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

 Yes, that's the full title of the game.

It might be the most ridiculous game title I've ever heard in my life. I mean, I guess it does make sense: this game is the official licensed game of the King Kong film from the early 'aughts directed by Peter Jackson. But it's just such a mouthful. They couldn't just call it "King Kong: The Movie" or something like that? Maybe just "King Kong?" Could you imagine if they called Super Star Wars "George Lucas Presents: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope: The Official Game of The Original Film Trilogy: Part 1?" Now it's really got me thinking, is this the only game in history to include a film director's name in it's title? See, this is where your mind goes when you start playing these licensed games. They're all so terrible, so you have to keep yourself distracted with things like that.

Well, maybe not all of them. MOST of them are terrible, not all of them. There are a few pretty good licensed movie games out there and fortunately, despite its mouthful of a name, King Kong is one of them. It's not the best video game I've ever played, not by a longshot. But its a good, solid adventure that really felt like the developers put a lot of time and effort into it. It's not the prettiest looking game, but it actually follows the film and features actor likenesses and voices. And we're not talking D-listers that kind of resemble the cast, we're talking  Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Naomi Watts, the actual cast of the film. Perhaps more shocking, Peter Jackson was actually involved in the development process, which definitely shows as the game actually does follow the movie. Credit to Jackson here, a director of his stature could have (and most of them would have) dismissed a video game as a waste of time and happily sat back and collected royalties from a crappy tie-in. Good on him for actually getting involved, I now forgive him for not ending "Return of the King" at its logical conclusion point.

Anyway, the game follows the plot of the film pretty much to a T. You take control of Jack Driscoll (Brody) a screen writer working alongside actress Ann Darrow (Watts) in a film directed by Carl Denham (Black). Denham has acquired a map leading him to the mysterious Skull Island. Ever the dedicated director, he insists on shooting on location, no matter how dangerous it may be. And it becomes dangerous very, very quickly. A storm destroys the crew's lifeboats leaving them stuck on the island. It's up to you to guide Jack, first person shooter style through the island as you constantly find yourself separated from your compatriots. As anyone who's seen the film knows, Skull Island is filled with all sorts of crazy creatures, from prehistoric birds to dinosaurs. It's also home to a tribe of natives, who successfully capture Jack and Ann, offering the latter up as a sacrifice to the islands most famous denizen, King Kong. A lot of movie games have to change the plot around to make it fit the video game format, but that isn't the case here. I think an FPS was a great choice here, its unique for this kind of game and allowed the developers to experiment with a lot of different things. There are a few sections where you get to play as Kong himself, but these are more of a 3rd person action style. Honestly, as cool as that sounds, I kind of missed the FPS sections when I was doing it.

While its an FPS first and foremost, there are certainly elements of a survival game here as well. Jack's ammo is very limited and there will be portions of the game where he simply isn't able to find a gun. He will usually be given a weapon when he meets up with one of his associates, but he will often be forced to pick up and use one of the spears that are strewn throughout the island. These spears make pretty solid weapons, but they can also be used to solve puzzles. Pry open a gate, use it as a torch to burn away dead grass, replace a broken lever with it, these things have tons of uses. I think it was a really great use of what is essentially the default weapon, they could have just used them for simply attacking but they went above and beyond. The gun selection isn't huge, but it's got some cool 1930's style arms, like a Thompson machine gun and an old timey sniper rifle. Again, ammo is limited, but these things will also make quick work of your enemies, it kind of has a more realistic vibe. Of course, this cuts both ways. You can take two, maybe three hits before dying and getting hit once will impact your vision. This can get annoying, but the game is actually pretty fair with this and while its very easy for an enemy to kill you, it's not that easy for them to actually hit you. Plus, the checkpoints are very forgiving.

The area design is kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, most of the areas you find yourself in are dark, dingy and bland. It's all just a lot of dark grays and it's not super appealing to the eye. The operative word here is dark, the skies above skull island are cloudy and it rains constantly, so its difficult to see outside and even harder in caves. Normally, I would pan the visual design here as it was somewhat muddy and under normal consequences I would find it boring. Thing is though, its done that way because its trying to be as close to the movie as possible. The game looks that way because the movie looks that way and I'm okay with that. I guess I could be critical of the developers in that they should have known these kinds of environments look much better on the silver screen than they do in video games. But I also have to credit them for, again, actually following the movie, listening to its director and staying true to a vision. I think the graphics in general were kind of bad and if they were better overall the atmosphere would have been less bland and more bleak, dreary and frightening as the designers intended.

The controls are very good, everything is responsive and rarely did I ever have controls result in any cheap deaths. While there were a lot of aspects of the game that were surprisingly revolutionary, the controls weren't anything out of the ordinary, but that was probably for the best. It's the standard FPS layout of the era, which isn't much different than what you would see in a game today. You do move a little slowly, but not so much so that you feel like you are bogged down. The game does cut a deliberate pace, but everything is equal. Jack takes some time to move, look and turn, but so do the enemies. The hit detection is also pretty good, I never had any problems with hitting enemies and it always felt fair whenever I got hit. Not much to say about the controls, but usually no news is good news on that front.

As I alluded to, some of the things presented in King Kong were ahead of their time...and I'm not sure that's necessarily good thing. One of the first things I noticed, and its something that's extremely common in modern games, was the complete lack of an HUD. That was unheard of at the time and even nowadays, you usually have at least some level of information. But in King Kong, you don't get any information at all. You determine your health by the screen effects and Jack will tell you how many clips he has left after you reload. I understand they are trying to make the game as immersive as possible, but I feel like this is a little too far. A lot of developers forget, these are supposed to be video games and players need to have information to help them complete their task that moviegoers just don't need. You do have the option of turning the HUD on, but that doesn't change the fact that its off by default. Not being able to see your health or ammo is frustrating, but the biggest issue is that the game never tells you where you are supposed to go. Once you realize the game isn't that linear it's not as big a problem, but you do have a bunch of open areas that require you to locate objectives and not having a any direction makes these take longer than they need to.

Overall though, King Kong is a solid FPS and definitely one of the better movie tie-in titles. This was a big movie back in 2005 and they really could have phoned it in, slapped "King Kong" on a generic 3D platformer, made fistfuls of money and called it a day. But instead, they went the extra mile, getting input from the film's director and strong performances from its stars, particularly Jack Black. With so much thought put into the details, its odd the graphics really aren't up to par, at least from the 6th generation versions of the game (it also came out on XBox 360, and that version apparently looks much better). But the controls are solid, the mechanics are unique and the action is fun and interesting. Add in a couple of puzzles and a chance to play as everyone's favorite giant gorilla, and you have a recipe for a solid video game. It may have a strange title, but it's worth a look today.

8/10