[Review] Skull Island: Rise of Kong (PS5)
More like Dull Island, am I right?
And now, the belated conclusion of my series of "ape action" reviews. In the late 90s, artist Joe DeVito partnered with the estate of Merian C. Cooper, co-creator of the 1933 film, to launch an expansion of the Kong mythos in an overarching project called King Kong of Skull Island. This has spawned novels, comics, merchandise, and eventually a full-fledged video game. Chilean studio IguanaBee handled the development, having already made several budget licensed games. The result is… underwhelming, to say the least.
Positioned as a prequel to the original story, this game covers events leading from Kong's childhood where his parents are killed Batman-style by the monstrous dinosaur Gaw (a common feature of DeVito's stories, although here she only has one head) to his quest for vengeance and ascendancy as top dog of Skull Island. Apart from the prologue chapter where you play as Kong's mama, the throughline is disappointingly straightforward: navigate some canyon or cave, find a big monster, punch it, learn a new skill, and move on.
In theory this game sounds pretty awesome: a free-roaming beat-em-up where you explore Skull Island and smash creatures as King Kong. First impressions are rough though as you’re greeted with visuals that seem at least two console generations behind current, misplaced level geometry, and weird pop-in that causes the landscape ahead of you to warp. Kong’s animations are stiff and the brawling is clumsy and basic.
And then you discover that the vast majority of combat encounters can be safely skipped with no consequence. There’s an OK amount of variety in enemies, I guess, but lots of repetition: you will see a lot of crabs, feathery theropods in several sizes and colours, some bird-type dinos, sandworms, and spiders. But unless they put up temporary barriers around a challenge room, there's absolutely no penalty or difficulty in simply running past these mobs. So that's what I did, because the combat isn't any fun with its damage sponge enemies and Kong's slow attacks leaving him open to hits. There's a half-decent parry mechanic where you can shoulder-barge foes when they're winding up a big attack, but otherwise it's pretty shallow.
Kong has a skill tree, and skill points are rewarded after those locked-off battles and boss fights. Most of the upgrades are for the unlocked abilities (charge jump, strong attack, ground slam etc.) which are of dubious usefulness in combat, and the descriptions are often poorly worded, at least in English. If fighting regular enemies contributed to your XP, or if these unlocks were more useful, then this could be a cool way to tailor your build and become more powerful. Alas.
When you're not running from fights, there's some element of platforming and exploration. The areas are usually narrow corridors, but there's some branching, alternate paths, and even routes that are locked behind abilities you gain later, and it's possible to backtrack through the whole game if you want to find some collectibles. These artefacts represent fragments of human civilisation or creature parts, which either impart obvious descriptions of the animals or recycled lore of the Tagatu tribe from other DeVito stories. Apart from these and some scattered (and deserted) huts and walls, there is no human presence in the game.
In fact the whole world of Skull Island feels barren and deserted, aside from a few dozen crabs I guess. The boss encounters are an attempt at building up to something but they're pretty bland, and the final encounter with Gaw feels like just another humdrum example. The most memorable part of my experience, and not in a good way, was the bugs. Sometimes Kong's animations seem to short out, so you just can't attack properly and have to reload a save (the game keeps a log of recent autosaves you can revert to, which is a great feature). Sometimes the next wave fails to spawn in a challenge room, which also requires a restart. One time the final enemy in one of these rooms appeared behind the barrier wall; luckily I could punch it through the glowing red force field.
King Kong is one of the most iconic pop culture characters of the last century. He deserves better than this cheap, sloppy game with its overpriced deluxe edition (it's currently on sale on Steam for 90% which is just about a reasonable offer). It has the benefit of centering Kong himself as the playable character, which as far as I'm concerned makes it more interesting than Legendary's Monsterverse Kong game about *yawn* yet another Sad Dad trying to save his child. But in execution it simply commits that cardinal sin of gaming: being deathly boring.
