With such a long unwieldy title, one would assume that the game would focus on the exploits of the titular giant ape gallavanting through the jungle, smashing villagers and invading film crews. In reality, a more appropriate title for the game should be Adrian Brody's Sweaty Death Romp since the majority of this game is spent as Jack, Adrian Brody's character from the film, stumbling around the jungle and running from everything including, but not limited to, all manner of dinosaur, giant millipedes, mutant eels and, of course, Kong himself.
The gameplay as Jack is a standard FPS style, and this is where you will spend the majority of your time in this game. Most levels involve either rescuing/protecting someone, collecting a thing to proceed further into the game, escaping from something trying to kill you or just plain ol' going from point A to point B. As a nice, and far more awesome, diversion, you additionally will get to play as Kong occasionally. This involves chasing after things by running along walls and swinging across branches and beating the living bejeezus out of dinosaurs. The Kong sections use a modified Prince of Persia: Sands of Time engine to facilitate the fluid acrobatic and fighting sections. And this is what befuddles me the most about this game. The developers had to know that the Kong sections were more fun, so why didn't they have more of them? Perhaps they doled the sections out in more bite-sized nuggets so that when you get to them, you are much more appreciative of how awesome they are. My biggest complaint is that there isn't a Kong section closer to the beginning. You probably have to play for at least an hour or so as the ho-hum Jack FPS before getting to the Kong action, which could present a deterrent to those wanting to get immediately engaged in the game. I believe this is the reason they made the achievements so easy.
I'm betting a good 80% to 90% of people who played this game did so to get a full 1000 achievement points with little effort. Basically you just have to play through the game on any difficulty, which takes roughly 5 or 6 hours. Although the game can get very challenging in places, the knowledge that another 100 point achievement is just around the corner will keep driving many a player.
The graphics are actually very good if you are playing the Xbox 360 version, particularly the Kong sections. and while the sound is fairly uninspired, the music cues work very well within the context of the game to give you a sense of ominous foreboding or panic when appropriate.
I dumped on the FPS sections quite a bit but only because they seemed dull in comparison to the Kong sections. They are actually fairly serviceable FPS sections, presenting a pretty high challenge due to the stinginess of the game in trickling out weapons. More often than not, I had to rely on throwing spears and bones at vicious, man-meat craving dinosaurs to fend them off due to constantly running out of ammo. Spears? Against velociraptors? Seriously? you can see how effective the game is in creating a sense of panic. Overall, I'd recommend the game to anyone looking for a pretty good way to kill a Saturday afternoon or to anyone who hordes achievements.
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