King Kong hasn’t exactly had a good run when it comes to video game adaptations. Aside from 2005 adaptation of Peter Jackson’s remake, the big guy has definitely been lost in the jungle. After the disastrous Skull Island: Rise of Kong, it was looking like all hope was lost. But surely a game set withing the highly successful Monsterverse will be a different story, right? Here’s our Kong: Survivor Instinct review.
A 2.5D action-adventure metroidvania style side-scroller where you don’t play as Kong. Instead, you control David, a regular joe who’s trying to look for his daughter in a city ravaged by giant monsters. Initially, I thought this was an immediate deal breaker considering how I would’ve much preferred controlling the big ape himself and fighting against other kaijus. However, it is admittedly fun to run around, feeling so small and helpless, while monster chaos happens all around you. As long as you can get past the bland story, awkward performances, and simplistic gameplay, Kong: Survivor Instinct is actually a solid time to have.
A little Kong-fused
The game has a bit of a rough start. Quite literally. David sees a gigantic ape destroying a city on TV. The city where his daughter is in. As he rushes to drive to the location, he sees Kong in the distance, stunning him in place and causes him to accidentally drive off the road, completely torching his car. He’s now forced to run through the remnants of destroyed buildings and streets all while trying to survive not only giant kaijus wanting to stomp on him, but also some of the typical human antagonists you’d expect in a post-apocalyptic setting. Looters, robbers, henchmen who work for the crazy dude who wants to control the Titans. The usual.
David just wants to find his daughter, but it only takes a couple of steps until he finds himself in the middle of an eco-terrorist’s plans. Remember Alan Jonah from Godzilla vs. Kong? He returns here to officially tie in the game as a cannon story in the Monsterverse. A cool concept in theory but it doesn’t really go well in terms of its execution.
The most immediate thing you can notice is how the voice performances aren’t exactly what you’d call great. More often than not, you get pulled out of immersion because David’s actor sounds like he’s reading the script for the first time and didn’t know the recording button was pressed. It also doesn’t help that the material itself doesn’t give him much to work with. He tries to make light of situations, blurting out a one liner here and there but the extremely one note delivery completely kills it for me.
If you are a fan of the lore of the Monsterverse, there are tidbits in here that will be interesting for you but ultimately, it feels paper thin in the grand scheme of things. Especially when it comes to an extremely underwhelming ending. But then again, you don’t really watch the movies in the franchise for their plot. You just want to see big Titans wrecking whatever it is on their path. On that end, the game delivers.
Monster squad
Aesthetically, Kong: Survivor Instinct actually looks pretty decent. The color palette places it firmly within the gritty look of the films and the monster models themselves, especially Kong’s, is great. Considering that the game was developed on a budget, the development team made sure that the production values are as good as they can get.
The visuals of the levels you go through look varied enough in their destruction even if it’s mostly just abandoned buildings and streets. Occasionally, you see certain Titans in the background which are always a welcome sight. The same can’t be said for the actual level design though, which is pretty sub-standard. Most of what you do to progress is breaking down walls, pulling apart doors, and opening paths with keys, generators, or fuse boxes. You do get some gear that allows you to open up new paths that you’ve passed before. There are some fast travel points to make this easier.
The environments look great but they are a tad bit boring to navigate. It’s not the most mechanically demanding game to play and it is a quick and easy 6-7 hour campaign. What it lacks in gameplay engagement is made up for with a number of Titan-related sequences.
Up until this point, it’s your standard metroidvania platformer set within a post-Titan destroyed city. The real spectacle happens in the handful of set pieces where Kong or the other kaijus come up close to you and you watch them fight each other, or “control” them with the ORCA device to open up a path for you. The key word here is watch. You don’t really have any input in these events and you’re really just an ant trying to avoid being stomped at any second.
It’s always cool to see Kong pick up a train and tear it down. The fact that you used a tablet device to call him for it is a bit absurd, even for Monsterverse standards, and so you really have to suspend any sense of reality or logic when it comes to what happens in the game.
Easily the best parts of the game are where you narrowly run away from times where Kong and other kaijus try to splat David. As you run around a building or street, they’ll try to smash everything in an attempt to get to you. While very cool in motion, it does involve a bit of trial and error as to which direction you should be running or jumping to.
There’s also combat in the game, but it is very paper thin in its mechanics. You get a gun and a melee weapon to fight against humans or tiny monster. Enemy variety is nonexistent and they’re not all that different to fight each other. Just whack away until their health bar drops. Walking away from this title, the combat is the last thing you’ll remember.
For the keen eye and most dedicated of fans, you might also notice that there is some inconsistent sizing when it comes to the monsters. Kong is significantly smaller than his movie counterparts. Maybe it’s a resource issue or the developers wanted to make sure that he still fits within the frame of the game’s perspective. Either way, there are certain moment where he is definitely varying in size but nowhere near as big as he is in the movies.
Kong: Survivor Instinct Review Final Verdict – 6/10
Kong: Survivor Instinct is the best video game set within the Monsterverse so far. It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking in the metroidvania genre, but it does offer good enough kaiju spectacle to warrant a look from fans. In solidarity with the movies, the human plot elements can easily be ignored to get to the next Titan sequence.
Just temper any monstrous expectations going into it.
This review was made using a game code for the PC provided by the publisher.