If you’ve ever wondered what the arcade classic Rampage would be like if you had to play as a puny human instead of one of the skyscraper-crushing goliaths, then Kong: Survivor Instinct might be your answer. This 2.5D Metroidvania platformer takes place amid a crumbling coastal landscape while Kong and his Kaiju warriors duke it out in the background, making it look a bit like a shadow complex in Shadow of the Colossus at first glance. It’s a novel enough concept, but the basic puzzle design and uninspired combat prevent Survivor Instinct from reaching the lofty heights of its ideas, and while I found myself reluctantly pushing crates and collecting keys to work my way making my way through each ruined urban rabbit hole, I was never really able to get the impression that Kong seemed to be having significantly more fun than I was.
Not that actually playing as Kong would be a guaranteed fun time, of course – 2023’s Skull Island: Rise of Kong was such an unmitigated disaster that the aftermath of its self-destruction is likely still being studied by Monarch scientists. Kong: Survivor Instinct is a noticeably better game than that, but once the novelty of having the iconic evil monkey in the middle distance wears off, it simply no longer has the level of creativity or player freedom that other superior games of this ilk have released . in recent years – such as Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown of Blasphemous 2 – so expertly rendered.
It also doesn’t have much to it other than “Don’t let the monkey crush you.” We play as David Martin, a single father searching for his missing daughter amid the spectacular, city-destroying royal rumble currently sweeping the west coast of the United States. The elevator pitch of David’s personality is basically a kind of middle-aged Nathan Drake, who has apparently forgotten how to be funny (almost every time he kills a spider the size of a Labrador, he says, “I was never into spiders”) , and the handful of survivors he meets along the way don’t even pretend to be real characters. There are also a few appearances from the villainous Alan Jonah, who was last seen in 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters – there he was played by a typically cold and ruthless Charles Dance (AKA Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones) , but here he is voiced by a somewhat subdued soundalike. None of these details really matter, however, as Kong: Survivor Instinct’s small amount of story is stretched thin across its six-hour frame until it suddenly falls apart during the shockingly abrupt and disappointing conclusion.
Surface tension
The story may be weak, but the look and feel of the crumbling 2.5D environments is undoubtedly its strength. David’s quest takes him from smoldering suburbs to devastated downtown areas and the mysterious underground facilities below, and each dilapidated diorama is rich with precise detail and convincing depth. Kong: Survivor Instinct may try a little too hard to convince you that every structure you explore is unstable with the repetitive routine of causing the floor to collapse under your feet or chunks of the ceiling to fall on your skull, and that gets old pretty quickly. However, it also lets you run across the roofs of cars hanging from the web of a towering arachnid, and weave your way through the sloping hallways of an apartment building violently turned upside down by Kong, so there are still some more interesting platform sections between them.
It’s just a shame that much of the exploration is built around the same pushing of crates and shooting at locked gates. The very best Metroidvanias – like Hollow Knight or Metroid Dread – gradually give you new tools and abilities that encourage you to travel back through the world and unlock previously unreachable areas, but Kong: Survivor Instinct is relatively light when it comes to developing the ways in which you interact with your environment. Here, by contrast, David is given a sledgehammer to break through weakened walls and eventually a grappling hook to scale up to specific anchor points, but otherwise his progress is always painfully obvious and consists of the same rebuilt switch boxes to shoot or generators to repair. , copied and pasted along the winding path to each mission objective.
This general lack of ingenuity also takes the fun out of the combat, which focuses mainly on melee attacks since ammunition for David’s gun is so scarce. There’s some nuance to every scrap with Jonah’s soldiers – you can block or deflect their blows to open them up for a counterattack, or grab them to use them as a human shield when their more heavily armed comrades open fire, and that I did with pleasure. discover that you can even shoot them in the leg to bring them to their knees so you can deliver a series of finishing blows a la Resident Evil 4. At the same time, there’s a stiffness to every bit, especially when David is surrounded, and since he can’t jump or climb while in a combat stance, there were times where I found myself fighting off an enemy from an enemy. edge, but I found myself unable to drop down and continue the fight. Annoyingly, the only way out was to reload my save.
Furthermore, rather than introducing interesting new types of enemies that require you to adapt your attack methods, Kong: Survivor Instinct gradually increases the number of enemies in each encounter, while your combat skills remain exactly the same. David’s gun can be upgraded to carry more bullets per magazine to counter the growing hordes, but there are no other firearms to be found, despite the fact that every other guy you meet in the second half of the story has a shotgun with pump action. . When you consider that outside of the human soldier types, there are only a few small spider-like enemies to contend with – and absolutely no boss fights – Kong: Survivor Instinct’s combat feels flatter than a kaiju’s couch cushion in general.
Destroy the roof
While there may not be any traditional boss battles, Kong: Survivor Instinct does feature a handful of sequences that can best be described as boss battles. to flee. At specific points in the story, Kong or one of his rival titans will see you through the window of a building and you will suddenly be forced to flee, the monster punching wrecking ball-sized holes in your path that will require some precise platforming. dodge. (Unfortunately, none of these titans are Godzilla.) These sections certainly provide a burst of excitement and urgency to the adventure, though they also involve a fair amount of trial and error to circumvent immediate deaths, which does lead to some frustrating repeated checkpoints. restarts occasionally. Still, watching one of these monolithic beasts unwrap the building you’re trapped in like a kaiju child on Christmas morning is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular tricks Kong: Survivor Instinct has up its sleeve – even despite the seismic impact of this high. .. intensity moments seem to affect frame rate while playing on PlayStation 5.
Unfortunately, these are the only times Kong and company have a measurable impact on the action. Elsewhere, you may only catch glimpses of these goliaths – either during an occasional battle in the distant background, or when you summon one by collecting the requisite number of biowaves, spread throughout each level, to clear a blocked path to the exit from a level in a game of super-sized apes. Simon says. It’s certainly a delight to watch Kong casually pick up a continuous row of train cars as if they were steel sausage links and violently rip them apart, but the operative word here is “watch.” Once these groundbreaking actions are completed, you’re immediately returned to the same plodding puzzle platforming and uninspired combat.
