Customer Reviews

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The 8th Wonder of the World

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow what a beautiful game. I am very impressed by the graphics on this one. But what about the gameplay. It is very unique. Most of the game you are a human running around in first person shooter mode. This is pretty cool. Sometimes you will have to look around in the environment to find things to use. An example would be finding a spearlike object to hurl at a t-rex. THis sounds like it would be tough, but it really isn't. While you cock the spear with one hand, your other hand points to where you will throw the spear. THis brings up a very unique aspect of the game. There is no health meter, no reticle for shooting, no ammo readout. NO nothing. You are IN the game just as a real person would be. This helps with the immersion in the game. But what about the Kong Levels? They are way fun and way short. they are probably only about %25 of the game. They are fun though. A little clumsy on the controls, but fun. All in all this is a good game. Not great, but pretty good. (...). Whatever the case, you will be pretty happy with your purchase.

King Kong the video game is an absolute must have. I rented it, playing it non-stop, and I actually beat it in less than 24 hours! The 1st person shooting is awesome. To find guns, or spears to throw at your enemies, you must search and search (and search) for gun ammo and different spears to bring your enemies down. The game has a variety of different creatures that attack you. Ranging from massive centapedes, velocaraptors, and T-rex's as well. The other characters that are with you are extremely helpful. You know how in most games, the other characters that are with you just kindof stand there? Not so in this game. The other characters do everything in there power to help you out. You arent provided with a health bar or any information telling you how much ammo you have left, you rely on the other characters telling you when you need to re-load. You know when you are wounded because the screen goes all red. While playing as King Kong himself, you use your brute streangth to bring your enemies down. You also can scale rock cliffs to evade those menacing Raptors or Tyranasaurs. All in all this game is EXTREMELY well done, the only down side is that it could have been a LITTLE longer. Other than that its great. Awesome graphics, and entirely great game-play. I cant wait untill the Movie...!

THIS WAS AMAZING! I AM USAULLY A WAR GAME TYPE OF PERSON BUT I WENT FOR THIS. I THOUGHT I WAS MAKING A MISTAKE OF GETTING THIS RATHER THAN CALL OF DUTY 2.IN THISS GAME, YOU GET TO DO EVERYTHING YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO IN THE MOVIE. YOU PICK UP GUNS OUT OF BOXES THAT ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS DROPS OUT OF A PLANE. YOU WILL HAVE A TOTAL OF 5 DIFFERENT WEAPONS LIKE THE SPRINGFIELD SNIPER RIFLE, THE TOMMY GUN, A GERMAN LUGER PISTOL, A SHOTGUN, AND AN OLD FASHOINED NATIVE SPEAR. YOU WILL FIGHT AGAINST MEGAPEDES, VELOCIRAPTORS, GIANT CRABS > THESE GUYS ARE PRETTY HARD TO KILL) AND A HUGE V-REX( I NEARLY SCARED MYSELF TO DEATH WHEN THIS THING POPPED UP OUT OF NOWWHERE!) WHEN YOU PLAY AS KING KONG, YOU CAN DO COOL THINGS LIKE JUMPING ON TREES OR SKYSCRAPERS, AND RUN ON WALLS, AND THROW OBJECTS FOR EXAMPLE A CAR OR TREE, OR YOUR ENEMY. MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT THIS GAME IS SEEING JACK BLACK PLAYING AS CARL DENHAM WHO IS FILMING EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME. ABSOLUTELY GET THIS GAME IF YOU LIKE ACTION AND SHOOTING COMBINED!!!!! ONE OTHER THING, EVERY TIME YOU BEAT THE GAME OF A TOTAL 34 MISSIONS, THE GAME CHANGES AROUND AND IT IS ALWAYS DIFFERENT!! lIKE ONE OF YOUR TEAMATES MIGHT GET KILLED OR ANOTHER TIME THEY MAY NOT! IT'S UP TO YOU TO CHANGE THEIR DESTINY< EVEN YOURS! BUT SEROUISLY, GET THIS GAME! aLSO GOOD FOR A CHRISTMMAS PRESENT.

What is King Kong?
It is a great action game based on the movie.

What do you do in King Kong?
You can play in as Jack and as King Kong. Jack can use weapons in the environment like spears, sticks, and fire, but he can also use guns brought from Hayes and crates you find around. You solve puzzles and defeat enemies in multiple ways. The first person makes things look realistic. You can swim and use various guns. It's a survival combat game. It has no health meter. If you get hurt after you already got hurt, you will lose. Sort of like Halo. You spend most of the time as Jack. As King Kong, you play in a third person veiw. You can fight enemies with plenty of moves, jump, lift, smash, and much more with Kong. It's a fun treat after all of that first person combat with Jack. Though, you won't spend most of the game playing as him. It's fun. You paid to play as Kong.

How are the graphics?
Best graphics out of all PS2, Xbox, and GC games. Xbox 360 version has the best graphics though.

How is the sound?
The sound is great. We have Dolby Pro Logic II. It sounds as atmospheric and realistic as ever, but the breathing noises the character can make can get really annoying.

How much lasting value does this game have?
It doesn't take much to beat it. But, there are extras and the game is fun which will keep you going. Kong fans will want to keep this forever.

I enjoyed King Kong the movie... Will I enjoy this?
Yes. It's one of the best licensed ever and it's worth checking out, Kong fan or not.

What are the cons about this game?
There are some programming bugs. Some so small you can laugh at and some so big you have to restart the level. A short game. Kong parts are short. Other than that, it's amazing.

King Kong is a great game, full of adventure and excitement. It van be confusing sometimes, but if you're patient, you'll find a solutin to your problem. The screen can be very dark at times: the creatures are a dark gray or black, the rock is dark gray or black, you are usually in a cave so there is little light, the plants are ususlly darki red or green, and your weapons is gray or brown(if your using a spear. So it can be very difficult to see. You'd think that carrying a torch would help, but the flame on;y gets on your way.
King Kong is a reat 1st person sooter, despite the flaws mentioined above. Playing as Kong is fun but it too is complicated. He only has on "hit" button and he caan also grab the enemy, and then use the two in a combo, but thats about it.

Movie-to-game translations are often abysmal, unfun, and disgraceful. However, Peter Jackson's remake of the 1933 classic is not only strong gaming material, but Ubi-Soft and Jackson collaberate to make one of the better gaming experiences based on a film. The pride and passion are evident throughout most of this adventure piece, because not only does it attempt to use the movie material faithfully, it also is a unique twist on the first-person-shooter genre.

GRAPHICS
---The GameCube's graphics in this game are a mix of great and underwhelming. The best graphics are in the creature animations. Dinosaurs, flying predators, and the ape beast himself have fluid movements, and never look like stiff robots. The water and fire patricle effects are also very crisp. The human characters don't look bad, but they don't move well. Part of their jerky movements are due to some scripting glitches (think "Medal of Honor), where the computer-controlled characters move to eagerly too their next destination. The level environments aren't jaggy or poorly-drawn, but the coloring of this game made me a little bored. The jungles of Skull Island are so blue and green, and when you're navigating claustrophobic environments very quickly, this can become an uncomfortable experience. As for New York, the climactic sequence of the movie, I wasn't too impressed, because it's so dark you can barely see anything. Overall, a solid graphical presentation, but with some sore spots.

SOUND
---The music is not James Newton Howard's from the film (damn!), but it is actually an originally composed score just for the game. And a very good musical composition it is. I can't say anything really stands out to me, but when the final Credits roll, you'll listen with a smile. The voice actors in the English language setting (one of several) are those from the film. The acting isn't bad, but the written dialogue, which (ironically) was supervised by film co-writer Philippa Boyens, is pretty lame. Listening to the talented Naomi Watts speak so insightfully on the nature of Kong is cringe-inducing. Jack Black...well, that depends if you liked him in the film, but everybody else is fine. The enemies and environment sounds are crisp and very well-done. If you can forgive some bad dialogue, then turn your bass all the way up, because when you fire those guns, your heart is gonna race.

