Luckily, you'll have some friends at your side during the most hectic of occasions. Needless to say, you're going to have to get creative during sequences like that, and not in any truly satisfying way. Case in point: a sequence in which you have to fight your way through several waves of prehistoric alligators armed with half a clip of pistol ammo, and if you're lucky, a few scraps of bone. Make no mistake: there's little more satisfying in the game than spearing a raptor in the eye with a sharpened bone, but there comes a point (a couple, actually) when the scarcity of ammo gives rise to some truly frustrating game sequences. Spears, in other words, either crude wood-and-chipped-stone instruments strewn about by the island's native inhabitants, or even cruder ones fashioned by you out of bone piles that seem to permeate the island. But the other half of the time you're going to have to make do with what the environs provide. Roughly half the time, you'll have access to firearms of some kind: shotguns, pistols, sniper rifles, even Thompson submachine guns, all thoughtfully airdropped via seaplane by the Venture's crew. Factor in the relative scarcity of modern weaponry, and you start to see the sort of urgency that the game creates. See, Skull Island is a place that's been somehow frozen in time, and the fauna is generally of the enormous, man-eating variety. The sequences in which you're playing as Jack are, at their best, richly immersive, and at times, genuinely terrifying. If nothing else, it's a great setup for some genuinely riveting first-person action. You play a good majority of King Kong as the compassionate, level-headed Driscoll and as you'd expect, the group eventually not only finds Skull Island, but finds itself marooned thereon. Among others he brings along screenwriter Jack Driscoll and budding starlet Ann Darrow.
Ambitious movie director Carl Denham (played by Jack Black in Jackson's film) is dead set on shooting his next feature there, and thus embarks on a dangerous voyage with his crew aboard the freighter Venture. Uncharted, and thought only to exist in myth. We'll refrain from giving away any details about the story in our review. While they're still enjoyable during the relatively short spurts in which they surface, it's clear why there wasn't more of an emphasis on them: they simply aren't as fleshed out as the rest of the game. The game's third-person elements - which cast you as King Kong himself - feel underdeveloped compared to the rest of the game. The game's flaws, though, are unfortunately just as easy to point out. A whole lot of effort was put into making the world seem vibrant and alive, and this has similarly paid off: from the AI characters that accompany you throughout your Skull Island trek, to the flesh-hungry beasts that assail you all the way, the presence of every character in the game contributes to its excellent atmosphere. Primarily, the game delivers a seamless, engrossing game experience, relatively unfettered by contrivances like in-game cutscenes and intrusive interface elements. Peter Jackson's King Kong takes some pretty bold steps to distance itself from the multitude of by-the-numbers movie licensed-games, and it succeeds on many accounts.
Where the games based on Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lord of the Rings have trod fairly traditional grounds, the one based on his rendering of King Kong does anything but. Developed in conjunction with Jackson and his production company, the game also features scenes and locations not seen in the film. Gameplay comes in two styles: In control of the ambitious hero Jack Driscoll, players fight for their own survival from a first-person perspective, while in the empowering role of the mighty Kong himself, players have a third-person perspective that allows them to take in their surroundings, and take better control the massive ape in battle. Based on award-winning director Peter Jackson's big-budget remake of the landmark 1933 Cooper and Schoedsack film, this video game version of King Kong is designed to convey the action and excitement the massive monster inspires, as well as the poignancy and emotion of the melancholy "beauty and the beast" storyline.