King Kong

This paper is over the interactive translation of the movie King Kong into the videogame, Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie. Why he felt the need to make the title that long is unknown to me.
The movie was released December 14, 2005 while the game was released about a month earlier on November 17th. The reason I mention this is that we have discussed how movies repeatedly use games as merchandise for movies to make extra money and increase hype, and do not give them the due respect they deserve. Generally, my opinion about games based on movies is that they continually feel unfinished and rushed.
I enjoyed the film and honestly felt it had the potential for a great game. The scenery, locations and story made a great setup for a game. There was an amazing world created in the film that gave the game a lot to work with.
I think overall they did a good job of translating the game over. The game had around forty levels, but they were fairly short so you played through them fairly quickly. The story was changed in ways that would make the game stronger. For example, in the movie only Ann Darrow is captured by the natives and lowered over to Kong. In the game you (Jack Driscoll’s character) are captured and watch this happen. Then Carl (another character from the movie) comes and unties you and you sneak away to go rescue her. They use a lot of common creatures and locations from the movie, but make many new experiences that weren’t in the movie. Also the sequence of events in the game is not the same as the movie, but I do not think this takes anything away from the experience.
If they had spent more time on details in the story it could have been a magnificent game. The game became very repetitive, doing the same actions over and over. It seemed in every level you had to use this torch to burn some brush and find this specific stick to open the door, even though there were other sticks everywhere else that would do the job just fine.
The game was clever in some aspects when you could do things like kill some little creature then throw it on a spear to distract the V-Rexes from attacking you. Another interesting bit about this game is there is no display whatsoever. There are no health, ammo, target or navigation icons on screen, only your view. You can hit a button on the controller and he will tell how much ammo is left. Ammo is very limited so you cannot go crazy with it. Many times you run out and are forced to use the spears lying around, which is pretty neat and probably realistic. Also you have to protect the whole team, none of the main characters can die when you are all in battle.
Also you actually get to play Kong occasionally. This seldom occurrence is really a strong point to the game. His controls work very well, sometimes the camera work is odd while playing him but other than that it is great being the beast.
My overall view of the game is that it is good, but could have been amazing if treated more like a game instead of an addition to a movie. I feel they used it to push movie sales and rushed it. They did a good job with the story, as not following the movie but borrowing locations, characters and creatures. They should have just thought the levels out more to reduce some of the repetitiveness.