Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie Review
Ubisoft, 2005
Xbox Review by Raffman, December 14th, 2005
While Peter Jackson's rendition of the original King Kong has been dubbed as "epic", the official game
of the movie is quite the opposite. However, although I finished King Kong in one day (about 7-8
hours), it was pretty damn fun. Short, fun, and definately full of surprises. Surprise numero uno
came right off the bat when the game began, when I heard the voice of none other than Jack Black. I
turn to my left, and there he is, face and all. He looks identical to his real life character, as
does everyone else in the film, which is a tribute not only to them but to the beautiful graphics this
game sports. From the characters to the stunning environments, this game is absolutely gorgeous on
the Xbox. As we all know though, beautiful graphics does not make a game, so what about the
gameplay?
King Kong is a lot of fun to play. The majority of the game you play as Jack, in a first person
shooter mode, but it's not your normal FPS. There is no inventory, so you can only carry one weapon
at a time, unless you have a spear than you can carry two. When you get hit by an enemy, the entire
screen flashes red making it hard for you to see, and more importantly to react. All the while you
must work with your team as your progress through the game, which many a times is not really easy to
do. Near the end of the game you'll also get to play as King Kong himself which is a lot of fun, but
ultimately too short at the end.
As I mentioned above, I completed King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie for the Xbox in 7 or 8
hours, but quite honestly it could have been around 6 hours. Why do I say that? Well this game has a
decent sized glitch in it that some of you may come across, and it involves the team AI. I ran into
this glitch twice, and each time I was forced to literally restart the game from the beginning because
it was literally impossible for me to get any further. Prior to writing this Xbox review I did some
research and found out that this glitch exists across all platforms, so it wasn't just an error with
my game disc. This glitch really gets out of control because of the fact that there is only one save
slot; if there were more, one wouldn't have to restart from the very beginning of the game to get past
it. Note that 99% of you will never run into this problem, but it's my job to tell you that it's
possible. Although it's annoying, it doesn't take a lot away from this really fun game.
As a kid, King Kong would be a solid rental. But since we're all adults here with school, full-time
jobs, etc, this game probably isn't really worth the purchasing price until it comes down to $20 or
$30; it's just too short.
Graphics - 9.2
Sound - 8.2
Gameplay - 7.8
Overall - 8.2 (Great)
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