Peter Jacksons King Kong Review

Peter Jacksons King Kong was released on all major consoles around the time of the films release. Developed by Ubisoft, they wanted this to be a bigger budget game to match the movie and do it justice. They put the creator of Rayman in charge and asked him to make a game worthy of the movie and not just another quick cash grab.

It’s clear from the onset that King Kong is more than the usual movie to game adaptation. The production value is clear to see, menus look sleek, all the actors from the movie reprise their roles and do a decent job too. Graphicly it’s a decent looking game, its not going to win any awards for its visuals but its more than a simple up-res of a last gen game. High res-textures are abundant and improved lighting over the last gen version really helps to improve the emersion. The game sets a decent atmosphere, skirting the line between horror and action adventure well. Skull island is a foreboding place and the game makes you feel every moment. The game is a first-person shooter 70% of the time as you play as Jack, and a 3rd person view when playing as Kong.

When playing as jack guns and ammo are in short supply and only for emergencies, there is a pistol, rifle and shotgun only, but all useful and fun to use. Most the combat focuses on using the environment to your advantage, sticks and bones that can be thrown at enemies, lit on fire to burn down parts of the environments. You can use bugs to distract enemies, diverting their attention to save ammo. Enemies are varied, large bats, millipedes, drakes, all the creatures seen in the film are here and are tough opponents. You can only take 2 or 3 hits before seeing game over, regenerating health is present, an annoying red hue comes over the screen when close to death, but it obscures your view too much and often will result in certain death because of it. Speaking of views, the field of view is far too zoomed in, this makes melee combat a pain, especially as enemies move quickly around your feet.

When playing as Kong the game switches to a 3rd person view, and becomes a melee brawler. Kong handles rather clunky, due to how he is designed his actions are slightly delayed, the camera also opts for a cinematic view, similar to resident evil games which make him more of a struggle to control. It looks awesome to battle dinosaurs and throw them about when it works, but often these sections where a struggle to get through.

The story starts about a 3rd of the way through the film when you arrive on skull island, scenes from the film are used at times to bridge some large gaps but for the most part, once it starts it’s a liner experience taking you to the end of the film. If you’ve not seen the film you can tell what’s happening but some of the levels don’t blend into one another as seamlessly as you’d like. Theres little re-play value to be had here, all levels are open once you have completed them, but none really stand out and standalone experiences to enjoy. Achievements wise its an easy 1000 Gamerscore that you will get for just completing the game. I had a good time with King Kong, id be in no rush to return but what was here was enjoyable.

7.0/10

Released in 2005 as Rare's second launch title for the Xbox 360, alongside Perfect Dark Zero. Kameo: Elements of Power is a Rare game through and through, a 3D platformer, full of bright colours, interesting characters and fun gameplay. It started life as a Gamecube game, then moved to original Xbox and finally Xbox 360. It very much feels like a Nintendo game, it dose feel strange playing it on a Microsoft console. However, it stands out among the launch titles as being very different, further expanding what was a very busy launch lineup for the system.

The story of Kameo revolves around the battle of Elves and Goblins, Kameo is a princess of the land whose father has bestowed the power of the elements onto her. Her sister gets jealous, and teams up with the goblin king to take the powers back. It’s not Oscar worthy, but its good enough to move the game forward. Kameo starts the game with all her powers, looses them all, and you must get them all back to defeat your sister.

To start with, Kameo looks fantastic, for a game that was due to release on the original Xbox and was 80% complete when the decision was made to transfer it to 360, the game looks very impressive. This really would be the game to show off your new console to your friends. Lighting, texture work, is beautiful, and it all runs at a decent framerate.

The gameplay revolves around Kameo an elf who can glide, and use the elemental powers to transform into different elemental forms and use their powers to fight through environments. All of them are well designed and fun to use, unlocking them allows to access parts of the game that you could not before, and you will often need to combine them to achieve your goals, which is great fun. The game is semi open world, with a large battle going on in the middle and various “lands” off of this that you go to, to unlock the various elemental powers. Its impressive stuff, there are hundreds of npcs on screen at one time, we have seen nothing like this on console before. The world reminds me of Ocarina of time, with one large open area, and the various dungeons, surrounding it. Each dungeon is well designed with a final boss fine, they all follow the same routine, and much like Zelda the bosses are never too difficult once you know how to defeat them. It’s a rather linier game, there’s not many hidden or secret areas to discover with your new powers.

There is also a co-op mode available for the game where you can invite friends into the game to play co-op states, both of you able to use the powers at the same time, mixing and matching as you go. Its really quite good fun and the DLC stages are still available. Kameo has a score meter, you gain points for combos and not getting hit, and they are all uploaded to the XBL scoreboards, its makes for some good replay ability, despite the linier focus of the main game.

Kameo’s biggest issue is that it lacks a bit of character. Despite being well designed, none of the elemental powers say anything or show any real personality. Kameo herself has few lines of dialog and what is here is nothing great, the case of side characters are nothing to write home about either. Which for my money is a big issue for a 3D platformer.
Despite this I had good fun with Kameo, I enjoyed my playthrough and looked forward to coming back to it, but once it was done I never felt the need to go back to it. The co-op is really good fun and the game is certainly eye-candy for 2005. Overall a solid experience, lacking a bit of character and replay ability.

7.5/10

Tony Hawks American Wasteland – Review

Its 2005, of course there is a Tony Hawks game available for your brand-new Xbox 360. Dose the 7th console generation give the birdman the love his games deserve?........Not really.
THAW as I will now refer to it as is the first skating game of the 7th console gen. Released on all major platforms at the time it follows on from Underground 2, a game that was praised for its gameplay but many felt did not reach the hights of Underground 1. Thaw leans more into Underground 2’s tropes. The story revolves around your custom skater trying to make it big in L.A., you quickly meet a quirky bunch of skaters who are looking to build the ultimate skatepark, the “American Wasteland”. To do this you go from level to level collecting structures to build up your skatepark. The story is serviceable but nothing memorable, the voice acting is terrible, and because of this the characters are forgettable. It leans heavily into the silliness of Underground 2 rather than the more “realistic” tone of underground 1.
The big change this year is the “open world” aspect, levels are set out like your typical tony hawks’ levels, but with shops to by boards and clothes with NPCs giving out quests and objectives. The open world works by linking these levels together with linier corridors hiding loading screens. It works well, and you could in theory do one massive combo around the entire game which is a cool new feature. The level design is more it and miss than previous games, many feel very similar with a couple of standouts. There is also a classic mode here that brings back a number of levels from previous games, which is a nice change of pace. The online is sadly no longer available but was good fun back in the day.
New gameplay features are present, with an ability to slow down time with a full special to improve the number of tricks you can pull off. This is the best version of Tony Hawks from a gameplay standpoint, everything here feels tight and efficient.
For a 360 game, THAW looks really poor, it runs in 720p compared to 480i on ps2 and gamecube, and 480p on Xbox. If you’re coming here from the Xbox version, you’ll hardly notice a difference, the framerate is 60fps regardless of version. It in fact looks worse than Underground 2, character models especially looks really bad. Weather they have had to do this to implement the open world, I don’t know but its easily the worse looking launch title on the 360.
Overall THAW swings and hits more than it misses, but its more of a slight refinement of Underground 2, rather than a next gen skate game.

Rating: 6.5/10