King Kong The Official Game Of The Movie (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

Apparently it was the original King Kong movie that had first got Peter Jackson interested in film making and even before he started to prep The Lord of the Rings trilogy he'd already approached several studios with his ideas about re-telling this most famous of monster movies. Clearly he was turned down but the global success of the Tolkien classic had executives knocking down his door with blank cheques and now, after a few years, we have the finished product. Clearly with such a high profile movie we were always going to get a similar high concept game and Jackson has worked closely with acclaimed game creator Michel Ance on the console versions producing what some quarters are calling the game of the year. We've already reviewed the rather average GBA version but does the DS outing have the right ingredients for a classic?

Gameplay

The majority of King Kong is a kind of 'puzzle' based FPS (although don't expect anything too taxing) with all the action taking place on Skull Island. That's right, I may as well tell you know that although Kong gets to New York in the film, you'll only watch it here thanks to a handful of scratchy cut-screens. After much wandering around you'll encounter rather large and aggressive crabs. And then some more and more and then... some more. Yes, most of this island is inhabited by mutant crabs but fortunately for you they are usually disposed of with a single spear. There are even giant crabs too but you'd probably better check out the 'control' section to see how we dealt with them. Moving on from this you may have to shoot a small dinosaur or even a prehistoric bird but you'll always feel like you're mindlessly wandering though the game and everything you do requires little sense or urgency or even skill for that matter. The pace does pick up slightly when you need to protect another member of the team-keeping enemies away from them so they can open door, which is otherwise in accessible to you, but other tan that nothing. Not to developers: simply opening doors is not a game.

You'll also get to play as Kong but on far too few occasions to save the game. This, like the FPS sections, is a simple 'A' to 'B' affair with tree swinging and T-Rex killing on the way. The biggest problem her is the interaction and rather than fully controlling Kong simply press a selection of buttons to allow him to perform a variety of actions. You do still move him around but both jumping and swinging is activated by one button whilst simple combat is controlled by another two. Oh, we almost forgot to mention what the other button is for: moving large objects of to the way of doors. Useful eh? It really is that simply and added to the fact that some of the sections are incredibly short you do occasionally wonder if you need to be there at all. The only thing we'll finish off with is that generally a mere 17 short levels would be a point of criticism in most games but here, it's a blessing.

Controls

This is the area of the game where some fairly serious bugs start to present themselves most notably the collision detection, which simply doesn't exist. Throw a spear over a small crab, for example, and it will die in an instant whilst shooting a giant crab at point blank range will result in him mauling you to death. It's this kind of wonky control which runs throughout the game and if it wasn't for the fact that the manual mentions 'testers' you'd be convinced this was sent right into production the day after coding had finished.

Graphics

From the very beginning you'll know that something is up when you see that the menus and save options have been coded rather than graphically produced and it's this lack of polish and, some would argue finish, which plagues the whole games presentation which wouldn't be so bad had the actual gaming engine been up to the job. There are no lighting effects, bland environments, minimal textures and some of the foggiest areas ever seen in a game. Even with this incredibly short draw distance you'll still find the game almost grinding to a haIt as soon as a little too much is going on. If all that wasn't enough the games characters are blocky and lifeless not to mention almost devoid of colour. The only real treat is Kong himself who at least looks like a giant ape and, thankfully, moves like one too but very all this is incredibly poor and given the amount of time the film has been in production and if you didn't know that Ubi Soft were behind the whole thing you'd swear that it had been produced as a first time shareware game.

Sound

This is the only area where the developer appears to have got it right and the various levels are accompanied by looping section from the soundtrack which does a fine job of building up tension although occasionally a little too much which the string section screaming out as you simply walk around. Your main character also has some speech samples. Well, one to be exact which is 'Anna' who he'll yell whenever he wants a door opening.

Dual screen

As with many recent DS titles the touch screen has been used because it was there rather than the developers actually having any real use for it. Here, it allows you to look around (rather like the function of a mouse of a PC based FPS) and select a telescopic sight or re-load and err... that's it.

Final comments

Judging by what I've read, only a handful of writers have dared to review this and if you've got to this final paragraph you'll know why. Quite simply this DS version of King Kong is everything that is wrong with your general movie tie-in not to mention it's total lack of use of any of the DS's unique features. We've already seen the film and it's clear that it's going to be a huge hit over the festive period but to think that gamers may actually buy this is very distressing indeed. We've already seen that the DS is more than capable of impressive FPS's (thanks to the Metroid Prime demo) so we know that it wasn't due to any lack of hardware power that led to this game being a disappointment in every department. What has caused this though is the developer's lack of care and attention to detail and if they don't take the time to create a competent game why on earth should you go out and buy it?

Pro: The Soundtrack.
Con: Buggy, Boring and Far Too Many Crabs.
Final score: 3.3

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