The highly anticipated game of the movie isn't good enough to make a worthy purchase, but is still a decent rental.
The result of many month's hard work is evident; right from the start King Kong has simply gorgeous presentation. The waves as you moor on Skull Island is the best foamy water effect I've ever seen, and it's just so cinematic you could probably film your entire play-through of King Kong and release it as a different adaptation of the King Kong movie.
Yep, the devs have certainly put a lot of hard work into the game presentation-wise, giving the game a very filmlike feel and it really is an interactive movie. Skull Island may be dark, dank and repetitive, but you can't deny that every nanometre of the island is stunning. Add the character models that really look like the main stars of the film, Jack Black, Adrian Brody, and Naomi Watts, and it really feels like you're controlling yourself through the movie through the eyes of Jack Driscoll. And then to totally make your eyes go bonanza, there's the Kong sections of the game that really are a visual knockout. Every trick in the book is used; even a Rage mode that sends Kong off the anger scale and turns the whole game a different colour, a sort of bleached look that is absolutely wowza.
And then there's the audio. It's good enough to send your eyes spinning out of their sockets. Great music, top-notch voiceovers done by the actual stars of the movie, and excellently done sound effects give the game a sort of added atmosphere, that you're really on a desolate, undiscovered island with no place to hide from little prehistoric monsters that would enjoy nothing more than turning you into sub-micronic crimson mush.
So, in the end, it all boils down to how entertaining this audiovisual masterpiece is. The truth is, not very. It's basically one big giant level in the middle of nowhere, where you just endlessly roam around following King Kong and helping your comrades, and, very annoyingly, revolves around chucking spears at flying bat thingies, which with the lack of a HUD makes this infuriatingly difficult when you have no ammo for your sniper rifle. Apart from these unfortunate sections, the game is actually very straight-forward and not much of a challenge - I found that whenever I had a gun in my hand I felt a feeling of safety, that I really could do no wrong when I could lodge a few bullets into a dinosaur's neck. And if you have a gun, the game isn't that bad, it's just when the ammo runs out it becomes a boring slog.
The Kong sections are very simplistic and linear, and half the time you're just absent-mindedly tilting the analog stick forward while watching him run forward, maybe occasionally pressing a button to attack a foe. Actually, they're only redeemed by the feeling that you really are a gigantic gorilla, on a rampage through a city that's in anarchy.
To make things worse for the game's score, it's also very short - you won't get much more than six or seven hours out of this one. After it you're done, and unless you're a devoted masochist, you won't force yourself through a game revolving around throwing spears at aerial foes without a bloody crosshair. Next time, remember a crosshair.
So all in all, King Kong is an average and often tedious game in very glittery wrapping. It's best played on an Xbox 360 with a nice big sound system so you can get the best out of this stupefying presentation, but the dull gameplay still shows through at the game's score, regardless of how shiny the environments are. And the provided classification that Gamespot have put in, and I chose: "All flash, no substance." This is a perfect example of that statement.