• AWAY Shuffle Dungeon
• Babysitting Mania
• Cooking Mama World Kitchen
• Major Minor's Majestic March
• Marker Man Adventures
• Our House
• Wonder World Amusement Park
• Zoo Hospital

It’s time for another movie blockbuster, and with the movie come the videogame tie-ins. Kong: The 8th Wonder of the World is the GameBoy Advance’s claim to the Kong franchise, and unfortunately isn’t able to compete with its console counterparts. For starters, unlike all the other Kong games out there, the GBA version isn’t titled Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, as if to emphasize that Mr. Jackson perhaps didn’t have as large a hand in the shaping of this game as he had in the others. While the console versions of Kong are being widely hailed as some of the best movie tie-in games of all time, this handheld version is only a mediocre game. Perhaps the PSP version, which releases this week, will have better luck at hitting the Kong sweet spot.

Kong is essentially two separate platform games combined into one. The main portion of the game is seen through an overhead view similar to the 16-bit Zelda games of yesteryear. In this mode the player controls Jack, Carl, and Ann as they travel through the wild environments of Skull Island, solving puzzles and killing creatures. The second portion of the game enables players to take on the role of King Kong in a side scrolling, button mashing minigame. Both modes are interspersed throughout the game, so players will play as the human characters for a couple of levels, then as Kong for a short minigame and so on.

While this game isn’t going to win any awards, it does have some redeeming qualities. Its best aspect is the amount of variety available to the player. Each of the human characters has his own special abilities and players can choose between them at will. The group doesn’t have to remain together, and players can split from their fellow group members as long as they don’t try to enter a new area without them. Players will spend most of their time as Jack, since he is the fighter of the group and can shoot a machine gun, throw spears, and swing a machete. Carl can throw grenades, push large objects, and carry torches while Ann can stun enemies with her screams, use a grappling hook, and heal group members.

The most enjoyable portions of the game are those in which players must use the abilities of two or more group members to negotiate puzzles and traps. For example, in one puzzle Jack must hold a button down with his weight to open a bridge for Carl. Carl then crosses and must move some blocks in order to hold down a button for Jack. These puzzles, while never very difficult, do require some thought, which makes the game much more entertaining than it would have been as a mere action title. Unfortunately, for every minute spent solving a puzzle there are easily ten minutes of wandering in the game, which can feel tedious at times.

Another entertaining aspect is the ability to create items. Over the course of their travels, players frequently pick up items such as vines, sticks, insect shells, and stones. Through the game’s item menu stones and sticks can be combined into spears, while other item combinations give players grenades and healing items. This does add a bit more entertainment to the game as players get a little “I made this” feeling when throwing their first spear. The game could have easily enabled the player to simply find spears or grenades, instead of making them, so kudos to the developers for trying to add a little more depth to the game.

The sound in Kong is decent, but once again won’t win any awards. Ann’s screams are fairly real sounding, as are the native’s “Kong” chants. The music is very percussive and fits with the jungle theme of the movie/game, but can get repetitive at times. The sound does do its job for a GBA game and players will want to play with the volume turned up, although the game is perfectly playable without sound as well.

The graphics are the first noteworthy problem in Kong. While the GBA is certainly a dated piece of hardware, it would be nice to see games that don’t look like they are 10 years old. The character animations are of the choppy and pixilated variety and the environments look like a jungle interpretation of an old Super Nintendo game. However, gamers don’t usually buy a GBA expecting amazing graphics so that may not be a turn-off for everyone out there. The short cutscenes do feature comic book style storyboards which are well done and look good on the GBA, but that’s about the extent of the “good” graphics in the game.

Above I mentioned that for every minute of puzzle solving there are easily 10 minutes of aimless wandering, which can lead to hours of frustration. Often players will wander through the same area several times trying to figure out where to go. This can be especially frustrating when the player realizes that all this wandering was caused by not seeing a branch of a path because it was hidden by a tree or some other form of vegetation. The level designers should have realized that certain areas are difficult to navigate as it can be unclear where to go or what to do next. The in-game map can also cause confusion because to reach certain objectives you have to travel away from them on the map. The game’s path takes a point A to point C, then turn and hit point B approach, which can be confusing.

The Kong segments in the game feel like an afterthought. Controlling a 25 foot giant ape should be fun in any game, but here the majesty of King Kong is reduced to short, side-scrolling segments. In each Kong level there is a timer counting down. Before the time reaches zero Kong must run from the left side of the level to the right, dodging obstacles and killing dinosaurs. That’s really all there is to it. It’s a shame the developers didn’t think of a more entertaining or thoughtful way to include the ape into the game, as he should steal the show. Instead the Kong levels feel like the designers threw them in at the last minute in order to say, “See, you can play as Kong, too!”

The last major problem with Kong is that it has little to do with the new movie. While Peter Jackson’s film heavily influenced the console versions of Kong, the GBA title feels like it has more in common with the classic film than the Peter Jackson remake. Skull Island in the film is surrounded by rocks shaped as skulls, while the GBA game’s Skull Island features a giant skull-shaped mountain. The gate on the island that keeps Kong from destroying all the villagers also looks different than the gate seen in the film.  None of the side characters seen in Jackson’s film are in the game, such as Lumpy, the cook or the tough first mate. The only real similarity the game has to the new film is that the characters in the game look similar to the actors in Peter Jackson’s film, at least during the cutscenes.

Kong on the GBA just doesn’t meet the standard set by its siblings on other consoles. The game is fairly entertaining, but doesn’t set any new standards in the industry. It simply feels like the developers tried to make a halfway decent game that uses the Kong name to sell a higher number of copies. If you’re a huge King Kong fan and can’t play it on any other console, go ahead and give it a try on the GBA. However, there are better versions of the game out there, and if you insist on having a portable copy Kong should release on the PSP this week.

Puzzles can be fun, but there aren’t enough of them to really make the game shine.

Looks like an SNES game, and only a decent one at that.

Not bad for a GBA game, but certainly doesn’t raise the bar.

Can be entertaining, but easily passed over in favor of other games.

No multiplayer or unlockables to offer an incentive to play the game again.

]]> Tue, 20 Dec 2005 16:39:00 -0600 Brian Mohr http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_harvest_moon_another_wonderful_life_ngc1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_harvest_moon_another_wonderful_life_ngc1 http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_preview_harvest_moon_another_wonderful_life_ngc1# This preview was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.