Skull Island: Rise of Kong Review

"Roar Into a JPG"

Campaign

December 10, 2023 at 5:42pm
By Jason Stettner

This game was a journey of trauma, not only for Kong but also for I. No seriously, this game dives deep into the traumatic events that took the life of Kong’s family. He witnessed both of his parents die and this sets the stage for the overall narrative, revenge. See, there was something here to work with but the end product is an absolute nightmare.

So the game is essentially linear but also open world to a degree. It’s a selection of levels that you work through in a linear way yet often you have no idea where you’re going since the map in the game is just an image. But with that, you straight up get lost due to the level designs and it’s maddening.

It will make you feel as though you’re losing your mind. Now with that, like I said it is technically open world since you can just walk through the areas after with small sections that can take you back to spaces. It’s a nightmare to traverse, but honestly an interesting inclusion. The story idea here is neat as I’ve mentioned.

You go about the island getting revenge. You smash some enemies, find the ending boss and then get a flashback usually. One of these even includes a random JPG mid-cinematic which is hilarious. There’s a decent amount of content to some degree I would say where it will be like five or so hours. It’s just mundane and awful to move through basically.

Gameplay

You awkwardly move about as Kong. They give you abilities in the prologue, then take those away without telling you. You then gather more special abilities over time that help you fight enemies. The enemies are repetitive and kind of terrible to fight. It can be strangely difficult at times, and sometimes enemies get stuck. I will note clearly though, that this game does run and work. You can play through it without something breaking down, so that’s something.

They really don’t guide you, or tell you much and it barely sort of works at all. But it does. So you just hop about as Kong smashing things and occasionally doing the very awkward platforming. It can be punishing, annoying and mostly tiring. The world is very basic in terms of visual quality. It may run at a 4k resolution at 60fps on Xbox Series X but it doesn’t really look like it.

There is an odd stutter here or there but from a technical perspective it does run mostly fine. It does have this weird effect where the world’s textures shift awkwardly as you look around and the world is visually a nightmare to traverse due to the aesthetics. It really does lack any sort of intuitive direction and it’s super weird to see a title like this. Oh, and there are collectibles to find if you can handle dealing with that.

The Conclusion

Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a truly awful, mundane and strangely perplexing to traverse linear experience where Kong deals with deep emotional trauma. There really was something there, at the core of this from a story perspective and I wish the game around it was better.

It does run, like you play this without it breaking down. It’s just awful to play, truly awful as I’ve mentioned. You smack stuff, you hop about and then it sort of ends. There are some neat ideas here, but it is an absolute slog to work through and I’m sure many will give up along the way as it’s just not worth it.

Again, a bit of a shame as I felt something could have been done here with the concept they were displaying. Oh well. Your best bet honestly for a good King Kong game is to track down Peter Jackson’s King Kong The Game from a good decade and a bit ago, that was great. This was not.

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Skull Island: Rise of Kong Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Gollum Gaming

Rating Overall: 2.5