King Kong Review

8.3

Format PC

Developer Ubisoft

Publisher Ubisoft

Genre Action, Adventure

1 Comments

The last time I was planning major monkey coverage in PC ZONE, I was phoning a zoo asking if we could dress up one of their simian inmates in gangster clothing and pose alongside them with a copy of the magazine. Interestingly, the clothing wasn't an issue for the lady monkey wrangler. It was more the fact that apparently, chimps can be unpredictably violent, with a tendency to bite your face off - obviously a disadvantage if you're the editor of Britain's best PC games rag.

Which brings us to King Kong - another aggressive ape, that again I imagine would be difficult to get into a sharp suit and force to smoke a cigar. Ubisoft's game is a film tie-in featuring Peter 'The Lord Of The Rings' Jackson's latest spectacular and stars one of Hollywood's most famous monster icons.

A videogame based on a movie is usually something to be extremely wary of, but this is no ordinary title, being a genuine creative collaboration between Michel Ancel (Beyond Good & Evil), Peter Jackson and his talented special FX crew Weta. The result is a short but extremely polished rollercoaster-ride of a game packed with genuine awe-inspiring moments of fear and wonder. And a f***-off big monkey (surely that should be ape? Pedantic C&VG Ed).

MONKEY BUSINESS
Set in the 1930s, King Kong tells the story of film-maker Carl Denham (played by Jack Black - all of the movie's actors voice characters in the game), searching for the mythical Skull Island to make the epic that will save his career. In the game, he's accompanied by the Venture ship's Captain Hayes, struggling actress Ann Darrow, young sailor Jimmy and New York screenwriter Jack Driscoll, who you play in first-person.

Right from the opening sequence, when you're being lowered in a rickety rowing boat onto an angry ocean, King Kong plunges you into the action - the intensity of the sea sickness-inducing dash for the shore is actually reminiscent of the Omaha Beach landing in WWII games such as Medal Of Honor. Your AI-controlled compadres join you at certain points in the adventure and really contribute to the atmosphere and immersion of the game, even helping out in scraps with the local prehistoric wildlife, shooting enemies with spears and firearms and dragging injured parties to safety.

Each of the four characters has a distinct personality, ranging from Carl Denham's heartless wisecracks ("We desperately need to find the others - they'll have three cans of film with them!"), to Hayes' doom-mongering ("Had your fill of real-life yet?"). They also bicker between each other, shout and scream when they're in trouble and give you hints of how to solve puzzles and progress in the game. As always though, keep an eye out for their welfare, as a death results in a restart from the last save point. Gameplay is straightforward and linear, guiding you through the dense jungle as you progress by finding wooden levers to insert into vertical wooden poles, then turned by you and a team-mate to open gates.

HEAR THEM ROAR
Fire is a major element (ahem) too, and is used to clear harsh, spiky foliage from your path, as well as scare off or burn to death any carnivorous predators - of which there
are a fair few lurking in the bushes and long grass of the island. These include bitey insects, bitey giant bats and bitey dinosaurs, which are without doubt, the most impressive in-game prehistoric lizards yet seen in a videogame - they make Turok's look like household pets. The T-Rex has to be seen to be believed - a hulking meat-eating killer, wonderfully animated with saliva dripping from its jaws and a terrifying roar that physically distorts everything in its vicinity.

Fortunately, Jack has access to various meaty weapons (carried one at a time) such as shotguns, rifles and Tommy Guns that can be fired by holding down the spacebar and pressing the left mouse button. (Default left mouse button only is for melee attacks, and for other stuff such as smashing through debris-blocked passageways.) Extra weapons and ammo can be gathered from parcels dropped by Captain Englehorn, a character who pilots a sea-plane and flies into the action from time-to-time.