GAMEPLAY
---The first-person gaming of "King Kong" isn't typical. There is no HUD (health bar, ammo count, etc); instead, Jack Driscoll (you) can only survive a few attacks and vocally tells you how much ammo is left in your guns (you'll use 4). You'll mostly be grabbing nearby spears and throwing them at the island's predators, and it's going to be an intense experience most of the time. Crocodiles, bugs, dinosaurs, flying bats (can't remember their names) --- they're all dangerous if you're not careful. The spears are also interact with the environment to break doors and burn areas like torches & fields. There will also be a few protect-segments and chase sequences. This is mostly pretty good stuff, if a little repetitive. The 25% of the game where you play as King Kong, however, is going to polarize gamers. I personally don't care for it. The camera is too awkward, the combat too simple, the button-mashing redundant, and the jumping and chasing feel like they're on automatic pilot. Basically, I didn't enjoy this mode at all. The animations of Skull Island's beasts are fantastic, but the gameplay just isn't fun. The New York levels have shoddy cameras, so the game actually ends on a poor note. These final stages should've been the culmination of everything that "King Kong" is about, but the payoff is weak at best.

MOVIE-TO-GAME TRANSLATION
---You won't see a few characters, and the plot doesn't really follow the film's storyline. But the actual movie is one hour of exposition, and two hours of non-stop action anyway. What I miss about this game is the beautiful moments featured in the film. The quiet tender scenes between Ann Darrow and Kong would've made a stronger impact in this game. Instead, Ubi-Soft (and Peter Jackson, I guess) took the adventure segments, changed the plot to be more gamer-convenient, and extended the two hours of action to 6 hours of gaming. Not a bad idea, but then some of the attempts to portray some of those tender scenes come off as completely corny and obligatory. As I said, "King Kong" is one of the better translations, but that's not saying much.

OVERALL
---"King Kong" is a solid game, but 50 bucks is way too much for a 6-hour game. Even the current $20 price is a jip. There are extra goodies after you beat the game, but the final New York levels aren't that great, and playing as Kong just wasn't very fun for me. I will confess that I thought the 2005 version of "King Kong" was an average movie (6.5 out of 10), but this is a game that you should only rent or borrow, because I can't imagine many revisiting this one after a single play-through.

If a game should be challenging, putting you into sweatening situations, this almost ain't no game at all. Like when you play a silent Hill game on the easiest difficulty (without puzzles) it is more of an intense journey than anything else. In the extra interview Peter Jackson he said that the game is a survival course on what has to be the most dangerous island on earth. If that is, all of our islands are pieces of cake. It's not dangerous, it might be frightening at times, but not dangerous, actually there were around 3 Situations I had to retry, the rest went smoothly and without any troubles. I should also say that there is only one difficutly, being extremly low.

During the game there are about 5 things you can do: pick up a speer or animal bone and throw against enemies or hit'em with it several times untill it breaks apart. There are harmless animals like fish creatures and butterflies. You can put these on top of you spear/bone and throw it somewhere to distract the enemies. You can put it on fire as well and burn down bushes to get a clear path. You can pick up weapons and ammos and use them, you can sneak as well. You need to find specific pieces of wood to open doors.

