There’s a new King Kong game out in the wild and it might be one of the most broken titles we’ve ever seen. Taking one of the most iconic film properties of all time turned out well for the iconic 2005 Peter Jackson movie tie-in game; not so much here.
Earlier this year, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum quickly became a punching bag for being a bland and lifeless experience, but this new title has bad gameplay, horrid pop-in, and some absolutely baffling edits.
Called Skull Island: Rise of Kong, the initial trailers made it seem like a low-effort tie-in that looked horribly bland. Now that the game is out, it’s more horrible than bland, as it looks like this poor brawler was shoved out the door without any polish, bug testing or even care.
One post from Twitter user Rick is what caused the internet to pay attention to this new King Kong game, as it featured a bafflingly incomplete cutscene. Aside from the ugly visuals that look like a shovelware Wii title, the cutscene literally has a PNG image used to convey a dinosaur scream instead of, well, animating the dinosaur to scream.
Various videos of Skull Island: Rise of Kong have since made their way to YouTube, showing slowdown, repetitive gameplay, pop-in, and more. It’s genuinely insulting to see a video game like this come out and cost $40, especially with a hot movie IP like Kong.
Now, the big gorilla might not compare with the Avengers or Star Wars, but King Kong is still a well-liked movie property. Many fans enjoyed 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong, as it was the dumb monster fight they wanted it to be, stupid human plots be damned.
Godzilla is doing slightly better, as the radioactive lizard has a pretty fun DLC pack in the kaiju beat-em-up Gigabash. Admittedly, Godzilla also had a horrible PS4 game that nobody liked but why worry about that when Gigabash is available?
Fans who want a good video game experience already missed their chance. Kong and Godzilla were part of Warzone for a hot minute, which was a fun use of their license.
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Morbidly curious fans who want to try out this horrible King Kong game can get Skull Island: Rise of Kong now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC.