Have You Played... Peter Jackson's King Kong?

I mean, some games aggressively resist your playing them. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie is not available to buy on Steam, or Uplay, or any online store you could name. When I sought out a physical copy, it bricked my computer. Putting it down to coincidence, I tried the disc in my laptop, and it bricked that too. Is there no end to the devastation left in the beast’s wake?

It’s not really Peter Jackson’s, of course: it’s Michel Ancel’s. The former commissioned the latter after falling in love with Beyond Good & Evil, as all seven of its players did at the time. But Kong leaves a strange, hairy handprint in Ancel’s history book. BG&E and the Rayman games explored a benevolent and spiritual relationship with nature, but in Kong, nature is a slap in the face from a thorny branch. The rain of Skull Island soaks you to the bone, ready for toothy dinosaurs to chew those bones into mealy mush. You fight with guns while Adrien Brody counts down ammo in your ear, and then with flaming sticks. Jack Black looks on, turning the crank of his olden times camera.

The trick, of course, is in turning the monsters against each other, letting pterodactyl feed on giant caterpillar. You getting this, Jack?