Polygon: Peter Jackson’s King Kong was the most innovative game of its console generation

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Peter Jackson's King Kong was the most innovative game of its console generation:
www.polygon.com

Peter Jackson’s King Kong was the most innovative game of its console generation

A forgotten classic deserves another chance
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com

A forgotten classic deserves another chance

One of the most influential, enjoyable, and important games of the seventh console generation is a licensed adaptation of Peter Jackson's version of King Kong, designed by the creator of Rayman.

That sequence of words is an absurd mess. It sounds like a phrase from a gaming-themed Mad Lib, or something written by a particularly verbose Twitter bot. Nonetheless, it's true.

Ubisoft released Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie as part of the Xbox 360 launch slate while simultaneously delivering versions of the game for Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Windows PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation Portable. We'll be focusing on the backwards compatible Xbox 360 version.

It's one of the few games from that period that still feels like it came from the future. King Kong's combination of cinematic stylings, rudimentary but working ecosystems, improvisational combat, a minimal HUD that forces information to be shared through more clever means than numbers on a screen, muddy textures striving for realism, and focus on player freedom within tightly-scripted encounters, functions as a prophetic statement of intent for the generation that would come.

King Kong had the iconic Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion camera zoom-in before Oblivion. Widespread use of fire propagation before Far Cry 2. King Kong himself was a swinging parkour master before Assassin's Creed was even a spot on the horizon.

The seventh generation console games from this time tended to swerve between trends. There were the open-world maps crowded with icons, and a small army of gritty third-person shooters that followed in the wake of Gears of War. If you wondered why a disc-only King Kong tie-in was included in the last wave of backwards compatible games made backwards compatible for Xbox One, it's because, like the beast that shares its name, Peter Jackson's King Kong stands alone.
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More in the article. I'm not sure if I agree with the title but the game was very good. I played it on PS2 and later bought the Xbox 360 version. The movie was great so I was happy that they made a good game about it. Movie games aren't usually good so this was a great suprise.

This is one of my favorite levels:
 
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No.. it was actually this.
91oDTG8tfmL._SY445_.jpg
 
Psykodad said:
Didn't this game cause a massive shitstorm?

It's been so long, can't even remember.
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Yeah, and it wasn't very good either. I think at this point, Polygon is trolling its readers.

The good thing was, if you were an Achievement Score hunter for the XBox 360, this game was pretty easy to score 1000/1000 on--you got 100 per chapter, 10 chapters (IIRC).
 
it wasn't bad either, and looked pretty dope for a movie tie in, i remember it being compared to riddick (although not anywhere as good)

was some super impressive visual shit for the time
 
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Tesseract said:
it wasn't bad either, and looked pretty dope for a movie tie in, i remember it being compared to riddick (although not anywhere as good)

was some super impressive visual shit for the time
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Sounds like a last-gen The Order, or that Roman-themed Xbox One launch-game.
 
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As if Polygon would have any clue. Author admitted at the end that they played it as a kid. Sounds like the typical "here I will justify my existing opinion by writing up a wordy blog post videogame article for the sake of my own ego" routine that Polygon is already known for.
 
VectorVictor said:
Yeah, and it wasn't very good either. I think at this point, Polygon is trolling its readers.

The good thing was, if you were an Achievement Score hunter for the XBox 360, this game was pretty easy to score 1000/1000 on--you got 100 per chapter, 10 chapters (IIRC).
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I played it for the 1000 gamerscore too :messenger_grinning_squinting:
 
This was such a straightforward movie tie in game that the thread title seems like it comes from bizzaro world. My memory of it was that it was a functional game that exemplified the description of derivative in gaming. You played through The story of King Kong. The best thing you could say about is that it's an easy 1000k gamer points.
 
yeah, I got it as an Xmas gift. You could finish it in a few hours which for those who cared made it a great value :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 
This twit obviously hasn't played Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm on 360 and had your galley catch on fire and someone go overboard at night in the middle of a massive storm all at the same time... Now that's a 360 game.
 
It played it on 360, I think it was a launch game (but I'm not sure) and I remember having a good time with it, but it sure isn't the most innovative game of the 360 era. Polygon are really strange in their assessments.
 
This was one of the games they put in demo kiosks around the release of the 360. It was an amazing graphics showcase, but to call it innovative is a stretch.
 
Did OP even archive it before posting the link? I refuse to give them clicks, because as #24 said, click baity.

As for the game, never played it. Movie was decent. Skull Island was more enjoyable IMO.
 
Bonus Round: Polygon just recently wrote an overt defense piece for mtx lootboxes that boiled down to "Think of Poor Companies and how much it costs for them to hold the exclusive rights to a sport. They need the lootboxes and unskippable commercials and more money"

Imagine if different companies could make a football game? Compete with each other like they used to?

Want to help the issue? Don't give them traffic. Let their traffic starve and they languish into irrelevancy. Someone copy and paste the article to one of those mirror sites and let their viewership drop even more. Fuck them. They literally side with the shittiest things in the gaming sphere and when they don't, they write ponderous fucking articles that mean fuck all.
 
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Iorv3th said:
That's the only reason I played it. It wasn't terrible, but it was not anywhere near what polygon is making it out to be.
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To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Or in the case of Polygon's sterling reputation as highly-skilled gamers, everything looks like the most-innovative game of its console generation.

giphy-downsized-large.gif
 
the game was ok for 1 playthrough...
not as bad as The Order 1886 like many here say, bur also not very great either.

it looked nice on 360 and had an easy 1000G
 
One thing I love about achievements: having them as a record of when you played something 🙂
I0KNidn.jpg
 
It was a decent licensed game with (some) spectacular visuals (especially considering the weak PS2's version) but I doubt I'd finish a replay if I started it or that it holds up without the visual wow factor. It was neat but that's all you can really say about it. It was on PC too btw.
 
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King Kong's combination of cinematic stylings, rudimentary but working ecosystems, improvisational combat, a minimal HUD that forces information to be shared through more clever means than numbers on a screen, muddy textures striving for realism, and focus on player freedom within tightly-scripted encounters, functions as a prophetic statement of intent for the generation that would come.
Click to expand...

Gee, it sounds like he's describing Trespasser.
From 1998.
 
I had to force myself to finish it, imagine the shame of people knowing you didn't get the full 1000 gamer score from this game.
 
Next article from Polygon:

Why Hanna Montana: The Movie: The Game and Avatar The Last Airbender are really easy Platinum trophies from my childhood are the most innovative games of their console generation.
 
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