King Kong

6.2
Mediocre

Gameplay	6.0	"Kong has a hit and miss PSP debut."
Graphics	7.0
Sound	8.0
Value	5.5

By Daniel Needham

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie hit just about every platform known to man back in November. On the consoles and PC, it's great one-two combination of immersive and enjoyable first-person action and exciting third-person Kong levels made it a truly excellent title, its only major flaw being its somewhat abrupt ending. Now, the last platform, the PlayStation Portable, has its own version of Kong.

The PSP adaptation sits somewhere between the glory of the console and PC Kongs, and the cookie-cutter FPS games we see day in and day out. It delivers many of the same key levels, combat sequences, and Kong platforming sections as the other versions, but not all of them. In fact, on the (ultra) small screen, Kong seems to be about half the game it once was, with fewer enemies, no interaction with other characters, and a disappointing lack of story. Nobody would reasonably expect Kong on the PSP to be identical to its major console counterparts, but, in this case, too much has been cut from an already short game.

The PSP version of King Kong follows the plot of the other versions, which in turn were following approximately the same plot as Peter Jackson's film. In the game, you play as both Jack (a struggling screenwriter sent to the horrific Skull Island to shoot a new picture) and King Kong (a giant gorilla). But whereas other versions of the game presented a reasonable amount of story - and interaction with various other characters from the movie, like Jack Black's Carl Denham and Naomi Watts' Ann Darrow - you get next to none of that here.

The interactive cutscenes from the original game have been turned into non-interactive scenes, and nearly every sequence involving multiple characters during gameplay has either been altered to require only Jack's presence or has been cut out altogether. What this leads to is a copious number of leaps over key story points, which makes the flow of the game completely disjointed, and furthermore renders many of the remaining levels and missions seemingly pointless.

On the more positive side of things, the core action of the game feels very much as it did on consoles. When playing as Jack, you'll be treated to a visual experience unaffected by any sort of heads-up display. You gauge how much health you have via a screen effect that flashes the screen red when you're injured. When in such a state, you need to get away from the action briefly to heal up. If you take another major blow while things are still flashing, you'll die. Ammo is kept track of via verbal cues from Jack. Every time you reload, he says out loud if he's got enough ammo, or if he's starting to run dry. This system thus gets around the need for a HUD and allows for some real immersion in the game world.

One of the biggest gripes that you will have with the PSP version is the controls. If you played Kong on PC or console you will find this even more frustrating as you will recognise the vast differences between the two versions. Admittedly, the PSP is smaller and has less room for control buttons, but that isn't an excuse for the unresponsiveness and just all-round muddle experienced playing through certain sections.

Graphically, King Kong on the PSP does a lot considering hardware's capabilities. The graphics capture the aesthetics of this nightmare of an island quite well. This is a dank, rain-soaked, ugly place to be, and the visuals capture this atmosphere in such a way that you'll be delighted to look at all these dreary details. All the creature designs are excellent, and they move and behave in a very realistic fashion. Unfortunately, when they die they simply disappear (unless another beast happens upon its corpse and begins to devour it). The environments on Skull Island all have this hazy, creepy look to them. You'll see these big mountains and stone structures off in the background, just beneath the thick fog and the various flying monsters that circle around.

There are, however, also a number of unpleasant things that drag the game's visual presentation down. Texture seams are visible throughout each level, and in some cases, textures will blink in and out repeatedly and in such a way that you can't possibly miss it. Enemy animations can be rather glitchy, especially many of the dinosaurs, which will sometimes bug out and clip through random objects. Also, the Kong portions of the game have a number of issues: Kong clips through walls and floors, and there's a weird animation glitch every single time Kong jumps to the ground where he floats for nearly a full second above the ground before actually landing.

Audio was Kong's best feature on other platforms, and that holds true here as well. The voice work from the film cast is excellent. There is, unfortunately, less voice work in this version of the game, since you don't get the great conversational bits and pieces between characters during gameplay. But you still get plenty of Jack talking to himself, with Adrien Brody voicing the character. And there are still a number of cutscenes where you get Jack Black and Naomi Watts doing their thing as well. The sounds of the beasts, however, are what really drive the audio. When Kong starts beating his chest and lets out a roar, you feel it, even through the PSP's modest speakers, and the shrill criess of dying dinosaurs ring through your ears and leave you anxiously awaiting your next foe.

Whenever you port a game to the PSP, some sacrifices are going to be made. But in the case of King Kong, too many sacrifices were made, to the point where you wonder if porting the game was really the right way to go. The fact that the gameplay still holds its own and that the visuals hold up for the most part suggests that a King Kong game could have worked on the PSP, but it would have required much more care and forethought than has evidently been applied here. Simply put, Kong is a better game on the consoles, hands down.

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