut scenes and voice acting from the actors in the movie.

Gameplay

• Unfortunately the gameplay is not as smooth as the story.
• It does offer more than a predictable rehash of the movie by allowing you to experience pieces of the story from both Jack’s and King Kong’s perspective.
• This means you’ll switch back and forth between two completely different control schemes and gameplay styles as you progress through the game.
• Whether you play as Jack, or Kong, you are still stuck on an island trying to find ways to battle natives and dinosaurs.
• On the positive side, you do get to play two distinctly different types of games as you will play some chapters as Jack Driscol and other chapters as King Kong.
• As Jack, you’ll play more of a stealth based first person shooter.
• You’ll be able to acquire a few guns and shoot your way through some foes, but others will require you to distract them so that you or others can make it to their destinations.
• Spears are also fairly easy to obtain in the environment for when you run out of bullets.
• You will also often have to solve some puzzles in order to find your way out of certain areas.
•  As Kong, you’ll play a bit more of a third person action game, heavily based on fighting, with some light puzzle solving thrown in.
• You’ll have a number of powerful attacks to unleash on dinosaurs and natives.
• You’ll also usually have to protect Ann, from those predators while putting her in areas to help create escape routes.
• While the two different gameplay styles are fun and varied, they both suffer some of the same problems.
• First the game is too dark.
• I spent way too much time wondering into walls and dying needlessly because I couldn’t see what was in front of me.
• Finally I boosted my HDTV’s brightness level to the max in order to make things a little more manageable.
• Though the game is fun, it lacks a lot of depth.
• There are only four guns in the game and their all boring and generic:
• Pistol
• Shotgun
• Sniper Rifle
• Machine Gun
• There are only a handful of enemies that you will encounter over and over again.
• The level design and puzzles are laughable and always involve the same few fundamentals:
• Burning brush that is in your one linear path through the level.
• Finding “levers” that you will then need to use to open a door.
• Distracting spiders that are in your path.
• In terms of Kong, Kill all your enemies and then move to the next area.
• The game controls fairly well.
• Aiming the guns is straight forward and easy.
• Aiming the spears takes a little more calculation for further targets.
• Kong feels a little sluggish but does have a variety of different moves.
• Moving is ok, but neither character has the ability to jump which will leave you feeling constrained.
• One interesting play mechanic is the Food Chain concept.
• Sometimes you may not want to kill your predators but rather distract them by killing a lesser predator.
• Anytime a predator dies, other larger nearby predators will race to consume the carcasses.
• This can buy you the time you need to escape, or will make them easy targets for spears.
• Overall, the gameplay of Kong was fun, but was filled with too many frustrating moments of being lost in the dark and a lot of repetitious puzzle solving with needless backtracking.