Peter Jackson’s King Kong

Peter Jackson’s King Kong is the obligatory tie-in to the forthcoming Universal Studios movie. Most of the game, based in the 1930s, follows the exploits of Jack Driscoll, who travels to the mysterious and previously uncharted Skull Island to film a movie.

Once there he discovers the place is crawling with prehistoric creatures, including dinosaurs and, most notably, an enormous 30ft gorilla called Kong.

Playing as Jack, you’ll have to capture Kong and take him back to New York City to be shown to the public. Somewhat inevitably, though, he escapes and causes havoc in downtown Manhattan.

The game feels very much like a movie – mostly because a lot of it is scripted. In the early stages you almost feel as if you’re on rails, going through the motions to reach your next objective.

As Jack, much of the game involves following your team, shooting a few bad things, and moving on to face the next threat lurking around the corner.

This will seriously reduce the likelihood of you wanting to play the game again once you’ve completed it, but it makes the initial experience quite entertaining.

A few times during the game we were genuinely startled by enemies, which was mostly due to the excellent graphics. All the characters look good and are well animated, and there’s even some solid voice acting courtesy of Jack Black and the other members of the film’s cast.

In some parts of the game you’ll get to play the great ape himself. These sections are among the most enjoyable, but the game’s developers have kept this to a minimum in order to promote a feeling of relative helplessness when playing as Jack.

This isn’t the best 3D action-adventure game we’ve played, but it is good fun.

System requirements:
1GHz processor
256MB Ram
Windows 2000/XP/x64
64MB video card with T&L