The Longest and Most In-depth Critique of Peter Jackson's King Kong on YouTube
249A contextual, historical review of the Peter Jackson's King Kong PS2 game. Peter Jackson's King Kong had a $200m budget which made it the most expensive film ever made to date. When it came to the PS2 and Xbox 360 computer game tie in, it’s obvious Universal were expecting to make Peter Jackson's King Kong into a multimedia storm. Beyond Good and Evil director Michel Ancel was given the helm Peter Jackson himself was overseeing King Kong's game development.
Peter Jackson's King Kong game sold a huge amount of copies at launch and attracted high praise with reviewers of the day. But I played Peter Jackson's King Kong on PS2 and on review it's garbage! Can Peter Jackson's King Kong shine a light on modern AAA development?
Peter Jackson said that Beyond Good and Evil’s storyline and characters got him so emotionally involved, it convinced him that Michel Ancel was the man he wanted to work with on the King Kong Xbox and PS2 game and bring his vision to full fruition.
About 80% of the Peter Jackson's King Kong PS2 game is Adrien Brody trying to survive and ultimately escape Skull Island. The visual style is contiguous with the film and is one of the game’s biggest strengths. Survival horror games were still finding their feet in 2005 but the PS2 era is now famous for it. Peter Jackson's King Kong could have been a key player in the survival horror genre. Surviving on the most hostile island on Earth is a great premise for a game, had Ubisoft concentrated on the promising factors I just mentioned.
Unfortunately Peter Jackson's King Kong suffers from shoehorning in some cookie cutter examples of what was available in 2005. Ubisoft moved away from what could have made Peter Jackson's King Kong a truly great survival horror PS2 game. Rather than drilling down into the concept of survival horror, Peter Jackson’s King Kong is instead a brown FPS hybrid with some “puzzle solving” and “survival elements” bolted on.
It would have been interesting to incorporate King Kong’s segments as a survival horror. Like an early Alien: Isolation. Kong can’t be hurt so he has to be avoided by using the environment, creating distractions etc. Maybe the Kong sections would see you as King Kong trying to find and eat the humans. Being both the cat and the mouse might be weird but it could be a compelling way to structure a survival horror PS2 game. Unfortunately, the King Kong game segments are few and far between. The King Kong game sections don’t come around anywhere near often enough and when they do it’s all over way too quickly.
Peter Jackson's King Kong game’s visual appearance is that famous “cinematic” palette. The King Kong game’s HUD is disabled by default. On review this is actually a pretty brave choice and I’m all for it. It’s a creative decision that goes against the grain but it does give the game a more cinematic feel. There’s some obvious investment in the attention to detail of the presentation of Peter Jackson's King Kong. But I can’t help that the filmmaker’s eye was not on the ball when it came to translating what makes a good film into what makes a good PS2 / Xbox game.
Peter Jackson spoke highly of Michel Ancel’s ability to create believable and emotional stories. But those qualities are nearly absent in Peter Jackson's King Kong. Survival horror games massively benefit from emotional investment in the characters. Or Ubisoft could have gone the other way and just had a laugh. Peter Jackson's King Kong is so deadly serious about a giant monkey who fights dinosaurs with his bare hands. There’s just no sense of fun to it.
I really can’t believe the Peter Jackson's King Kong game was directed by Michel Ancel. I can’t figure out how a filmmaker and game director of such high acclaim could make something so bland. We could have had a tense survival horror PS2 game combining the cinematic efforts of Peter Jackson and the emotional chops of Michel Ancel. But what we got was a watery half-measure shoehorned into a pretty dull action game. The bitter pill is that there are better survival horror shooters and there are better monkey smash em ups on the same PS2 / Xbox game platform. Peter Jackson's King Kong is a massive missed opportunity. It might have one of the biggest game budgets of all time but it won’t be remembered among the greats.
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Stoked presently has 10,386 views for King Kong across 1 video, and less than an hour worth of King Kong videos were uploaded to his channel. This makes up less than 0.30% of the total overall content on Stoked's YouTube channel.