Video game review by ERIK LEIJON

Peter Jackson’s King Kong movie was considered too long for a film, clocking in at over three dinosaurand- bug-filled hours. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Game (Multi/Ubisoft, Ubisoft Montreal/France) is considered too short by video game standards; it will take you about eight hours to chug through the game’s story mode (its only mode, actually).

For someone paying $60–$70 for the game, the short story mode will likely be a slight disappointment, but the game itself is a fun, white-knuckle action title that brings a lot of new ideas to the table, with variable success.

At its core, King Kong is divided into two games: a first-person shooter where you play as writer-turned-adventurer Jack Driscoll (played on the big screen by Adrien Brody), and a Prince of Persia clone starring the big, hairy monkey himself. Although most of the game is played as Jack, the Kong levels were supposed to be the main drawing point.

Despite the initial excitement of being able to play as the King of all Apes, his levels are hopelessly redundant and suffer from choppy frame rate. Physics-wise, you do get the impression that you’re playing as a huge ape, but every level of his follows the same formula: run across walls, swing from branch, kill pterodactyls, move pillar, repeat. The fights are even more basic and repetitive than the Prince of Persia battle scenes, and manic controller tapping is really what you and Kong are reduced to. Once you start fighting the tyrannosauruses, it becomes slightly more complicated, but for the most part it’s still devoid of strategy. Still, there is a certain giddy thrill from swinging from branch to branch as Kong.

Where the game finds its footing is the surprising combo of thematic action and first-person shooting during the Driscoll levels, which make up the majority of the game. As a small man fighting an army of bugs, bats and dinos, the entire game is spent on edge, fearful of what could be lurking around the corner. The sound in Kong is impeccable, and pivotal for immersing the player in the horrible lost island. One particular scene had me running from hut to hut, avoiding a couple of smaller carnivorous dinos. Too afraid to turn around and see if they were following me, I had to rely on their hideous screeching to guide me. In that respect, I can’t think of another game based on a film that did such a good job recreating the action of the film.

Depending on your love of Tenacious D, Jack Black’s constant whining as film mogul Carl Denham may annoy you, but hearing him scream in pain as a huge centipede slowly drags him to his death is a plus. The character models were well done, as was the voice-acting (all done by the real actors), but sometimes the NPCs would be supposed to do something to trigger the next scene, and they wouldn’t. This definitely hurt the game’s otherwise frantic pacing.

It is a short game, but King Kong is a fresh take on the normally horrid movie-to-game conversion experience.

EA Cuts

Electronic Arts announced last week that they would be cutting five per cent of their workforce, or about 325 to 360 employees. EA Montreal studio manager Alain Tascan says that his studio will not be affected by the layoffs, citing that EA is “refocusing their priorities,” and that EA Montreal is “one of these priorities.” Electronic Arts currently employs about 6,500 to 7,000 people worldwide. According to Gamespot sources, the Redwood City, Orlando and Vancouver studios were mainly affected.