14 DAY TRIAL // 
King Kong is more than a giant ape. From the first film made in 1933 which rocked the world at that time, it transformed over the years into an iconic figure. There is something in the way that ape looks at you that makes you remember it for years. The original film is part of the national patrimony of United States among other 100 titles that have earned this stature.
Peter Jackson's King Kong - The Official Game of the Movie Wow this is a long name, but from now on I will refer to it just by King Kong. I eagerly await the unofficial game of the movie. Now here's the real question you have to ask yourself: is this game good enough to rest among 100 other titles in the history of game making? Let's find out!
Story: Carl Denham is a director that is almost on the brink of loosing his funding and getting his project scrapped. Through some miraculous way he discovers or stumbles across an ancient map that speaks of a lost island that was once the home of a great civilization and decides he should make his movie there. He finds some poor bastards that don't know what they're in for, a screenwriter by the name of Jack (which you are going to play with) and a... blond actress that agrees to come with them to the infamous Skull Island.
I understand you could want some real scenery for your movie because nothing beats reality, but still, after you get attacked by some myriapods the size of a man that nearly take your head off, the first reaction would be to get the hell out of there. But no, our brave and yet cowardly director continues to push forward over and over again. Maybe all will be explained in the movie because the game has some serious gaps in the story.
Gameplay: Actually this is done really good. Through the course of the game you will get to play two sides: one is through the eyes of Jack and the other is from behind (don't look at me that way) of the great King Kong.
Let's take care of Jack first. For a screenwriter he shoots pretty well and he probably would have won a medal in spear throwing. The game starts with you washing down a beach after your boat has been smashed into the rocks by the giant hurricane (whose idea was to get off the ship in the middle of a thunder storm again?).
For a few minutes you will only get a glimpse of what's to come because you don't have any weapons at your disposal, but don't worry you'll get your hand on one pretty soon.
This is no different than any other first person shooters out there except some minor adjustments. You don't have a lot of storage room on you so you will only be able to carry one weapon at a time and some spear-like things. Fortunately for me Ubisoft decided to implement a sort of auto-aiming. You can still miss but you would have to be a lousy shot to pull that off.
Almost anything in the game can be killed by the brave Jack, except the T-rex-like creature. The weapons are well done, not too powerful, but enough to give you a sense of security, although it's much more fun and more rewarding to kill things with spears made from wood or improvised from the remains of animals.
Another weird feature is the lack of any HUD (it can be enabled form the options). You don't see any life or ammo reserves, which makes the game a lot more interesting and gives a little more reality to the whole gameplay. You can get hit and die of course but it seems that the life tends to regenerate if you stay still (like in Call of Duty 2). Anyway the entire experience is rather easy and is focused on fun and not on frustration.
The other character is you get the play with is the mighty Kong. The first thing you will notice is that he is no longer this huge beast like in the original movie. The proper comparison is that he is the size of a T-Rex (isn't it weird that we all know what's the size of T-Rex) but only more chubby, muscular and quite athletic.
The action is always very fast paced even if you control an ape that weighs several tons, you never get bored of breaking necks and snapping the jaws of T-Rex and other vicious creatures that stand between you and the blond actress from the mainland.
There will be a lot of jumping but the most significant feature is the continuous fighting. The only thing you're not fighting is you. Eventually you get captured and dragged into civilization. This is where I didn't like the game anymore. Instead of leaving me with two hours of mayhem through the streets, the game ends quickly living me a bitter taste of "what I could have done".
Concept: I have to admit that this strange combination between a FPS (first person shooter) and TPG (third person gorilla) is an intriguing one and is the strongest feature for this title. None of these two concepts are new, but put together they make a perfect combination.
Video: For a game that has been ported to all known platforms in the world, the PC version stands on its own. The graphics is crisp and clear, with a lot of details like facial animation, good lipsync and a King Kong that never looked better.
You will notice from time to time, especially during the in-game cutscenes some low-poly textures that don't really fit in the general picture. This could have been a console port but it's more than that. You can see here the hand of a publisher that cares more about the looks of the game and not its playability on all possible systems.
A very pleasant surprise is the release of a 5.5 GB version that is meant to be played on a high-end computer. When I say high-end I mean at least an AMD Athlon FX-57 with dual SLI 7800 GTX and 2 GB of RAM. The textures have gigantic resolution and the characters look much more realistic, but all the effort is put in post-processing.
Audio: The music soundtrack doesn't stand out but the acting is a different matter. All the voices in the game are from the actors in the movie and it shows big-time. They are very convincing in making you wish you were somewhere else. And let's not forget the other main character, King Kong; that is a roar I wouldn't like to hear in real life. All in all this is one of the best acting I witnessed this year in a game.
Conclusion: Is this a game to be included in a top 100? Personally I don't think so, but I would include it in the top 3 games made after a movie. Usually these titles are a complete disaster, but not "Peter Jackson's King Kong - The Official Game of the Movie". I could get used with this kind of quality in movie games. Long live franchises!
