Kong: Survivor Instinct is a 2.5D Metroidvania style game that takes place after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong and it is, allegedly, going to be canon in the Monsterverse. The story is that Kong and a couple of other titans - giant spider Abaddon and sea serpent Tiamat - have suddenly shown up and destroyed a city because of reasons. It turns out that Alan Jonah - the bad guy from Godzilla: King of the Monsters played by Charles Dance but they didn't even attempt to get a sound-alike here - is somehow back with the ORCA device from that movie that allows him to control the titans via sound waves.
If you don't want to read this wall of text, a video version of the same script is down at the bottom of the article.
Nothing in the story makes sense, though. It's revealed that Alan Jonah's secret evil organization already had Tiamat's offspring in captivity and was doing research on it BEFORE they stole the ORCA device from Monarch. So why did they use ORCA To call in the other monsters? It does make sense that Tiamat would eventually show up regardless of the use of the ORCA, and kinda makes sense that Kong would appear to fight it (though, isn't it supposed to be Godzilla's job to protect the surface?), but why the hell is Abaddon here at all? It's never explained why they stole ORCA to control the monsters to begin with. That they call in monsters to destroy a city, and they also have Tiamat's offspring, are two separate stories that never connect. I beat the game and also re-watched the cutscenes on YouTube and still don't know what's going on in this game.
Your player character is a regular-ass every man guy - because playing as a stupid squishy human is totally what people want from a kaiju game - who goes out searching for his daughter after the titans attack. He discovers the ORCA device on the ground - after Kong destroys the bad guys' vehicle it was in - and then uses it throughout the rest of the game to call in titans to help him clear debris so he can progress forward. Spoilers, but who cares since you shouldn't ever play this game anyway, his daughter is working with Alan Jonah and played a part in calling the titans to the city - jeez, sounds kinda like King of the Monsters, huh? Which, by the way, I freaking hate Godzilla 2014 and King of the Monsters so, so, so much, so borrowing plot points from those movies kinda grinds my gears.
Anyway ... along the way as your everyman makes his way through the city in search of his turncoat traitorous daughter, he comes across other survivors and the game really, really, really tries to play up the sad human cost of titan attacks angle. They even go so far as to throw up a "super sad stuff happens" content warning when you boot the game. A kid left alone. An elderly woman that refuses to leave. A drunk guy who's going to get revenge on Kong. Lots of other dead and dying people. The game really wants this to be a somber serious sad experience, but these minute-long encounters are so ham-fisted and poorly done that they have zero impact whatsoever.
Just like Godzilla 2014 and King of the Monsters, they completely and utterly flubbed the human element in this game. They want so desperately for you to care, but the characters are horrible so you just can't.
They also totally flubbed the kaiju here too, though, which is far more egregious. The game takes 5 or so hours to play through, but giant monsters are only onscreen for a total of 15-minutes - seriously, there's a YouTube video with all of the kaiju scenes and it's only 15 minutes long. That is a pretty terrible ratio even in the kaiju genre that notoriously has a "less is more" attitude where Godzilla might not show up until 45-minutes into a movie. The titans are almost an afterthought here. I'll also add that Godzilla is mentioned a couple of times in the game, but never actually makes an appearance.
It was almost certainly unintentional and not meant to have any greater meaning, but your character totally becomes the proverbial "real monster" as your kill count by the end has to rival that of the titans. It's ridiculous how badly the game wants to focus on the human impact of titan attacks and play up this sad somber gritty reality, but then your character goes and kills dozens and dozens and dozens of other humans on the way to save his daughter (that doesn't need to be saved). It's so freaking dumb.
That brings us to the real problem with Kong: Survival Instinct - the horrible no good very bad putrid rotten stinking gameplay. It's just so awful. They say it's a Metroidvania, but you don't ever actually have to backtrack, so it's really just a linear action platformer. It probably could have been OK or even good if it was just an exploration and puzzle focused cinematic platformer, something like INSIDE, but you can tell at some point someone said "this is boring and stupid dummy gamers need to kill stuff" so they put in a bunch of humans you had to kill via terrible combat.
Combat encounters always throw different combinations of enemies at you, all of which have different patterns and whatever. So you break the shield guy's shield with a power attack, dodge the gunshots from the gun dudes, block and counter the melee guys, etc. Except the controls are ridiculously unresponsive and horrible. I saw a review that said you could just mash the counter button and automatically win every fight, but they must have been playing a totally different game than I did. Combat is freaking difficult and not fun at all! I ended up just using all of my bullets - because of course you get a gun - in every encounter because it was the fastest and safest way to win. And the game always gives you free bullets right next to any puzzle that requires a gun, so there's no reason not to blast away during combat.
The final, and worst, part of the gameplay are the chase sequences where a titan is attacking the building you're in and you have to frantically escape while they're peeping in through the windows trying to kill you and only you for some reason. Think of the escape sequences in Ori and the Blind Forest, except unlike in Ori where the controls are extremely responsive and precise and it feels great to play, in Kong: Survivor Instinct the game only does what you want it to about 40% of the time. The game literally just eats button inputs and nothing happens, so you miss jumps and grapple hook throws and your stupid guy won't climb and everything happens way too slow and you die over and over and over. I rage quit at least once on every one of these goddamn chase scenes. I hate them so much. The game just plays so, so horribly. The combat is atrociously bad and the platforming is abhorrent. Anyone that gives this game higher than a 4/10 shouldn't be trusted.
Kong: Survivor Instinct fails at pretty much everything it tried to do. It's a bad kaiju game, since they're only in it for like 5% of the game. It's a bad Monsterverse game because the story doesn't make any sense. It's a bad Kong game since nothing that made him interesting in the Godzilla / Kong movies is present. And it's not only not really a Metroidvania, even though they claim it is, it's not even an acceptable 2D platformer because the combat and controls are so horribly bad. This is just such a terrible disappointing garbage game all around. I bought it with my own money just to make a video 100 people will watch and, yes, I really really regret it.
Comments
Post a Comment