Kong: Survivor Instinct may be the solution to your question about what the arcade classic Rampage would be like if you had to play as a small person instead of one of the goliaths who crush skyscrapers. At first glance, this 2.5D Metroidvania platformer looks a lot like a Shadow Complex from Shadow of the Colossus, set against the backdrop of a decaying coastal cityscape, where Kong and his kaiju fighters engage in combat. Although the idea is new enough, Survivor Instinct’s simplistic environmental puzzle design and uninspired combat prevent it from living up to the lofty heights of its concepts. I could not help but feel that Kong was having a lot more fun than I was as I reluctantly pushed crates and gathered keys to navigate through each abandoned urban rabbit hole.
Of course, playing as Kong would not guarantee a nice time; Skull Island: Rise of Kong, released in 2023, was such a complete failure that experts from the Monarch organization are likely still studying the consequences of its self-destruction. While Kong: Survivor Instinct is unquestionably superior to that game, it lacks the same level of inventiveness and player autonomy as other excellent games of its genre that were released recently, like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Blasphemous 2. This is especially true once the novelty of the iconic angry ape frolicking about in the middle distance wears off.
Additionally, it does not tell much more than “Do not get squashed by the monkey.” Amid the stunning, city-ravaging royal rumble that is currently sweeping throughout the West Coast of the United States, we play as David Martin, a single father searching for his missing daughter. David’s personality is essentially that of a middle-aged Nathan Drake who has seemingly lost his sense of humor (he deadpans “I was never fond of spiders” almost every time he kills a labrador-sized spider), and the few survivors he encounters along the way do not even attempt to pass as real people.
Additionally, the antagonist Alan Jonah makes a few cameos. He was last seen in Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 2019, where he was portrayed by a generally merciless and icy Charles Dance (also known as Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones), but his voice is a more muted soundalike. However, none of these things are really important because Kong: Survivor Instinct’s meager plot is crammed into its six-hour running time before abruptly and disappointingly coming to a head at the end.
For its six-hour runtime, Kong: Survivor Instinct’s meager plot is pushed to the brink.
Although the plot is mediocre, the decaying 2.5D surroundings’ appearance and feel are its strongest points. David’s journey takes him from the flaming suburbs to the ruined downtown and the enigmatic underground facilities below. Each run-down diorama is full of realistic depth and fine detail. Kong: Surviving When instinct repeatedly collapses the floor beneath your feet or dumps pieces of the roof onto your skull, it may be trying a little too hard to convince you that every structure you examine is unsafe. That gets old pretty quickly. There are some more intriguing platforming portions among them, though, as you may also make your way through the slanted hallways of an apartment building that Kong has violently upended, and skitter around the roofs of automobiles strung by the webs of a gigantic arachnid.
It is only unfortunate that a large portion of the adventure revolves around the same padlocked gate shooting and crate pushing. Kong: Survivor Instinct is relatively light-handed when it comes to changing how you interact with your environment, but the best Metroidvanias, such as Hollow Knight or Metroid Dread, gradually give you new tools and abilities that encourage you to go back through the world and unlock previously unreachable areas. However, David’s progression is always painfully obvious, consisting of the same repurposed circuit boxes to shoot or generators to repair, copied and pasted along the winding path toward each mission objective. In contrast, he is finally given a grappling hook to scale up to specific anchor points and a sledgehammer to smash through weak walls.
Since ammunition for David’s handgun is so limited, the battle is mostly designed for melee attacks, which is made less enjoyable by this general lack of inventiveness. You can use them as a human shield when their more heavily armed comrades open fire, or you can block or parry their blows to open them up for a counterattack. I was happy to learn that you can even shoot them in the leg to bring them to their knees so you can deliver a series of finishing blows a la Resident Evil 4. However, each class has a rigidity, especially when David is encircled. Because he can neither jump nor climb when in a combat position, there have been occasions when I have knocked an opponent off a ledge only to be unable to descend and carry on the battle. Unfortunately, I had to refresh my savings to continue.
Furthermore, Kong: Survivor Instinct just increases the number of enemies in each encounter while maintaining your combat skills in the same way, without introducing any intriguing new enemy types that call for you to modify your assault strategies. Although every other goon you see in the second half of the tale appears to be carrying a pump-action shotgun, David’s pistol may be upgraded to hold more rounds per magazine to assist in combat the swarming hordes. However, there are no other guns to locate. Overall, Kong: Survivor Instinct’s combat feels flatter than a kaiju’s couch cushion, especially when you take into account that there are not any boss fights and only a few little spider-like foes to deal with outside of the human troop kinds.
Raze the Roof
There are a few scenes in Kong: Survivor Instinct that are best characterized as boss flights, even though there may not be any conventional boss fights. You will be abruptly forced to escape when Kong or one of his rival giants spots you through a building’s window at certain moments in the narrative. The monster will punch you, creating holes the size of balls that you must avoid with precise platforming.(Unfortunately, Godzilla is not one of these titans.) Though they also require some trial and error to avoid sudden fatalities, which occasionally result in annoying repeated checkpoint resets, these parts undoubtedly add a rush of adrenaline and urgency to the quest. Even though these intense moments seem to have a seismic effect on the frame rate when playing on the PlayStation 5, witnessing one of these monolithic beasts unwrap the building you are trapped inside like a kaiju kid on Christmas morning is unquestionably one of Kong: Survivor Instinct’s most amazing tricks.
Regretfully, Kong and company only have a discernible influence on the action during certain periods. These goliaths are only ever seen in passing elsewhere, either during an accidental battle in the far distance or when you call one in a game of supersized simian Simon Says by gathering the necessary amount of waves strewn around each level to clear a blocked way towards a level’s exit. The key word here is “see,” because it is entertaining to see Kong nonchalantly pick up a connected row of train carriages like they are steel sausage links and brutally twist them apart. After these path-clearing operations are completed, the sluggish puzzle-platforming and uninspiring combat return.
The Verdict
Although it is an interesting concept to set a Metroidvania-style platforming game against a backdrop of creatures that destroy buildings, Kong: Survivor Instinct is not up to par with its impressive ensemble of kaiju cameos. Its characters and plot are poorly developed, its dilapidated urban playground is visually striking but not unexpected to explore, and its fighting does not change enough throughout the game to make the battles engaging. Though they are rare and only serve to briefly detract from the generally straightforward platforming, the sporadic room-rocking escape scenes do shake things up. The gameplay of Kong: Survivor Instinct is entirely one-dimensional, although Kong and his kind are from an alternate world tucked away deep inside the Earth’s core.
