At first Peter Jackson’s King Kong seemed like an awesome ride. The game starts out with actual movie footage to set up the story and as soon as you know it you jump in right when they arrive at Skull Island. You play as Jack, the man who is writing the script for Carl's movie. There are some weapons that are dropped by a seaplane, such as shotguns and pistols but they are not very diverse. You can also pick up spears or bones to throw at enemies.
The adventure part of the game is not of much value. The levels are completely linear, with only the occasional hidden ammo crate hanging around to spruce things up. Most of the puzzle action involves finding levers to open doors or burning bushes from your path. However, there is an interesting food chain system in which you can kill a smaller animal to distract bigger animals into eating it while you run away. These three things are repeated throughout the game in the end making King Kong fairly easy to beat.
There are some nice gameplay moments. Running from dinosaurs is fun but there isn’t much of a challenge. Some portions of the gameplay seem weak, for instance in one situation you have to kill giant bats and a dinosaur will go for them while you run past its legs. In dealing with the dinosaurs, they are very slow and take awhile to kill your friends. The overall skill in it is distracting them until your friends open a door or find a hiding place.
The game switches back and forth between Kong and Jack. Kong is very powerful and can mash the weaker enemies to bits. When it comes to fighting a larger one, you can keep getting hit repeatedly and die sometimes. The game has a nice feature where you can press the Y button repeatedly and go into a rage mode that makes you stronger and adds some slow motion to each hit. However, Kong's combat becomes very boring as the game goes on. You use A to hit and B to grab, and that's all. To finish off larger enemies you have to weaken them and then Kong will grab them and you press A or B repeatedly until he performs a finishing move. Playing as Kong makes it pretty much a standard platform game; i.e.: Climb along the wall, swing from branch, run to the door, and smash it open. Overall, Kong is fun to use but the experience grows old quickly.
The levels themselves are not very diverse, relegating the player to the usual jungle, swamp, or cave scenarios. The game has no HUD but that wasn't a problem for me. The health system is similar to Call of Duty 2, where as long as you’re not getting hit you will be healing. You can check your ammo with the B button.
The aural experience is a positive one overall. The main thing you will be hearing is roaring, whether it is a dinosaur’s scream or Kong’s yell. When Kong roars the screen shakes and the controller vibrates, and hopefully your speakers are not turned up too loud. When your allies are being hurt they will call for you and if they are close to dying you hear an escalating noise warning you. The music is typical action movie soundtrack.
The main good thing about the Peter Jackson’s King Kong is it has a nice flow with the events in the movie. If you liked the movie you should like the game. As far as replay value, there isn't much to speak of. You can go through the levels again to gain points to unlock extras in the form of art. I haven't unlocked all of them so there may be something nice in there. To me this game is only worth a rental, as you can go through the whole story mode in a day.
