2/5 ★ – hwljulie's review of Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie.

The ratings don’t always match my enjoyment of the game. If I had to rate my enjoyment, I’d say it’s a solid 3/5. For 2005, this game is actually pretty decent for a movie adaptation. It’s got some immersive scenes, like when you’re looking over the dinosaurs marching, even having to walk among them at one point, and seeing glimpses of Kong being magnificent through little holes in the cave as you’re traversing through a swamp throwing spears at giant millipedes. The game actually does a good job at guiding you in how to play certain levels. If they give you 5 bullets, you know you’re gonna have a tougher time frantically looking for spears to fight off a whole horde of dinosaurs and giant insects. If they give you 80 bullets, you get to go crazy. I don’t know if I can say it’s a good balance between the two, but I appreciate that there is a satisfactory balance. Speaking of which, the game has adaptive difficulty by tracking two things: how fast you kill enemies and how often they kill to. If you keep dying, the game will eventually start spawning in easier enemies that you’ll kill fast. On the other hand, if you’re smart and know how to kill the enemies fast (good aim, luring them into the fire, etc) the game will adapt and consistently keep it challenging and hard for you. The game always meets your needs, and I think it’s cool that everyone’s playthrough is pretty personalized in this silly monkey game. Ambience was surprisingly good. The creepy giant insect sounds, the ravaging dinosaurs, the pterodactyls flapping their wings around, giving you a tinge of nervousness because you sense their proximity. They like to make it completely silent when you’re creeping through the swamp, just listening to the sounds of the water you’re wading through and anticipating with anxiety what might come out of the water in front of you. For 2005, it’s cool! I promise! The FOV is MINUSCULE. Try not to turn the camera too much if you’re prone to motion sickness (me) :) If you want the cinematic immersive experience, you can turn off the HUD that displays your ammo and reticle. There’s a dedicated button that makes your character check and announce how much ammo you have left to drive in the immersion. It’s pretty cool for its time! But I found this to be pointless since I just didn’t enjoy playing the human anyway. Playing as Jack, the human, is the worst part of the game. This gameplay is boring, repetitive, sometimes padded, and long-winded. Sometimes the boredom will break with some campy silly dialogue being spoken by your companions or some high-stakes chase, but overall it’s just slow and tedious. This is about 75% of the game, so that’s why most of the game isn’t too great. BUT THEN. YOU BECOME KONG. AND IT’S HYPE. You go big monkey mode and spam X + A to basically body bash all your enemies so that the slow motion effect can play where you can appreciate all the destruction and damage you’re doing to the dinosaurs. You swing around and climb walls and enjoy all the glory that is King Kong, his body’s swift movements captivating the stars in your eyes. And grabbing the enemies to execute them, where you have to mash the living hell out of your controller, is so stupid but like in a silly funny way. It was satisfying to have Kong pound his chest in an overdramatic type of way after every execution. Also, the ending of the game is AMAZING. I was practically smiling the whole way through because it was just so silly, man. All in all, the game is actually quite ahead of its time in the way they provided this cinematic experience. That was just not a thing back then. This was a LAUNCH TITLE for the Xbox 360, and so to do something new, and to execute it pretty well, makes this game a lasting legacy. I’m not gonna say the game is that fun, but I can objectively respect its impact on videogame history. Basically, Playing as human: boring Playing as monkey: hype