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No, why would Kong go back to skull island when it’s a stormy uninhabited wasteland which the novel implied later sunk beneath the waves? Even if skull island wasn’t destroyed why go back? It’s literally a small portion of hollow earth come to the surface and he’s actually living in hollow earth. Now what do you think is the better choice?
Oct 17, 2023 · You can submit a problem report for any non-working or fake code in the lists above. For Skull Island: Rise of Kong on the PlayStation 5, GameFAQs has game information and a community message board for game discussion.
- (5)
- A boring, buggy, totally unambitious game.
- Skull Island: Rise of Kong Gameplay Screenshots
- Do you like playing games you know are going to be bad?
- Phil Hornshaw's Favorite Large Ape Games
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By Phil Hornshaw
Updated: Oct 20, 2023 5:17 pm
Posted: Oct 18, 2023 10:09 pm
Here's the thing about King Kong: He is not just an ape, he's a giant ape. It's his defining feature in the 1933 movie that birthed him and the ultimate cause of his tragic demise. Picking up people, climbing skyscrapers, fighting dinosaurs — being huge is King Kong's whole deal. Skull Island: Rise of Kong is bad for a lot of reasons, but the main one is it's a game that lets you play as an iconically large gorilla and somehow manages to make him feel exceedingly average. Rise of Kong portrays King Kong in the most bland way possible, and then it matches that mediocrity for everything else around him.
Killing the boss at the end of each level unlocks new, but not particularly interesting, abilities for Kong, like a ground-pounding punch that hurts enemies and can break through certain rocks, or a heavy attack that can stun enemies and break through certain other rocks. Each new move also comes with its own small skill tree, where you can choose one set of attributes from three to power up. These provide some nominal upgrades, like earning life back from hitting an enemy or providing armor while you're charging up a big strike.
But no matter what you upgrade or unlock, every fight is pretty much the same: Hammer the light attack button to perform a three-hit combo, then use Kong's only cool ability, a shoulder charge that shoots him forward a short distance and can temporarily stun enemies, to interrupt the attack of whatever you're fighting. When the enemy takes enough damage, hit another button to perform a finishing move on it, which restores some of the health you lost to the many other enemies attacking you in the back during this process. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Rise of Kong manages to make a giant ape killing literal dinosaurs dull.
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There are other little elements, such as an overly familiar rage ability you charge by damaging enemies that powers up all your attacks, but they're only good for breaking up your combo or finishing a fight slightly faster. Rise of Kong also removes any challenge combat might present by placing health-restoring flowers pretty much everywhere, including in the middle of and immediately following any large-scale fight you might get into. You're never required to think about how an enemy attacks and use a specific move to deal with it, or to change up tactics based on how many or which kinds of enemies are on the field. You play a giant ape who routinely kills literal dinosaurs, and Rise of Kong manages to make that prospect dull and lifeless.
All those well-placed health items are at least helpful, as they make it much easier to just run past most enemies. That's something you'll probably want to do once you realize that there are hundreds of them and that they mostly just exist to waste your time. Skill points to make Kong stronger are only dished out at special Ascension Events, which are fights in specific arenas that are closed off until you finish them. They come in two flavors: Kill all the enemies in the arena, or climb around and destroy the nests of flying dinosaurs. Once you're done with the objective, you get a couple of points, and occasionally you earn enough to actually invest them into one of your meager upgrades. That means the only fights that actually serve to improve Kong are boss fights and Ascension Events, and the many, many other enemies are just pointless filler.
Yes, it's fun to see the jank firsthand
No, it's not worth my time/money
No, but I'll watch other people play them
Sometimes, but it depends how bad
The Ascension Events at least try to change things up by throwing different combinations of enemies at you, occasionally even featuring a new, slightly tougher creature you haven't seen before. But the repetitive combat means they all shake out exactly the same way, requiring you to spend one second identifying the two or three combat animations the enemies have and then avoid the ones that can actually hurt you. There are five total Ascension Events in each level, and they're mostly pretty hard to miss, but like the rest of combat, they never feel satisfying or even particularly necessary to complete. Blow past one and you'll miss out on a few points to unlock skills you don't really need, so who cares.
Platforming is the most pedestrian version of ideas you've seen before.
Gorillas make great game protagonists under the right circumstances.
And it must be said that Rise of Kong is an ugly game, with dated graphics and a mostly flat art style of gray rock walls and repetitive jungle trees. The whole thing has a cartoonish vibe approximating a comic book or almost cel-shaded look, but it feels more like an attempt to mask its blocky, low-res character designs rather than an artistic choice. Cutscenes frequently include animations of creatures moving around like they've been picked up and dropped somewhere else, and one ridiculous flashback moment features a square still image of the final boss just pasted poorly on top of the existing background. There are also numerous points where you'll see trees not quite attached to the ground or rocks haphazardly and obviously duplicated and pasted on top of each other. It all looks sloppy and rushed, providing more evidence of a game that was created without a lot of care.
Skull Island: Rise of Kong is ugly and full of bugs, but the real trouble is that, at its core, it’s just boring. It makes no meaningful attempts to do anything new or clever, with mindless combat and pointless platforming that make it feel like a worse version of every action game from the last 20 years. This isn't the kind of bad game you can pla...
- Phil Hornshaw
- 16 min
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Oct 17, 2023 · Released Oct 17, 2023. Xbox One. Xbox Series X|S. PlayStation 5. PlayStation 4. + 2 more. A third-person action-adventure game based on the King Kong franchise, showing the origins of the titular Kong. Game Wiki. Videos (1) Images (24) Forum (0) News. Guide. Releases (10) DLC. Reviews. Get this guide started!
Feb 27, 2017 · All Reviews Editor's Choice Game Reviews Movie Reviews TV Show Reviews Tech Reviews. ... Kong: Skull Island - "Rise of the King" Official Final Trailer. ... Kong: Skull Island - John Goodman on ...
Oct 24, 2023 · This makes Skull Island: Rise of Kong a videogame based on an origin story from the sequel of a reworked novel, of the remake, and a cult-classic film. What makes it even more convoluted is that Skull Island: Rise of Kong and Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie are canonically in the same universe because of this.
Oct 17, 2023 · Description. Based on the rich history of Skull Island developed by creator Joe DeVito and based on Merian C. Cooper's King Kong, this exhilarating third-person action-adventure game lets you become Kong on a journey of vengeance as you fight to claim your rightful place as King of Skull Island. Take on an action-packed quest to avenge the ...
