King Kong Demo: Review

Monday, October 10th, 2005

After a weekend away from home, I was looking forward to some serious gaming tonight. I’ve got a ton of new games recently, but I didn’t end up playing any of them. The first demo for Peter Jackson’s King Kong was released on Friday while I was out of town. After seeing the screenshots and short video clips from E3 and shortly after, I wasn’t overly stoked on it. Not to mention that movie games are supposed to suck. After all, the only game based on a movie franchise I’ve really enjoyed (besides a few of the Star Wars games) was The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. Great game - shit ass movie.

Anyway, it looks like we have another exception to this unwritten rule on our hands. This demo is fuckin’ great! There’s two parts - one where you play a human and have to lure a T-Rex away from your comrades while they open a gate. It’s super intense and had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Reminded me of the first time I saw Jurassic Park and how awesome the T-Rex-chasing-the-jeep scene was. The second part of the demo, you get to play as Kong… and holy hell is it amazing!

There’s no HUD and the camera view changes every few seconds - really giving it a cinematic feel. The visuals and sound are simply incredible. Also a great use of light-bloom and lots of accurate shadows. When you move around as Kong, you really get a sense of his size. My only complaint at this point is the combat system. It’s pretty much a button masher. Not so much when you fight smaller enemies like Raptors. But the T-Rex battles are just constant clicking. You wouldn’t know it by watching some gameplay footage, though. Speaking of which, here’s the entire Kong demo segment played by yours truly…