The most striking difference between King Kong and other shooters is the absence of a heads-up display. You see what Jack would see and nothing else. That’s right—no cross hair. Ammunition and health are handled intuitively. Jack announces how many magazines he has left, a feature that may sound as annoying to you as it originally did to me, but actually works well and unobtrusively.
When Jack is hit, the screen reddens with blood creeping in around the edges. His breathing speeds up and the pulse races and it feels a lot like Call of Duty 2 or, possibly, methamphetamines. If you avoid taking any more damage, Jack’s body stops freaking out and everything is fine again.
It is possible to turn on the cross hair, inventory, and ammo count, but it does not make the game easier and lessens the level of immersion that distinguishes the gameplay.
While traipsing through the wilderness Jack makes use of firearms dropped by the ship’s captain from his pontoon plane. The guns—a pistol, a shotgun, and a scoped rifle—have an arcade quality and hit things that are in the middle area of your screen thanks to some friendly auto-aim.
Ammunition is not abundant and, if guns are used exclusively, it will quickly run dry. Thus, Jack makes use of numerous pointy objects scattered throughout the environment by nature and the natives.
Jack can pick up spears and bones and use them against the various beasts in either a poking or a throwing manner. The throwing is the more deadly attack by far—even a bit better than the guns. By using the tools provided by man and the island, you should never be without defense or unable to handle the many threats the jungle houses.
The threats range from bats that dive at you to centipedes that jump at you to small dinosaurs that lurch at you.
The combat is repetitive when facing small foes and my usual thought was, “Oh, they’re rushing me again, I hope I can grab bone shards fast enough to keep them from hitting me twice.” The limited health is often frustrating because if a centipede, for instance, succeeds in striking me, my vision becomes obscured, balance takes a vacation, and it is difficult to hit the creature or creatures that were attacking you before they hit you again, causing death.
At times, wild and desperate shotgun unloading in an attempt to escape from a raptor’s jaws can be thrilling, but mostly it’s just annoying. At least the game features some limited auto-balancing abilities where enemies are subtracted or added depending on how well you are performing. [8Bats]
