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Skull Island: Rise of Kong is an origin story for King Kong. When Kong's parents get murdered by Gaw, a dinosaur, Kong grows up on Skull Island alone to fend for himself. The game does a time jump to when Kong is old enough to face the threats on Skull Island on his own, and that is where his adventure begins. In a Metroid like fashion, this game strips Kong of all his abilities and powers, forcing you to explore the map to complete Ascension point challenges which will ultimately unlock the skills you need to defeat Gaw and gain access to other parts of the island.
The tutorial is probably the most thought out portion of the entire game. There's cutscenes, message boxes, the areas are pretty linear so you have an idea of where you should be going next. Outside of the tutorial, exploration involves exploring one of five different levels. The levels are open world parts of the island that feature challenges, enemies to defeat, and hidden collectibles. Eventually, you'll get to boss battles, where upon defeating them, you'll unlock new abilities that help you explore newer parts of the island.
That's pretty much the gist of Skull Island. You'd think that would be a fun experience, but honestly, it isn't. Below is a lengthy list of bugs/complaints that I have with the game:
1. The map system doesn't have a "you are here" on it. So it's very difficult to know where in fact you are. The developers could've even done a monster hunter zoning system where the map flashes certain areas to help you know where you are, but nope. Not even that. It's annoying.
2. The game has bad geometry. You will get stuck in places that look accessible but are not. The game also has an input bug that prevents you from moving Kong. Restarting the game or the save doesn't fix it. I tried uninstalling and lost all my save progress. Beyond frustrating.
3. The skill tree is pointless. What really grinds my gears with it is that it tells you blatantly that you won't be able to unlock all the skills in your current playthrough so spend your points wisely. Seriously? Is that your definition of replay value? The skill level ups aren't even that effective either.
4. The collectibles system is actually not bad. I'm disappointed that the game doesn't go all in on finding more collectibles. I think of all the systems in the game, the collectibles are probably the most thought out. And that's sad.
5. There's no reward for fighting enemies other than the ascension point challenges. You're better off just running away from enemies because there's literally no reason to fight them.
6. The female narrator's voice acting is great at the beginning but we don't hear her after that point.
7. The textures of Kong sometimes don't look right. In a cave, he has white fur but then outside he has brown fur.
8. The DLC is too pricy for just different skins and camera filters.
9. Kong is a BIG beast. In this game he's not that big at all. In fact, he's very small compared to other monsters. Are we supposed to be seeing a younger more vulnerable version of Kong? It just doesn't make sense the way we see him compared to other parts of the island and enemies.
Here are some suggestions I have to improve this game:
1. Make the game level based instead of open world. Give us a world map with levels to choose from. The levels will each have their own number of collectibles to find as well as skill points to uncover. Completing a level will unlock the next one, but players can go back into levels to find what they missed.
2. Chunk out the environments into their own levels. For example, make each area its own level. Even if the area by itself isn't that big, that's fine. Small can be totally fine if it's decorated nice and looks cool.
3. Defeating enemies should give players a currency. The currency can be used to purchase concept art, one up's, etc. Currency can also be found in the world.
4. Fix the input bugs and test it thoroughly. Kong freezing up into a hard lock situation is a horrible bug.
5. Every time we complete a "world", I think it would be cool if there was a time jump between boss battles where Kong grows a little more. So in World 1, Kong is still young. But in World 2, we see a bigger Kong fighting much larger enemies. And as we progress to World 5, Kong becomes the giant Kong we know from the films.
6. When it comes to graphics, I feel like you should either go for cinema style or something stylized. The graphics in this game are somewhere in the middle. There's sort of an identity crisis going on.
I'm sad that this game just isn't what I was expecting at all. I really hope the developers can try to make adjustments and fix this game. There's a lot of potential to create something awesome, and this just felt rushed. Was there any QA? Beta tests? A lot of these bugs could've been caught with beta testers.
In my honest opinion, this game should be priced at $10-12. There isn't enough content to justify anything more than that. Don't pay $40 for this game. It's not worth that much money. I'm sorry, it just isn't. I ended up refunding my purchase after playing for 1.6 hours. Again I can't recommend this game until they do something about the bugs and general identity of the game.
Thanks for reading!