If you run out of bullets, you can rely on organic weapons such as spears and sharpened bones, which can be picked up and jabbed or hurled at foes. These could've so easily turned out to be a poor substitute for the man-made armoury, but in fact these improvised projectiles provide immensely satisfying kills, sticking into the beasts' flesh and causing them to reel back in anguish. You can even opt for an eco-friendly way of completing levels, by stabbing small grubs and flies and then using the wriggling bait to distract bigger animals in the food chain.

The result of all this clever game design is that while playing as Driscoll, you get a palpable feeling of having to survive in an extremely hostile environment, where everything is either attempting to eat you as a light snack or offer you up as a human sacrifice to Kong. Witness some stunning heart-racing set-pieces, including a memorable river rafting sequence, where you and your chums have to fend off two T-Rexes (you can't kill these immense sharp-toothed behemoths) while tearing down deadly rapids at breakneck speed.

ENTER THE MONKEY
Obviously, however, the main attraction in King Kong is the 25ft giant ape himself, who you control in third-person and view with a fixed cinematic-style camera. Kong is a massive lumbering animal, and you really feel his huge weight and power when you're controlling him in the game, but the silky controls mean you're soon deftly leaping from branch to branch, clambering up walls and jumping chasms like a hairy Prince of Persia.

The Kong sections of the game involve the growing relationship between the big fella and Ann, as he protects her from nasty natives, dinosaurs and other enemies by battering them about the head and neck with his fists. You can use a combination of left and right mouse button presses to punch, grab and use tree trunks and other objects to hurl at distant foes, while the mouse wheel can be used to charge up Kong for rage attacks. Yep, combat is brutal - fur flies, limbs collide, claws rip into skin and bats' heads are bitten off, in what could be a subtle tribute to Ozzy Osbourne. The finishing moves are particularly excellent too - you can force open a dino's jaws until they snap, for example, before Kong roars loudly with approval. Despite their button-mashing simplicity, the battles are always spectacular events that will stop anyone passing your PC monitor in their tracks with a winceinducing display of animalistic violence.

However, there's beauty in the beast - the way that Kong can gently pick up Ann with his right hand and place her down safely away from trouble is very touching and reminiscent of the non-verbal relationship between the boy and girl in classic PlayStation 2 adventure Ico. Ann also learns through the adventure in the jungle into the urban sprawl of NY to care about Kong's welfare, and will throw spears at his enemies and clear obstacles in his path.

GREAT APE?
It's obvious that I like this game - it has a big monkey in it for goodness sake - but is King Kong worth your Christmas cash? In the cold light of day, you could criticise the fact that the shooter parts are somewhat unsophisticated compared to a dedicated FPS such as F.E.A.R., not possessing jump or lean keys, for example. Plus, the fixed camera in the Kong sections sometimes manoeuvres into an awkward position. There are moments of dumb AI with dinosaurs running on the spot too, and you can die from simply walking into sharp jungle shrubbery if you're not careful.

Most importantly, King Kong is a game you can rattle through in no time - there's nothing here to challenge you if you found Far Cry "a bit easy". This is a console game at heart, and one to play sat on the couch in front of the TV in the afternoon, rather than hunched over a keyboard and monitor at 4am.

However, even though we're yet to see Peter Jackson's King Kong movie (and can't say whether the game closely follows the film or not), Ubisoft has already delivered a cracking action-adventure packed with jaw-dropping (and jaw-breaking) set pieces, such as a truly frightening T-Rex attack on a rope-bridge and a brontosaurus stampede.

Even though some of the textures aren't great - up close they can look rather blocky - there are still some beautiful jungle and city scenes with atmospheric lighting, cool particle effects and superb character and creature animation, as you'd expect from a development team with unfettered access to the might of Weta's special effects and art direction departments.

Kong is the ultimate anti-hero, and now you can play as him, you'll empathise with his tragic predicament even more. Yep, King Kong is one very slick package and certainly the best movie tie-in game since The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. If only they'd thought to slap a wig and roller-skates on the big monkey fella, we could've been looking at a classic...

PC Zone Staff