Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie

Overview

King Kong is the video-game adaptation of Peter Jackson's King Kong. It is part first-person shooter with you taking the role of the character Jack, and part third-person beat-em up as Kong.

Gameplay

Although games in which the player takes control of multiple characters are not exactly rare, King Kong takes this to extremes by changing the style of gameplay dramatically. Whilst most of the game is played through the first person perspective of Jack Driscoll, occasionally, players will get the opportunity to take a more diverse route as King Kong exploring the jungle in platforming style segments as you leap from trees and walls, and also taking the approach of a beat-em-up, usually in colossal, almost boss-like battles against a Tyrannosaurus Rex or at times even a pack of Tyrannosaurs.

Whilst playing as Jack, however, the game still manages to divert from the first person archetype most games follow by making ammunition for automatic weapons such as guns sparse and scattered far away, meaning the character has to learn to use bones, torches and sharpened sticks to fend off dinosaurs, giant bugs and other ghastly creatures.

The notable lack of a HUD also increases the difficulty factor putting players in a position where they need to judge how far and where to throw their projectiles. Due to the lack of a HUD, the game introduces tactics to keep the player in the know regarding their ammo count, such as having Jack shout out how much ammunition he has left whenever he reloads his clip and allowing players to manually check their ammo with a button press. When injured too much, the screen will go red and blurry and Jack's heartbeat will sound off louder than usual. All this serves to create atmosphere within the game which, although used frequently today, might have been considered somewhat unnerving and effective when the game was initially released.

Production

As the director of the 2005 remake of the movie King Kong, Peter Jackson worked very hard to make sure the video-game tie-in would be a more pleasurable experience for gamers than most other movie-game tie-ins which are on the whole considered sub-par by the video game community. Jackson's own background as a video-gamer is known to have prompted this.

The game was made alongside the film and was seen as a collaborative effort between the cast and crew of the film and the developers of the game, two groups of people attempting to tell the same story through different mediums, and trying to evoke different experiences, whilst maintaining a positive response.

Almost all of the cast from the 2005 motion picture lent their voices to the game including Jack Black, Adrien Brody and Naomi Watts. As well as that, Andy Serkis, the critically acclaimed motion capture performer praised for his acting as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, and playing King Kong in the movie provided his services for the video game as well.

Chapters

1. The Venture
2. Skull Island
3. Necropolis
4. Scorpions
5. The Wall
6. Sacrifice
7. On Kong's Tracks
8. Hayes
9. V-Rex
10. Ann
11. Kong
12. The Canyon
13. Millipedes
14. Brontosaurus
15. Jimmy
16. On the Raft
17. Rapids
18. Fight
19. Swamps
20. Chased by V-Rex
21. The Log
22. The Skull Islanders
23. To Save Ann
24. The Cave
25. Venatosaurus
26. In the Mud
27. Call Kong
28. Kong to the Rescue
29. To the Plane
30. To the Lair
31. Kong's Lair
32. Fight in the Lair
33. Free
34. Chased by Kong
35. Heading Back
36. Back to the Village
37. Kong's Capture
38. Kong Struck Down
39. In the Streets of New York
40. The Empire State Building
41. Kong's Death

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was composed by Chance Thomas and was released free on the official website. It contains mysterious and powerful elements, similar to motion picture score, composed by James Newton Howard.

Track Listing

• Ann Leaves The Island
• Ann's Theme
• Between Two Worlds/Vision of Ann
• Fury and Heroics
• The Island Tombs
• King Kong, the Tragic Hero
• Kong Dispatches the Tyrant
• Lost in the Jungle
• Nest of Raptors
• Panic
• Raptor Attack/Death of a Friend
• Relentless
• Sting of the Giant Scorpion
• The T-Rex Cometh
• Valley of the Brontosaurus
• Vampires of the Sky

Xbox 360 Game Installation

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie requires 6.2GB of space to be installed on an Xbox 360 HDD.