Kong: Survivor Instinct – Review

What comes to mind when you think of a Kong game? Firstly, it’s King, and not Donkey, so maybe you’re envisioning massive battles playing as the titular ape, leveling buildings and scenery alike in an epic re-enacting of the films. Or perhaps you see a lone survivor trapped in the dense jungles of Skull Island, gunning down other grotesque monstrosities all while being pursued by the great Titan himself? 

But nowhere would you consider a side-scrolling platformer where Kong hardly appears, where you spend most of your time fighting generic human enemies while solving environmental puzzles? But that’s exactly what 7Levels’ upcoming Kong: Survivor Instinct is and while the game does shine visually and offers brief moments of spectacle, it can’t escape its most glaring issue – that it’s a King Kong game in spirit only.

Set in the MonsterVerse, a shared universe featuring King Kong and Godzilla first introduced with the 2014 Godzilla movie, the game follows the events of 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong. The duo’s showdown with Mechagodzilla has left the city shaken, but just as things seem to return to normal, a sudden Titan attack once again prompts a massive evacuation and the re-emergence of Kong.

Players take on the role of David, who ventures into the devastated city to find his daughter, Stacy, who unfortunately wasn’t able to make it out in time. Amidst his search, he encounters not only the Titan threat but human foes as well, in the form of the Hyena crime syndicate and their leader, Alan Jonah (a major antagonist in the MonsterVerse franchise). 

Although there’s nothing inherently bad about the game’s plot, what is on offer here ends up being incredibly generic. David has a singular goal, with nothing presented story-wise apart from his journey from one point to another. The game doesn’t build upon the backstories of David or Stacy, making it difficult to feel any emotional connection to the pair or get invested in the plot. 

To make things worse, the voice acting in the game is painfully mediocre. Everyone sounds as though the actors are simply reading off a script, lacking the emotional nuances necessary to convey the events happening on-screen, leading to even the game’s tenser scenes lacking any impact. The voices for enemy NPCs are by far the worst contenders, repeating the same few generic lines of dialogue just with different voice actors, all of which are over-acted and feel out of place.

Unfortunately, this same level of blandness extends to the title’s gameplay and level design. Kong: Survivor Instinct is a 2.5D side-scroller with Metroidvania elements, and largely revolves around players visiting and re-visiting different locations around the city, solving environmental puzzles, and platforming challenges to progress.

But unlike the usual Metroidvania premise, the game offers little in terms of backtracking or finding secrets, and everything plays out in a mostly linear fashion. The title does feature the genre staple progression blockers, such as walls that only certain tools can break, or broken generators that require a specific amount of components to fix, but almost everything the player collects on their journey is a requirement to progress its main plot, offering nothing much in the way of exploration, apart from the occasional health and ammo upgrade tucked away off the beaten track.

The act of traversal itself is a rather mixed bag, with basic platforming feeling adequately responsive, but new elements introduced throughout the game are often half-baked, such as the grappling hook, which uses an unreliable aiming system that’s clunky and inaccurate.

One of the game’s biggest features is the ability to summon Titans to David’s location since early in the game, he picks up a mysterious ORCA Sigma device, which can detect and record biowaves located in specific areas. Upon collecting a certain amount, you are able to summon nearby Titans to pre-designated locations.

This sounds rather exciting on paper, but in reality, serves nothing more than a flashy way to remove obstacles from your path. Granted, witnessing towering beasts like Kong casually demolishing an entire building like it was made of styrofoam is a sight to behold, but fundamentally, these moments serve no purpose apart from being a glorified cutscene. Simply put, it’s all style, no substance.

Calling forth a Titan also leads to its inevitable confrontation, which is arguably the game’s strongest point in terms of gameplay. Every Titan encounter culminates in a chase sequence, where David has to escape the clutches of the beasts through a gauntlet of platforming challenges.

These moments, while intense and satisfying, also present a problem of its own, that being the lack of checkpoints. The timing for these sequences is rather tight, and coupled with the aforementioned clumsy platforming systems, each failed attempt leads to restarting the entire segment. With some of these encounters being rather lengthy, having to constantly restart due to trial-and-error can lead to many infuriating moments.

Outside of platforming, the title also features its fair share of combat. Enemies mostly come in the form of Hyena gang members, with David having a melee weapon and sidearm at his disposal to deal with these threats. Alas, melee combat is a mess, and although the game tries to include systems like parrying or grabbing enemies to throw them off ledges, these simply fail to work half the time, leading to a multitude of frustrations. The range of David’s weapon is also painfully short, and having to constantly inch closer to enemies just to hit them makes combat feel more like a chore than intense encounters.

Ranged combat fairs slightly better, but due to sparse amounts of ammunition spread across the level, coupled with the fact that certain environmental objects need to be shot at in order to progress, firearms become more of a traversal tool than a viable combat weapon, serving as more of a last resort for trickier encounters.

The game’s biggest flaw by far, is that it’s a MonsterVerse game that hardly features any monsters. Throughout the game, players will mostly encounter human enemies, which only come in 5 different archetypes utilising one of two tactics, either rushing the player directly or shooting from afar. In a baffling design choice, the game only features two monster types, a spider and a bipedal lizard-like creature, both possessing the exact same attack pattern of rushing at the player and pouncing, which can simply be countered with a well-timed melee swing. 

The same can be said for the Titans, which of course features Kong and others but here’s the thing – Kong only plays a big part in the game’s opening zone, and is notably absent from the rest of the game, for no apparent reason. Sure, he does make a brief appearance from time to time, but for a game with Kong in its title, players won’t even see him for more than half the time spent playing. Even when he does show up on screen, his presence is mostly restricted to him doing stuff in the background, having no effect on gameplay whatsoever. Once again, the game echoes the theme of prioritising spectacle over any meaningful gameplay variety.

Despite its many missteps, the game does a commendable job when it comes to its visual design. From the very beginning, the backdrop of the game’s devastated cityscape is a sight to behold, with deserted streets that offer both peaceful tranquillity and a looming sense of dread. Details in the foreground are equally impressive, filled with environmental props such as boxes and hanging light fixtures that react realistically to the player’s movements.

Titan appearances unsurprisingly steal the show, and entering an open-air area never failed to provide a sense of anticipation for the reveal of the next towering beast. It’s obvious that a lot of attention has been put into designing the various Titans, with Kong for example – when he does show up – sporting minute details such as scars across his chest and face, seemingly from his previous encounters with both Godzilla and Mechagodzilla. Regrettably, the game’s excellent visuals do serve as a stark reminder of its overarching issue, that it’s great to look at, but not so much to play.

Kong: Survivor Instinct ends up feeling like a massive missed opportunity. It attempted to combine multiple aspects of other side-scrolling titles such as level layouts from the Metroid series, and the reactive combat style reminiscent of Tails of Iron or Blasphemous, but ultimately stumbles in its execution. Aside from offering up bits of pure Titan-fueled spectacle, the game provides little in terms of actual gratifying gameplay. There’s nothing inherently bad about the title except that it’s just dreadfully mediocre, and for a game centred around such an iconic figure like Kong, that’s really disappointing.

Kevin Low

Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.