Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie

One of the most intense experiences I've had with game in a while.

What makes King Kong so good is the polish that the game brings. It takes a classic storyline and a classic gaming genre and delivers it to the gamer in a new and refreshing manner.

The voice acting is spectacular.

If the environments were more open, if there was more variety to the puzzles, if the game lasted longer, if ..., then you could have had the best game of the year here.

But while laudable in many senses, ultimately King Kong is as Carl Denham - fascinatingly single-minded and full of wonder, but ultimately shallow, and too caught up in its initial achievement to really think the rest of it through.

There isn’t much replay value in King Kong. With the lack of any sort of Live/Co-Op play, you won’t find yourself going back to the game once you have beaten it.

Imagine a free-roaming King Kong game, with a main plot line that you can ignore as you run through the jungle, beating the piss out of dinosaurs with tree trunks and rocks. That would have been awesome. Instead, we were given this six to eight hour snooze fest.

Great King Kong First Person Shooter! Nice Graphics and great Gameplay! On Xbox 360 great!

I remember when I first played this game all the way back in 2005.I thought thought it was up there with one of my favorite games to play on my Gamecube. It was a fun game that was held back by it's short length. Having played it again on the Xbox 360, it's pretty much how I remembered it, but it definitely has aged with time. The game doesn't really follow the story of the movie it's based on, but it does share some important plot elements such as Ann Darrow being captured by the natives and King Kong climbing the Empire State Building. Throughout the game you'll be playing as either of these two characters :Jack Driscoll and King Kong himself. The game's levels follow a very linear structure where you have to get to the end of each level while fending off against the island creatures and solving puzzles along the way: It's all very straight forward. 90% of the game takes place on Skull Island, and while everything looks a bit lifeless with lots of gray and pale green coloring everywhere, most of the levels feel varied in it's environments and with very little backtracking. In each level you'll be playing as either of these two characters: Jack Driscoll and King Kong himself. The Jack segments play much like a first person survival horror game, where you'll have to fend off against dinosaurs and other creatures with limited limited weaponry you find on the island, from guns that found in supply drop boxes with limited ammo, or the plentiful spears that you'll find yourself using very often. Most of the games puzzles involves trying to find door handles to open doors and using spears to light bushes on fire to clear pathways or to throw spears tipped with bait to lure away predators. The game gives you a great feeling of vulnerability and urgency as you have to fend off against the likes of velociraptors and giant centipedes, all of which can easily kill you. You'll also have to face off against T-Rexes, which are impossible to kill, and all you can do is try to get away. These portions of the game are easily the most intense, and they'll make your heart race. As King Kong, you're able to kill all of the small enemies in one hit and you also face off against T-Rexes, often against multiple ones at a time. There's even a level where you play as Kong where he goes on a rampage in New York City after escaping captivity. While this level is fun to play, your destructive capabilities are only limited to destroying cars. You can't damage buildings or attack pedestrians like you'd expect, and the street feel like big hallways. The game can be beaten in less than 4 hours and the time you beat the game, you feel like there should be more to it. While you do get an interesting art gallery mode, there isn't much reason to replay the game, not even for Xbox Achievements as you can get all of them just by playing through the game. I'm glad I decided to play through this game again. It's still as fun to play now as it was to play back then. When it first came out, it was being sold at the retail price of $50, and let me say that while I like this game, it's not worth $50. Luckily you can just want a copy for just under $10, which is much more better deal, but I'd recommend renting it since it's so short. It's the perfect game to play though the weekend.

In the early years of xbox, movie licensed games were still a bore, till this game came along. The very essence of survival in this game was astounding and I truly loved it. The lack of a HUD made it more tense as you carefully consider your supplies and ammo. The story follows much of the film, but it doesn't look as bad as other movie licensed games. What it gets wrong is the length. The game is pretty short and I cruised through it in about 6 hours. The King Kong sections however, are fun and truly make you feel powerful. This is a game rarely seen as it shows promise that movie licensed games have a few gems.

Ok if your picking this up in 2012 or beyond its probably only for Gamerscore. If not your crazy or a super hardcore King Kong fan. In fact I wouldn't even recommend it to the latter. Theirs nothing really to explain, other than the game hasn't aged well. I'm not just talking about graphics, the gameplay is just clunky and will frustrate the hell out of you as you plow the campaign for the easy 1000GS. The reason i give it a four, is because I don't want it to effect the user average score too much, as the game looked like it would be quite good fun 7 years ago. Personally I think it would suit a 2/10 as I found the King Kong sequences a little enjoyable. Emphasis on little.

One positive, it was colossal in terms of the realistic environment, equivalent to a jungle. The control mechanics were too vague in use, too simple, too annoyingly strange especially when I can come up with better games of 2006 that had a better AI function (Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions which also I don't really like much). But yeah, enemies are quite chaotic and often you get glitches and cheap deaths.