Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of The Movie | a Review
originally published on 08/04/2021;
Hello everyone, I am the Anprim supporter, Monkey enthusiast, G.E.M.Simov, a Zoologist who’s also a geographer that likes going to legendary locations to shoot movies and hot loads of lead all over the native population. Today, I will be talking to you about the magnificently titled: PETER JACKSON’S KING KONG - THE OFFICIAL GAME OF THE MOVIE. It’s going to be known as ‘the game’ from this point onwards.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
Gameplay
This is a first person shooting/spear chucking game on the PSP. It is… Interesting. But then it becomes a third person big monkey action platformer. When a First Person game, the player uses the X, Square, Triangle and Circle buttons to control the keyboard. In addition, the player can ram or stab with the Right trigger/bumper, aim with the Left trigger/bumper and reload with the right arrow button. The player can do three things, other than move. Quite unfortunate.
Then, when the player is in third person Big Monkey mode, the camera is uncontrollable and somewhat automatic, but very stupid. The arrow buttons do not do anything, same with the Triggers/Bumpers. X makes Kong jump, or do parkour, as with most Ubisoft games - it is the dedicated "do movement things that look kinda cool" button. The Square Button makes Kong attack and the Triangle button is a grab. And that's all he can do, too.
The shifts from Human FPS gameplay and Kong 3rd person monkeying is abrupt and never expected, the fights Kong gets into become stale and wacky, in part due to the fact that nothing is ever any danger, other than the bad controls, while the fights Human man gets in are always unpleasant, due to the fact aiming is borderline impossible, let alone on a moving target.
And a load of the issues come from those two things. The controls are clunky, at best, the movement is neither fast nor slow, the fact that there are only three buttons that do anything at one given point in time makes me feel as if this has been a very weird experiment that did not go well, while the bugs and the weird inconsistencies make it even weirder.
This is elaborated upon in the Presentation section, but this game's visuals affect its Gameplay in a multitude of ways, most of which are not good. In fact, most of the FPS issues, which plague the game, occur while being Kong. Not only that, but while playing as Kong, the game’s pace shifts drastically, the game loses its allure, and it’s just monkey fighting dinosaurs. It’s very unsatisfying, because there feels to be no impact to Kong’s attacks, there’s no indication that anything is happening, and he kills like 5 dinosaurs with the same jaw splitting animation. It’s… Somewhat lazy.
I’d wager that the game, if it did not have the Kong sections, would have been a lot better. A lot shorter, too, but a game that’s around 2 hours long, and 10 minutes of that are the credits, really isn’t losing much when you take away the lesser part of it. In fact, it would have been such an incredibly atmospheric, survival-horror-esque experience, had it been only the FPS portions. Alas, I don’t grade potential, I grade the realization of that potential.
There are many sections in which the player needs to walk over unstable platforms, but the collision detection is so bad that sometimes the player falls off while being on top of said platforms. Due to this overbearing jank, which is associated with features that ought to work not working, being prevalent in every aspect of the game’s playing process, I can’t, in good conscience, give it a high rating. However, I really liked that it tried. 1/3
Presentation
This game has a brutally amazing title screen. It's ominous, it looks incredibly foreboding and the audio that plays along with it is superb. The musical score remains almost immaculate - all the tracks are very pleasant to listen to and some are adequately enthusiastic.
Then it kinda tapers off. Enemies don't have any indications as to whether or not they are hurt, some don't have indications as to whether or not hitting them does anything, it's quite unclear. More uncertainties, or just bad presentation, comes in the form of ammo. At first, the player has infinite ammo, but then the player does not have infinite ammo. In addition, there is no way for the player to know how much ammo they have left. Instead, the character calls out if they have a magazine left, or if they need to reload.
This is both good and bad. Good, because it helps immersion, bad, because it is not done in a good manner. Adding UI that is not obviously UI is a very difficult challenge, as it seems, and not many people have managed to handle it. In this case, it's not bad, but it's not good, either. This is an attempt at grasping Diegetic UI, and I'd say it was not grasped all that well, because, really, there is no UI at all. Only prompts which are very evidently non-Diegetic.
Other problems with the clarity of what is going on? Most of everything is similarly colored to everything else, and that really makes it difficult for the player to figure out how to handle a situation or a location. It's not overwhelming, but it leaves a tinge of unpleasant stress and annoyance at the back of one's mind.
Now, what is more annoying is that this game sports a very low frame rate. So low, in fact, that at some points I felt as if it had dipped into single digits. That's not good, not when you're playing a game on a console.
The player character starts breathing heavily after walking for a few seconds and that's really distracting and unpleasant, because there's no means of preventing it. I would like to applaud this game for attempting something that really hadn’t been done before, on the PSP, nor will it ever get done again, considering its current fate, but, alas, I’ve already compared this to Communism, and you might know where that is going. 2/3
Story
At first, I was left with the impression that this game had no story. After all, the player is lucky if they end up hearing a human voice once every twenty minutes, while playing this. The story-telling comes in the form of these short, very hard to see cutscenes in between each ‘level’, which show King Kong roaring or some prehistoric creature moving about menacingly, for less than 5 seconds. It was heart-breakingly unlike the movie(s), because, at one point, Kong takes Ann Darrow (the damsel) away, but then, when next he is seen, there’s no indication, nor way, that she could be with him, or even in his hand, because he’s pummeling the everliving fuck out of some Dinosaurs.
Then, after a few ‘levels’, she appears for a moment, screaming in one cutscene, and then she’s gone again. The story is told in an interesting manner, but there doesn’t seem to be any story to tell. And, what little there IS, is very basic. Guy crashlands on island. Conveniently finds gun. Kills big crab. Caught by natives (whom we do not get to see, nor do we get to see the guy getting caught - he’s just retrained and looking at Kong in the next scene). Escapes captivity within 30 seconds of being caught.
It’s just that. Nothing spectacular, nothing interesting… There were some interesting visuals, but that is why I gave the Presentation a better rating. The Story…. Well, there is not much. In fact, it is SO BAD, like, really bad, that the human character the player plays as? No part in the story at all. Sees Kong once. Nothing else. Then, after a human character mission, wherein the player is being chased by a dinosaur, suddenly a cinematic of Kong being CAPTURED BY SOLDIERS LOBBING GRENADES at him is played, and the next few levels are all Kong levels in which Kong destroys THE CITY. And then monkey climb skyscraper monkey fight plane monkey fall. Sad.
The game’s story does not even MAKE sense. If the folks working on it were trying to convey something, there’s nothing conveyed, because Kong and the Human character’s paths are so disconnected, and they don’t ever cross again beyond the Human seeing Kong take Ann away, it’s just purposeless having the Human character (Jack is his name, by the way) at all! Big yikes, this game had real potential for some environmental storytelling, but hey, monkey. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Frankly, I thought it did. It was so interesting! The sounds of this game were incredible, the atmosphere created while Jack was running about, and breathing heavily, was superb. It was striking, honestly. There were moments of unfathomable greatness…
But, alas, there were the King Kong sections, and there was the inconsistency of the story that was being told, and then there was NOthing of value to be lost. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. This feels as if it is generous, when it comes to the bad, but then it feels as if it is lacking, when it comes to the good. Play this game… Or don’t. Just watch someone play through it on YouTube. It literally goes for 25+$ on Amazon. Not worth it, folks. Or you could give it a go if you really love atmospheric games and want to see something intriguing, but then you’ll fall into a deep depression thinking of what could have been...
I’ll hang it, with a noose, on the wall of shame. It had such great potential, but it committed the crime of not realizing it. For that, death by hanging!