King Kong Review - Xbox 360

6.5

Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Audio: 7
Innovation: 6

Immerse yourself in Kong’s world. King Kong, a launch title for the Xbox 360, is a first person/third gorilla adventure game that puts you in the shoes of Jack Driscoll and Kong as you relive the epic moments of the 2005 film, and fight your way through the most gruesome of beasts. Do you have what it takes to save Ann from Kong? Can you keep Carl Denham from getting caught in the line of fire while trying to film the exotic wildlife? With over 30 fulfilling levels and armed only with spears, bones, and what weapons a plane can drop to you, King Kong may be your greatest challenge yet.

Gameplay

King Kong is a basic action/adventure game. You travel around the various locations throughout the island trying to meet up with your friends and escape the island. If you take away the whole King Kong franchise, it still makes for a decent adventure game, especially for a launch title on the Xbox 360. The gameplay features some several innovative ideas that we haven’t seen in too many other games. Most of the time you are armed with either a pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle, or machine gun, however sometimes there are no guns and you have to rely on the environment. Luckily there’s endless piles of bones lying around which can be used to kill almost everything in the game, but it is a lot easier with guns.

There are also spears scattered around each level which make up a large part of the game. In King Kong you have to use fire to your advantage quite a lot and the best way to do this is to light a spear on fire and either carry it to a bunch of bushes or throw it in to them. This can result in the death of annoying creatures inside the bushes, and it also usually clears the path if you’re stuck. Another innovative feature which isn’t used too much in the game but still plays a key role in completing the game is using food to lure other creatures away, or distract them so that you can bypass an entire fight. This, we thought, was a great innovative feature of King Kong that you don’t get in most adventure games these days, and it actually makes you more aware of your surroundings in case you need to be feeding the enemies.

A lot of the game plays like a movie. There are key parts where you go down in to deep water and an event happens in front of you but you’re unable to do anything as you’re in water, and there are also other moments where you’ll feel like you’re actually one of the actors in the movie. As you work your way through the game fighting dinosaurs of all sizes and clearing paths through the jungles (continued next page)