Kong: Survivor Instinct Trailer Showcases the Worst of the Monsterverse

Video Games

The Monsterverse – the series of giant monster movies from Legendary Studios featuring Godzilla, King Kong, and other famous movie creatures – is making its video game debut (aside from some web and mobile games), and it’s got the same feel as the movies: very little of the monsters but lots of people nobody cares about. Today, PlayStation released a trailer for Kong: Survivor Instinct, a new action platformer from Polish developer 7Levels in conjunction with Legendary. Taking place “shortly after the events of Godzilla vs. Kong,” Kong: Survivor Instinct puts you in the shoes of a survivor of a recent monster attack who must navigate his destroyed city in search of his missing daughter. Based on the trailer, there’s a lot of climbing, jumping, and brisk walking, some marauding fellow survivors to fend off, a giant rampaging spider to avoid, and King Kong shows up for a brief appearance here and there. Kong: Survivor Instinct will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam in the fall of 2024, and you can wishlist it on all platforms now. You can see the trailer below:

Well, if nothing else, I guess I have to give Kong: Survivor Instinct credit for accurately representing Legandary’s boring, unduly pretentious, aggressively unsatisfying Monsterverse. On what planet did anyone involved in developing this game think people would want to play a King Kong game as a human? Did you ever play Rampage and wish you were one of the people fleeing the buildings George, Lizzie, and the Wolf destroyed? Of course not, because that sucks. You wanted to be your favorite monster, smashing everything in sight and fighting the puny military that thought it could stop you. But this is Legendary’s Monsterverse, the franchise built steadily on denying the audience for monster movies the satisfaction it craves. Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla took perverse pleasure in cutting away from the action to show Aaron Taylor-Johnson studying cave walls or his son eating chicken nuggets. Godzilla: King of the Monsters was even worse, giving us a glimpse of Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra fighting Ghidorah in majestic visuals before leaving them behind so Kyle Chandler could drive his kids around in his pickup truck. At least Godzilla just wasted those lame new creatures; King of the Monsters threw away Ghidorah, the ultimate Toho Godzilla nemesis. Interestingly, the movies featuring King Kong are better, showing plenty of giant ape action, albeit with lousy storytelling and flat, dull characters. (Kong: Skull Island wasted some amazing actors, with only Samuel L. Jackson being given much to work with.)

Kong: Survivor Instinct appears to break that trend, with the video game sidelining King Kong and his city-flattening opponents to allow you to play a dad jumping from rooftop to rooftop looking for his daughter. The gameplay glimpses in the trailer look dull as dishwater, so much so that I wouldn’t even describe it as basic. It’s just a slow progression through what appears to be uneventful action (in the loosest sense of the term), something you’d do to waste time in a dentist’s waiting room as opposed to a fun activity on a weekend. Even the fights with whoever it is you’re fighting are slow and don’t feel like they have any danger or urgency. Those fleeting glimpses of King Kong and the giant spider are almost insulting in that they tease what this game should have been, assuring you that you’ll never know the fun of controlling cinema’s most beloved ape (sorry, Caesar) as he battles vicious creatures and knocks down buildings. When I first saw the trailer, I was all set to say, “Well, it’s better than that other recent King Kong game,” but at least in that game, you get to play as King Kong.

Let us know what you think of Kong: Survivor Instinct in the comments!