All in all, that's extremly few things to do over the course of a 7-hours-game. It's repetion in the purest form. Every level almost consists of executing each "possibility" at least once. Don't play this game if you're out for a killzone-like experience on a Skull Island. It's far from that but the experience still is great. The details are AWESOME, the air is pretty wet and thick, so however you move the lights will move and break as well. If you have a fish attached to the spear, it will want to escape and try to bite you. If you're walking throught deep water, you lower the weapons over your head. Whenever you get the chance to get a wider view of the island, there's some kind of cool orientation to it. A Mountain in the distance gets bigger during the game, so you really feel like being and moving there, although there is not much of a choice which path to take, well, none at all. Meaning it looks bigger than it feels. Also the pace is very fast. There are a LOT of levels in the end, but they're extremly short, sometimes crazy short! The loading times are no problem at all, but you feel a bit like rushing throught the game when it's such a short time between the loading sections. Not a problem as long as you don't want to PATIENTLY ENJOY the game too much. I know that next time I play it I will do it in one course I guess, literally playing the movie in 6 hours. There are some trail-levels, leading you along a path, having you to fight against enemies attacking from everywhere. These levels are the shortest ones. But no wonder: so many things move and happen like a lot of discussions between the characters and stuff. So if a level endures only one minute, that minute will be full of stuff, be it dialogues, scripts, attacks (also scripted attacks animals on animals) or whatever.

A great experience, a much too easy game, and ways too short. It's no wonder as these kind of games are mostly being made for the fans of the movies, not for game freaks. So the difficulty level has to be pretty low to keep nongamers from getting frustrated. In the end you "control" a movie, no more no less. But the story is great, the setting awesome, KingKong a lovable creature like in the movie - no monster at all, just a wild animal.

Amazing, Impressive game! This may be the best GameCube game ever of all time,and i've played them all! Ten times better than what i expected! if you buy only one GC game, this is the ONE!.... Worth every cent...

Most of the time, movies do not translate into games very well. This is an exception to that rule. Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong (Widescreen Edition) comes to life in spectacular fashion with this game. Beautifully rendered graphics and fun gameplay make for a wonderful gaming experience.

The game takes place almost exclusively on Skull Island. You play as Jack Driscoll, and for those of you that have not seen the new film, he is now an educated and well respected playwright, not the he man hero first mate of the previous film.

As Jack, you are sometimes alone and sometimes with other characters from the film as you make your way through this hellish island to save Anne from Kong. The left and right shoulder buttons control your weaponry and this can take some time getting use to. But after a while, it becomes second nature.

There is no HUD on this game, so you can't tell by looking at the screen how much life you have left or how many bullets you have. The only ways to tell is by your breathing and heartbeat, which gets faster as you become injured. When the screen goes red and silent, you're dead.

There are a host of weapons to use, but it is realistic in the fact that you have a certain number of bullets and once you're out, you're out until you find another box of weapons that has been air dropped at various points around the island. For the most part, you will be using spears and the bones of dead animals as your weapons. It is important to master using these, because if you don't, you don't stand a chance.

Every few levels, you actually get to play as Kong. This is quite jarring (in a good way), as you now have the power that you lack as Jack. You can attack full force and kill your enemies. Repeatedly pressing X revs you up and gives you a temporary power boost. You must battle dinosaurs (lots of them) all while keeping Anne safe. This is the most fun part of the game and these are the levels that you will most likely go back to replay as each level is available to replay after you finish it.

After the island levels, you are Kong in New York. This is particularly fun as you get to rampage through the city on your way to the Empire State Building. Of course you die at the end, but that's really not the end of the game.

After you beat the game, you then go back through levels that have points available to score. You unlock various extras along the way including the "old movie" mode, where your screen resembles the 1933 film, King Kong (Two-Disc Special Edition). Of particular note is a Peter Jackson interview regarding the making of the new film.

The ultimate unlockable is the alternate ending, which you can unlock after achieving 25000 points. This is fun as you get to save Kong and give him a happy ending.

All in all, this is a great game. I would have liked more levels as Kong, or maybe an option of one or the other, as well as playing as other characters. The game is also rather short for an adventure game. But it has a great replay factor. These are minor quibbles though.

This game has got to be one of my best for gamecube. There is plenty of amazing levels and adventerous gameplay.I was a little hesitant on buying this game since I bought the ds version and found it to be way to difficult if not impossible to get passed the 2nd level. But once I started playing there was no stopping.Take my word of advice and go treat yourself to one of the best games of the year for gamecube