TheQuietGamer
That McDonalds Sonic game everybody liked to meme about on here for a minute there? Yeah, that was me.
I like to play the niche, weird, obscure, or just generally underappreciated stuff no one else cares about.
My rating scale:
★★★★★: 10/10 "Masterpiece"
★★★★½: 9-9.8/10 "Amazing" or 9.9/10 "Near-Perfect"
★★★★: 8-8.9/10 "Great"
★★★½: 7-7.9/10 "Good"
★★★: 6-6.9/10 "Okay"
★★½: 5-5.9/10 "Mediocre"
★★: 4-4.9/10 "Bad"
★½: 3-3.9/10 "Awful"
★: 2-2.9/10 "Terrible"
½★: 1-1.9/10 "Abysmal"
No stars: 0-0.9/10 "Garbage"
Badges
Epic Gamer
Played 1000+ games
Famous
Gained 100+ followers
On Schedule
Journaled games once a day for a week straight
Busy Day
Journaled 5+ games in a single day
GOTY '23
Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event
Early Access
Submitted feedback for a beta feature
Treasured
Gained 750+ total review likes
Pinged
Mentioned by another user
GOTY '22
Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event
Trend Setter
Gained 50+ followers
Listed
Created 10+ public lists
2 Years of Service
Being part of the Backloggd community for 2 years
Adored
Gained 300+ total review likes
Well Written
Gained 10+ likes on a single review
Gone Gold
Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page
Loved
Gained 100+ total review likes
Shreked
Found the secret ogre page
Best Friends
Become mutual friends with at least 3 others
Roadtrip
Voted for at least 3 features on the roadmap
Organized
Created a list folder with 5+ lists
Donor
Liked 50+ reviews / lists
Popular
Gained 15+ followers
GOTY '21
Participated in the 2021 Game of the Year Event
Noticed
Gained 3+ followers
Liked
Gained 10+ total review likes
Elite Gamer
Played 500+ games
Gamer
Played 250+ games
N00b
Played 100+ games
Favorite Games
1040
Total Games Played
024
Played in 2024
049
Games Backloggd
Recently Played See More
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6/10
Alright, now that I’ve given its makers a somewhat obligatory “it’s okay bud, we know it’s not really your fault” pat on the back, it’s time to mercilessly crap all over this abomination! We are looking at a genuinely abhorrent product here. Sure, Rise of Kong is a disaster from technical perspective with bugs that cause you to inexplicably get stuck on invisible snares forcing autosave reloads, graphics that look like they're from a PS2 offering (and not one of the pretty ones), environments that sometimes awkwardly melt into shape as you approach them in a manner akin to a hallucinogenic induced trip, and audio quality so bad it needs to be heard to be believed, but its worst aspects are easily those opening chapters where things are unreasonably challenging.
If there's any ish I can’t stand it’s when a bad game doesn’t have the decency to just let you steamroll through it with little trouble. The early hours are brutally plagued by the titular ape’s pathetically limited range and wimpy attacks that barely chip away at the health bars of his enemies. Shouldn’t this have been some kind of power fantasy? Why am I getting wrecked by what appear to be little green dodo birds? At no point do you feel like a beast powerful enough to have slugged it out in movies with the King of the Monsters. Even the way basic trees and other objects in the scenery tower over him give the impression that you’re controlling a regular-sized gorilla rather than one humongous enough to climb the Empire State Building.
Eventually you do begin to attain the true might you would expect from a kaiju with the first name of “King,” but it never seems to be the result of your investments into any of the skill trees. I can’t prove it, yet I have this unshakable suspicion that the devs artificially lower the difficulty in later chapters to give players the illusion of getting stronger rather than legitimately allowing them to become so, because it’s not remotely believable that those meager initial stat boosts I was unlocking would have had such a profound ability to leave foes that were previously causing me problems all of the sudden crumbling at my feet.
Oh well, at least when that happens it becomes pretty smooth sailing to the credits. You’ll still struggle to reach them though. Your motivation will be low. The entire runtime of Skull Island is a mind-numbingly dull loop of running around massive maze-like environments of identical assets to find unmarked, sparsely located “ascension event” arena fights and pick up the occasional collectible on your way to the area’s boss. There are plenty of threats along the way, but engaging with them is totally pointless. Not just because the combat sucks either. Defeating foes outside of the required sections grants you no additional EXP points, meaning they’re literally a complete waste of time. You’re better off simply sprinting past everything and focusing exclusively on whatever boring platforming segment is between you and the next mandatory encounter.
As much as I believe the small Chilean indie developers mostly deserve a pass for this given the circumstances, it is simultaneously not hard to wonder why they continued to try to create a package so grand in scope rather than reducing its scale to something more reasonable. Perhaps they shouldn't escape blame entirely. Their ambition paired with the lackluster resources from GameMill seriously cost them here. There were quite a few shockingly dreadful releases in 2023 and Skull Island: Rise of Kong blows the few I personally played out of the water, proving far fouler than the likes of Gollum or even TWD: Destinies. Is it the worst game of that year? That's highly likely. It's easily the top contender in my eyes.
1/10
That's because this is more along the lines of a fan-made total conversion mod than anything. The new protagonist even uses the exact same character model as the Dude despite what the cover art shows for crying out loud. So, this is enjoyable simply because base P2 is enjoyable. That’s not to say there aren’t any distinguishing characteristics to make it worthwhile. You can tell most of the effort went into the entirely original map. I’ve never been to Russia, but this looks like nearly every picture I’ve seen of a typical Russian town and considering it was made by actual citizens from there I’d wager it’s a pretty accurate, if somewhat satirized given the property’s brand, depiction that’s a blast to explore. There are also a ton of cool new NPC models to check out, a few of which are surprisingly detailed and well done.
I think the biggest thing people will have a problem with here is the writing. So far this is the most immature piece of the Postal series I’ve experienced, and I highly doubt that will differ by the time I’m finished with my marathon through it. The plot which puts you in the role of an amnesiac ex-pornstar on a quest to recover his missing manhood after awaking to find himself the victim of an unwanted sex-change operation feels as if it was penned by a bunch of twelve-year-olds. The "comedy" frequently dips into homophobic and borderline transphobic “jokes” because that was the sort of thing that was funny back in the 2000s, especially in countries like that. Plus, there’s a shocking amount of smut as well. RWS was prone to throwing up images of those half-naked IRL models they used to promote the games with on walls here and there, but Corkscrew Rules regularly displays blatant pornography in the form of fully nude women on its posters and billboards!
So, should you check this out? Only if you can handle what is easily the most offensive content any Postal game has to offer. Not to mention, it can be kind of a pain to get a translated/dubbed version running if you too aren't very computer savvy since the one on Steam's Workshop is broken (although not being able to understand the dialogue would probably be a plus). For better and worse though, this is essentially Russian Postal 2 and it's pretty fascinating because of that.
7/10
Random notes you may find interesting:
- The campaign only goes from Monday to Thursday rather than the whole workweek
- Objectives are doled out in a linear manner, and even when you are given the option to visit more than a single place at a time you're supposed to do it in a specific order.
- In the original, unmodified version you can't pee and there are only three new weapons, but in the tweaked English-dubbed release they reskinned a couple guns to better fit the setting, added a drunk visual effect whenever you drink vodka, and gave you the ability to urinate, but only straight down (because you have a vagina instead of a penis).
- Believe it or not, there is a legitimately humorous bit where every secretary you talk to in a business just sends you to a different one on another floor before you can eventually reach "the boss" you were looking for in the first place. It stands as the sole clever moment in the entire package.