On this damn game. It isn't worth the 1000 gamerpoints. Besides, I think I got 200 out of it. That's plenty. Playing this game any longer would only serve to drive me closer to the brink of insanity.

Thus begins my review of Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Game.

You know, saying this was a movie tie-in game would be to demean all other movie tie-in games. This game was at best inspired by the movie. Most of what seemed to be happening was just made up. And what they made up got recycled so often it was like playing the first 15 min of the game again and again and again.

Good points? Well, ok... here's a few things I liked... sort-of. Ok, I liked the whole deal where your weapon isn't always on screen, makes it more like a movie experience and all. But perhaps thats one of the flaws of the game, that it tried to be like a movie. Ever since video games went more mainstream, they've borrowed heavily from a more respectable medium: film. Many games even to this day use in-gmae cut-scences to relay plot info to the player. And as a concept I don't think all cut-scenes are all that bad, but they are a fall back on that medium from which video games have borrowed so heavily: film. These cut-scenes often rob the player of control for a brief period, which when I think about it, makes little sense. I mean, games are about playing, not watching. But in the traditional mainstream game, the linear plot line doesn't lend itself to player interference during crucial moments in the story. Thankfully, this is something I have seen declining in use over the years. One day maybe none of the games we play will use these tricks to direct the plot, relying on the player to essentially get from point A to B on their own.

That all said, this game was not one of the futuristic play-driven games. Using for the most part highly scripted events, king kong leads the player on through an impossibly unlikely set of scenarios almost none of which seem to have come from the film. Another thing they use to make the game more movie like is having nothing like a HUD or GUI on screen. not even so much as a health bar. You hit the "B" button and the character you often play as, Jack, shouts out how much ammo he has. (which makes for a lovely opportunity for someone to respond, but no one says a word.)

Much of the game seems to revolve around solving painfully simple puzzles under the threat of impending doom. Also there is some FPS element to this madness, as you do a lot of shooting, but to call this an FPS would be to imply this element might have been fun or something... which it wasn't. The name of the game when it came to shooting was, hit them as many times as you can 'til they die. You can't know for sure what your status is, as you'd need to hit B a bunch of times and then listen for an ammo count. There really doesn't appear to be a concept of health when it comes to the player's avatar: Jack. It seems if you get hit, there"s some red flashes, some wailing women soundtrack, and you stumble about trying to kill whatever just hit you. If hit during this drunken state, you die.

That fighting I just mentioned is terrible. Often I'd be frustrated with how little it seemed I could have done to save myself given the circumstances. But it wasn't as poorly done as the chapters you play as Kong himself. The camera was fixed, yes fixed... though they probably couldn't have done much better, it was miserable. And playing as Kong consisted of pressing he right button when they said so. Not much else to say, other than whoever did Kong's face deserves to be shot.