Thursday, August 09, 2012

King Kong: completed!

You may be feeling as if you've gone back in time to March 2007, as I completed this game then as well.  It's rare that I will play through a story-driven game such as this more than once, but I remembered really enjoying it and when I had the opportunity to buy a copy for the Xbox 360 for £2 I jumped at the chance.  High definition should be a bonus ...

I remembered the game as graphically accomplished with recognisable characters and beautiful locations. Maybe that was a standard definition illusion, as when played on the 360 it looks pretty basic. It's stunning to see how far games have come in the last five years.  Not only does it look rough, textures are repeated far too often and a lot of the game is just too dark.




Yes, she is meant to be attractive.

I also remembered the game as varied and well structured. It's varied to some extent, with levels split between controlling Jack and Kong, but there are limited puzzles and enemies, and by the time I was 75% through I was getting pretty bored. The chapter system works OK, but games have developed more elegant checkpoint and save systems now - in fact, they had developed them back in 2002 with Halo, but that's by the by.

Most of all, I remembered the game as good.  And it still is, though the difficulty is all over the place and if it went on any longer than it does it would soon turn into a grind.  As it is, it's a good fun short game that's starting to show its age.

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