THIS `KONG' IS KING.

Byline: Redmond Carolipio Staff Writer

ONE MOMENT you're running away from a T-Rex. The next moment you're pounding its guts out.

Such is the dual nature of ``King Kong,'' a title that not only avoids the so-called movie game curse but also serves as a polarizing lesson about power. In this game, you spend plenty of time both using it and wishing to God that you had some.

The game is based on Peter Jackson's remake of the 1933 classic about the plane-swatting simian who literally picks up a hot girl on the way to punching holes in the Big Apple. Jackson took an active role in Kong's console conception, seeking out game creator Michel Ansel after getting hooked on Ansel's underplayed masterpiece, ``Beyond Good & Evil.'' Most of the cast from the movie - including Jack Black, Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody - also signed on to do the voice work for the game.

What we get is an experience that goes beyond something you just pick up and play. ``Kong'' is meant to be digested in front of a big screen, with the lights off and the volume high.

When the game starts, it doesn't waste much time in teaching you about what it's like to feel relatively powerless. Players spend a lot of time in first-person perspective as Brody's character, Jack Driscoll, on Skull Island. As Jack, your job is to just endure. When you're not shooting dinosaurs and large centipedes, you're dodging a brontosaurus herd or an angry T-Rex.

You are never allowed to feel 100 percent comfortable - there never seems to be enough ammo to take down all the creatures trying to tear your limbs off. You are made to be in constant fear for your own survival.

On the bright side, you also get the best view of the game's beautifully crafted jungle environments. Eventually you gain third-person control of King Kong, and that's where the chemistry of the game comes alive. Most titles with a central character immediately plop you in the main role and send you off. But in this game, being the ``hero'' is a reward - now you have a chance to exact some righteous gorilla warfare on all the creatures that made life hell for Jack and his friends.

Kong uses all the talents a big gorilla would have - he's fast, he swings from branch to branch, and he can climb on vine-strewn walls like Spider-Man. Then there's his raw power, fully at your command. Remember those dinosaurs that chased you around and killed you? Kong will slap 'em away like they owed him money. T-Rex harassing you? Kong can unleash ``fury mode'' and break its neck, its jaw or just hop on and annihilate it under a hail of hairy fists.

There's also some brain work involved with Kong as well, as you have to figure out the best times to pick up and put down Naomi Watts' character, Ann Darrow.

However, the game isn't perfect. The first-person sequences can be a little too slow at times, especially when you're asked to scour landscapes for missing levers. I also encountered a few odd glitches, such as one of my team members simply standing in front of a T-Rex, waiting to be eaten (he was).

``King Kong'' isn't gaming's Eighth Wonder of the World, but it has shaken free of the chains that usually bind the quality of movie-based games. Perhaps future projects will learn a lesson or two about what Ubisoft did here.

KING KONG - Three stars

Platform: All systems.

Rated: T for Teen

In a nutshell: ``King Kong'' gets monkey off the back of movie games.

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Photo:

no caption (King Kong)