Terrible licensed games are coming back into fashion. Gollum was trash, there’s an awful-looking Bumblebee game on the horizon, and now King Kong is joining in on the fun with a new title from GameMill Entertainment. Judging from the reveal trailer, it’s a third-person action experience with big insects, big dinosaurs, and a big gorilla beating the crap out of them all. It sounds good on paper, but looks a bit rubbish.
According to the official description, King Kong is on a quest to avenge his dead parents by defeating the evil creatures responsible across Skull Island. All of which are more or less the same size as him, so the thrill that comes from stomping on tiny invading humans or ruling over New York City is very quickly lost. Expect bland combat, forgettable environments, and an oddly hilarious story that tries to humanise Kong. Sorry, I’m trying my best to be nice about it but it’s clearly not working. There is a King Kong game I do love, however.
Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game Of The Movie, developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, released in 2005. From the start, it was clear that Ubisoft and Peter Jackson didn’t want this tie-in to be a cash-grab or a poor imitation of the film, but an ambitious expansion of it. Even on older systems like PS2 and Xbox with its mixture of tensely immersive first-person exploration and thrilling jungle excursions as Kong himself, this game was, in many ways, quite ahead of its time.
It smartly decides to skip the slovenly opening hour set in New York and The Venture, and opens as Jack Driscoll’s boat is lowered into the sea alongside the rest of his unsuspecting crew. Ann Darrow, Carl Denham, and a number of other characters all reprised by the film’s cast rock their way towards Skull Island before crashing against the shore and losing some of their crew. This opening takes a few liberties with the film’s plot, but it also understands that, as we take control of Driscoll, it’s important to make sure the majority of events revolve around us. We’re constantly surrounded by moments of horror and action. There is a profound sense of immersion in the moment-to-moment gameplay that still feels refreshing despite the game pushing two decades old.
Unless you decide to pause the game, there is no user interface to speak off. Your current health and ammunition can only be determined by pressing a button to hear dialogue that describes how dry you’re running, while sound cues and visual effects on the screen are evidence enough when things are going wrong. You’re expected to observe the world you explore and fall victim to its vices, learning to defend yourself and explore in a shooter that even today is willing to usurp trends and try new things.
Aiming, for example, is achieved by holding one shoulder button to make your firearm appear, while the other is used to fire. Let go of any of them and you need to restart the process. Several ranged weapons like spears and sticks are similarly complex, because it’s important to remember you’re not a marine or a sailor, but a timid writer thrown into grim circumstances that will eat you alive if you don’t try to survive.
Much of the time you’ll also be in the company of allies, with characters given fresh lines of dialogue and character arcs that evolve beyond the film. I love the ability to swap weapons with your comrades at any moment, although I did feel bad stealing Jack Black’s shotgun and leaving him stuck with a random stick I found. I’m sure he’ll be fine...
While you’ll stumble across several weapons on your adventure, at times the only solution is to run away. Dinosaurs the size of buildings can devour you within seconds, with some of the game’s most memorable
moments coming from chase sequences where you must distract towering beasts while your allies fumble to open archaic gates offering a potential route to safety. Having no choice but to run in a random direction, hoping that a V-Rex won’t eat you alive from behind still gives me the chills, because it drives home the insignificance of human civilization in a world where it clearly doesn’t belong. Wherever you look are giant bugs and hungry dinosaurs waiting to eat you alive, encounters conquered by the skin of your teeth.
Kong sequences might be the game’s weakest as they turn a tense shooter filled with forward-thinking immersive sim elements into a scrappy brawler with dodgy platforming or combat arenas conquered through mashing whatever buttons feel right. It felt as if Ubisoft realised it was making a King Kong game so obviously we needed to play as the big guy at some point, even if his prowess pales in comparison to the humans sitting alongside him. I was blown away whenever he’d step into frame or do battle with monsters as I controlled Driscoll, free to look up in awe at the titans doing battle before me. Whenever that scale is reversed it just isn’t that exciting.
I replayed the game via Xbox One backward compatibility during the pandemic, but right now the only way to access the game is through a physical copy since digital ones aren’t available, meaning one of the best movie tie-ins of all time is sadly inaccessible. It would be unwise for Ubisoft to remaster a licensed game from twenty years ago just because I decided to write about it, but wouldn’t that be nice? Even a digital version available on the same platforms would go a long way, and likely encourage thousands to check out a game which is slowly being lost to time. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, but maybe they should.