A boring, imperfect, completely undemanding game.
Here’s the thing about King Kong: he’s not just a monkey, he’s a giant monkey. It was his defining characteristic in the 1933 Film that gave birth to him and the ultimate cause of his tragic expired. Picking up people, climbing skyscrapers, actioning dinosaurs-being great is the whole King Kong thing. Skull Island: Rise Of Kong is bad for many reasons, but the most important is that it is a game in which you can play as an iconic-sized gorilla and somehow manages to make it feel extraordinarily average. Rise of Kong the portrait of King Kong about the most boring Art and Manner, and then, he adapts to this Mediocrity for everything else around him.
Rise of Kong allows you to see King Kong become King Kong, which is apparently due to the fact that a lot of things were overcome to expired and really got angry in the process. After vowing revenge on the giant raptor who smaked his parents like a kind of Batman gorilla, you will action your way through each of the five levels of Skull Island, all of which are as massive as they are boring. There is absolutely nothing here that you have never seen in a hundred action games focused on hand-to-hand action. action gives Kong a light and heavy action, a dodge throw and a block, and although you gain special moves along the way, there is never a reason to use them. You will experience a small handful of different enemy creatures – dinosaurs, crabs, worms jumping off the ground and spitting acid — but the only Variation when it comes to actioning them is when to dodge an incoming action.
finishing the boss at the end of each level unlocks new, but not particularly interesting, abilities for Kong, such as a ground punch that hurts enemies and can pierce certain stones, or a heavy action that can stun enemies and pierce certain other stones. Each new move also has its own small ability tree where you can choose a set of replants from three to activate it. These offer some nominal improvements, such as gaining lives by hitting an enemy or providing armor while dealing a big blow.
But no matter what you upgrade or unlock, every action is pretty much the same: press the light action catch to perform a three-hit Combo, then use KONG’s only cool ability, a shoulder power that throws him a short distance and can temporarily stun enemies to interrupt the action of everything If the enemy takes enough damage, press another catch to perform a aiming movement that restores some of the health that you lost to the many other enemies that actioned you in the back during this process. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
There are other small elements, such as an all-too-familiar rage ability that you power by dealing damage to enemies that amplify all your actions, but they are only good for breaking your Combo or finishing a action a little faster. Rise Of Kong also eliminates any challenge that a action might present by placing health restoration flowers just about anywhere, even in the middle and immediately after a major action that you might find yourself in. You never need to think, like an Enemy, and use a certain Train to deal with it, or modify Tactics, depending on the number or Types of Enemies are on the Ground. You play as a giant monkey who regularly smaks literal dinosaurs, and Rise Of Kong manages to make this prospect boring and lifeless.
All these well-placed health items are at least useful, since they greatly facilitate the passage of most enemies. This is something that you will probably want to do if you realize that there are hundreds of them and that they exist mainly to waste your time. ability points for making Kong stronger are only awarded during special ascension events, which are actions in specific locked areas until they are completed. They come in two flavors: finish all the enemies in the area or climb up and finish the nests of flying dinosaurs. Once you are done with the objective, you get a few points, and sometimes you earn enough to invest them in one of your meager improvements. That said, the only actions that actually serve to improve Kong are boss actions and Ascension events, and the many other enemies are just useless fillers.
The Ascension events at least try to change things up by throwing different combinations of enemies at you, sometimes even with a new, slightly tougher creature that you have never seen before. But the repetitive action means that you shake them all exactly the same, so you have to spend a second identifying the two or three action animations of the enemies, and then avoid the ones that can actually hurt you. There are a total of five ascension events in each level, and they are usually quite difficult to miss, but like the rest of the action, they never feel satisfying or even particularly necessary. Get past One and you’ll miss a few points to unlock abilitys you don’t really need, so who cares.
The boss actions are at least a little different from the standard actions, each with its own signature mechanic that makes things happen. For example, a large sandworm boss throws stones out of the earth when he appears to action you, and then you can trick him into banging his head into these rocks and stunning him. You don’t have to — you can just stand there and complain about the thing and back off before it makes one of its three actions – but at least these actions try to occupy your brain more than the standard Rise of Kong actions. The patterns are always derivative, simplistic and unimaginative, but they are certainly superior than the low bar set by everything else.