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Unlike games like Halo 2 or Half-Life 2 which have minimal load times and continuous game play, King Kong is broken up into dozens of chapters with some being as short as only a few minutes. While many typical console reviewers complain about the load times, more often than not, I've appreciated the load time as a welcome respite. The game is so tense that these brief load times give you a chance to catch your breath before moving onto the next stage. For some of the tougher levels, the relief you get from the loading screen is indescriable. Despite these load times, the game is unquestionably cinematic. You experience cutscenes in real-time from the first person perspective. Sometimes a chapter will be purely expository, while others end up being an ambush where you're outnumbered and you're out of bullets. Since there's never a break in the story (except during loading), you can never predict whether the current chapter is a freebie or if you'll need to have your weapon ready.

Many first person shooters are built around an underlying "find the key," move to the next level approach. In King Kong, there's definitely elements of this. The puzzles are centered around two basic scenarios: setting brushes that impede your progress on fire or finding a piece of wood that can be used as a crank to open up doors. Within this gameplay mechanic are plenty of variations including waterfalls which quench the fire. It works logically because although the game is linear, you feel like there's progress to be made. Fire can also be used to frighten or kill predators.

Playing as Kong

Although the majority of the time is spent playing as Jack, the screenwriter, in the first person perspective there are a handful of sequences where you get to play as King Kong. While these are always very visually exciting levels since they're played in the third person, the gameplay is simple button mashing. It's not even fun button mashing like an old school arcade game like Rampage or King of the Monsters – it's fairly boring. The novelty quickly wears off after the first time you play as Kong. In its current form, the balance seems just right to me. Enough sequences where you play as Kong to keep the gameplay entertaining and to provide better transitions in the story without it becoming overbearing. Interestingly, most of the bread-and-butter console review sites seem to want more time with Kong. Perhaps this is my bias as a reviewer.

Image courtesy of Ubisoft

Technical

The graphics for King Kong on the Xbox 360 look great as there's judicious use of lighting and shaders. Image quality certainly varies through the game, with some low-resolution textures feeling like they're out of place and as mentioned earlier, the game wasn't validated on calibrated screens. Still, as FiringSquad alum James Yu has shown, there's still a substantial jump from the Xbox to the Xbox 360. The audio is clearly the superstar in this game. With a nice surround sound setup, you are immersed into the game. There is substantial LFE content, and little details like insects in the jungle or the rustling of leaves create a sonic soundstage that is on par with the best of Hollywood films. The orchestral score is also superb, capturing all the mystery and epic nature of the story. Surprisingly, it's an entirely original score – but it's so good, that I wouldn't be surprised if it held its own against James Newton Howard's score for the theatrical release.