Portable Gaming Revolution

Way back in the hay day of your grandfather’s yesteryear there was a little movie that involved an oversized gorilla, a director, and an actress. Who would have known that years and years later it would be redone so far as to be created into a popular videogame and then ported to the PSP? When I say ported, I mean hacked and slashed to vaguely resemble the console versions. The PSP version of Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie is really an odd mix of things.

Whether or not you have seen the extremely popular movie, the gaming experience should still be about the same. In its roots, it’s a FPS. The first introduction of odd things is that there is no HUD whatsoever. The only clue the game actually gives you of your amount of ammo is your character saying things like “I have enough” and “Three magazines on backup”. Health goes the same exact way. This is used to add to the immersive-ness of the game, but a hardcore FPS player like me is bugged by it. It’s kind of hard to shoot without the all too familiar reticule, but when you think about it… if you can’t spear a dinosaur the size of the side of a house then maybe you shouldn’t be playing this game, or any game for that matter. On the console versions there are 40 chapters, yet on the PSP version there are only 15! The list kind of goes on and on when looking at things that they decided to take out of the game.

Graphically the game is pleasant. It feels like your really watching the movie or playing it for that matter. One thing that really gave me the impression that they put no effort into this was when some cut scenes would popup. Some of them are letterboxed in a letterbox. This might sound confusing, but imagine a movie that is letterboxed like normally would, Then imagine that in a letterbox of its own. Really sucks. While actually playing the game I noticed this other little bug that really caught my eye. The graphics seemed to tear at its edges if you viewed it in a specific way. This shows up as a really white line around some scenery that really drew me back from the immersion that the game does so well. Since the PSP is no where near the capabilities of the consoles, less critters appear on the screen at the same time. If you never played the console version than you’ll never notice this.

The sound is where this game shines. It does a very nice job of making you feel like you’re in the movie. Every little thing has its own voice. It gets even better when you use some good headphones. The way the music jumps when something appears always seemed to have me on the edge of my seat.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s sort of a new thing. They managed to eliminate everything on the screen that would make you think that you’re playing a videogame. This in turn makes you feel like you’re in the movie, or at least playing an interactive movie. It definitely does that and very well I might add, but since they took so much out as an actual game… it lacks in the game aspect. This game really felt like they rushed through it just to have some big monkey pleasure on the most platforms available. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and play the game to find out exactly what I’m talking about.

I didn’t have a chance to play the multiplayer at all because no one that I knew actually had the game, but the only multiplayer mode available is Ad-hoc.

I personally, would only recommend renting the game before actually buying it. Even so, probably only fans who really loved the movie would buy this game. I’ve been told that the console versions of this title are better, but that’s neither here nor there. Like I said before it feels more rushed than any other thing.