Kong: Survivor Instinct Review (Blazing Blight| Nanao Worshipper)
Kong: Survivor Instinct pits the player in a action survival scenario in which they must use their combat skills and wits to search for their daughter, using the ORCA Σ to call upon the some of the Monsterverse's mightiest Titans, yet the game fails short of it's main goals: showing a spectacle of the monsters, showcasing a meaningful story that properly ties itself to Legendary's decade-old franchise, expanding on the world-building, or providing a fast-paced action survival experience.
—The Good—
* The game controls and feels a lot like 11 bit studios' "This War of Mine" albeit faster, and for the most part, almost everything feels responsive.
* The Titans look mostly faithful to their onscreen counterparts, and the introduction to Titanus Abbadon is also a nice treat, especially since Godzilla: King of The Monsters introduced a lot of off-screen monsters we never really got to take a look at aside from a few exceptions in tie-in comics.
* The reintroduction of the ORCA as the ORCA Σ is a nice touch to the game, especially since it was shown how powerful of a device it was in both King of The Monsters and Godzilla vs Kong.
—The Okay—
* Combat is, more or less, meh. As previously said, the game feels a lot like This War of Mine, yet it feels like it lacks so much. For example, you can easily take out enemies if there are one, two or even three if they're all on the same side, but the moment they start coming from both in-front and behind, you have to put in the extra effort to get them all on one side, meaning you might have to use your resources more often.
* There's a lot of going back and forth, much like a lot of Metroidvania games, but it feels like it's really flat progression. Half the time, you're looking for biowaves to call upon the power of the Titans to move or destroy things and even then, it feels like you've achieved next to nothing.
—The Bad (and I mean, VERY BAD)—
* THE STORY. The story feels almost nonexistent and it feels like a wasted opportunity. The protagonist: David Martin, feels like your generic disaster movie protagonist with no redeeming qualities. He has absolutely no backstory or professional history and they try and portray him as this man who can do anything and everything, and it really takes away from the atmosphere. Alan Jonah has been reduced from mass-extinction bio-terrorist to one-off black market dealer. We're talking about a man who killed thousands, if not, millions of lives during his debut movie, and he's ultimately reduced from international's most wanted to Saturday morning cartoon villain from knockoff Jonny Quest. And the ending, THE ENDING. I'm not expecting anything, but THAT'S IT?! THAT'S THE ENDING?! I'D RATHER HAVE INSTANT CUTAWAYS LIKE IN GVK OR GXK!
* The Monsters. Remember when Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire came out and we were promised a buddy-cop dynamic from Godzilla and Kong from Adam Wingard after all the flack given to him for making the previous movie mostly Kong-eccentric, only to show Godzilla for eight minutes in the entirety of the film? Well imagine this, a 7-8 hour game to fully complete, and the most you ever get of the monsters is like...say five to ten minutes tops. The title is called "Kong: Survival Instinct" yet it feels like the monsters are heavily. HEAVILY underutilised. It feels like the Monsterverse brand was slapped onto an already in-development game 7Levels was already working on.
* The grappling hook is one of the worst mechanics in the game. Half the time you try to use it, it fails and even then, it is not good for any of the chase sequences.
* It feels like there are a lot of inconsistencies trying to turn this into a Monsterverse game, especially with one certain enemy unit.
*THE ENDING. The final act of the game is, and I barely say this, hot garbage. Despite the complaints I had about the story, I did enjoy it to some degree...until I got to the final stage. Never have I been so disappointed in any game's ending that I ultimately tried to refund it. And the worst part? The developers had movies, books, and even comics to work off of to make a satisfying narrative and they still fumbled the bag.
* The Pricepoint: at $24.99 USD, this is not a game I could recommend to others. As previously stated, it feels like the Monsterverse brand was slapped onto an already in-development game 7Levels was already working on. I'd probably pay $10 CAD at most for a game like this, especially since there are much better games by sole comparison.
—Conclusion—
This game falls short of what it was trying to accomplish as shown in the trailers. Kong ultimately got the treatment of being degraded to a side character like Godzilla was for the last two movies and 7Levels ended up releasing a knockoff This War of Mine with monsters slapped into it just to make a few dollars. I think this is one of the, if not, THE WORST piece of Monsterverse media to ever been released in the history of the franchise.