Even mighty Kong can’t go anywhere he pleases. While the portions of the game played as Kong share the on-a-rail quality of Jack’s trip, the gameplay is mostly opposite from the pathetic human. While Jack has to look around every corner and exercise caution, Kong storms through the jungle fearing next-to-nothing.
The game captures the feeling of a being a twenty-five foot gorilla and Kong smashes through most obstacles and enemies alike with ease. Those venatosauruses that gave Jack so much trouble? A snack for our larger protagonist. What fun would this be without some larger challenges?
The greatest part of being Kong is brawling with vastatosaurus rexes. Activating Kong’s “Rage” makes him stronger and faster and is the best way the tenacious predators. Generally, anything smaller is easy to dispatch, which is a major part of what makes Kong fun: feeling his power, rage, and even grace as he swings from (highly linear) limbs.
Swinging, moving, and fighting can all be very cinematic. The player has no control over the third person camera which allows for the view to change dynamically and deliver shots similar to what the film offers. Perhaps the best example is when Kong is leaping through the jungle to save Ann from two Tyrannosauruses. When it is time for the final jump, the camera switches to a close-up of Ann and her attackers with Kong in the background that allows the player to witness the spectacle of Kong bursting onto the scene and delivering the first blow. It is simply majestic.
However, in other parts of the game, the camera’s tendency to move by itself causes frustration and, much to Kong’s distress, his death. For instance, when lumbering down a New York street I tried to turn right down a side street where a cannon lurked. But, the camera moved from behind Kong to behind the cannon so my turn down the street turned into a collision with a building and quick death.
While not always dangerous, traveling in one direction only to switch without warning is aggravating each of the numerous times it happens. Loss of control is the side effect of cinematic presentation, so it is unfortunate the developers were not able to minimize this.
Even when the camera is cooperating perfectly, other game mechanics may sabotage your progress. During the first episode played as Kong, I ran into frustration that no other game I had played this year could hope to match. I scaled a cliff in order to reclaim Ann from the clutches of a giant bat-thing. The kind game, still teaching me how to control Kong, told me to “dash” whenever the creature got in position to dive at me. The key command given appeared to damage the beast when performed correctly (which was rare).
However, it was actually as effective as angrily squinting at him, which I was also doing. In the end I played the sequence over two million times trying to land enough “hits” to kill the thing and each time having to sit through an in-game cut scene because of the save point’s location. I eventually figured out that standard Kong tactics worked great, but ten minutes later the game froze in the middle of a level-transition and I was forced to once again fight that stupid, stupid bat. I encountered the same freeze error once more while playing through the game. These problems were not common, but were severe enough to detract from the smooth and rapid progression the game fosters and definitely removed me from any emotional investment in the story.
