Kong: Survivor Instinct (PS5)
A game about traversing a city damaged by recent kaiju attacks is one with potential, seeing the actual wake of what giant monsters leave behind during their battles or contending with the creatures as they notice the survivors at the heart of Kong: Survivor Instinct. The choice of a headliner though is a bit odder, the big gorilla Kong certainly being made into more of a force to reckon with in recent films but he is still generally presented as a heroic character and one who doesn’t often cause much collateral damage even when he’s on a rampage. This side-scrolling platforming adventure does go on to justify him being a bit more ornery than we usually see him at least, part of it being he’s not alone in the attack on the city, the various giant monsters all adding new survival considerations for the story’s regular human protagonist.
In Kong: Survivor Instinct, the player finds themselves as David Martin who learns of the kaiju attacks on the city where his adult daughter Stacy works, and since he can’t get a hold of her to confirm her safety, he rushes off to try and find her. David isn’t the most charismatic leading man, his voice actor doesn’t add much emotion to him even during the occasional small moment where you encounter a survivor reacting to the kaiju crisis in their own way, but the plot about saving his daughter does at least take an interesting turn as you learn more about Stacy. This isn’t some journey to save a damsel in distress in the end, but its main purpose is surely to give David reason to traverse the city and run into the ruins caused by the various kaiju rampages. Despite Kong still being portrayed rather favorably, you get to see how he’s smashed apart homes in the suburbs and skyscrapers in the city, and while an evacuation did help clear out so many people it never gets outright grisly or depressing, you do see some bits that explore how living in a world of giant monsters would be for the fragile humans on the ground.
Taking some clear inspiration from the far more serious This War of Mine, Kong: Survivor Instinct sees you often walking through empty destroyed streets or clambering about building interiors that are viewed through a cross-section. Because of the devastation caused by the titans, structures are heavily damage and can even crumble a bit as you explore them, and if you want to use something like an elevator, you’ll might need to reactivate power for the area. Kong: Survivor Instinct does have some action portions, but exploring places and figuring out how to properly traverse them makes up the bulk of this platforming experience, making it perhaps more puzzle-focused than you might expect. You’ll need to find ways to account for missing parts of the structures you find yourself in and even begin to get tools like a sledgehammer to smash you way through damaged walls and flooring, most navigational challenges only asking you to consider a small nearby area but this game does near Metroidvania concepts when you occasionally end up coming back the way you came with new tools like a grappling hook that change how you can navigate a familiar space.
The constant little navigation puzzles are often a bit involved but not too difficult, often requiring you to move objects into the right place to climb to where you need to be or remove a hazard blocking your way. The different giant monsters that are attacking can shift how a place has been destroyed though, like one area being covered in massive spider webs that suspend objects in odd ways or another where the acidic gunk one kaiju produces serves as a frequent threat or even a blockage you need to find a way to clear. Kong feels a bit plainer than his titan companions in this story since he does just smash things, but in what ultimately proves to be around a 6 to 7 hour adventure, his section mostly demonstrates a more standard idea of city destruction while the other giant beasts get their more specific twists to how kaiju can cause unique issues. In an interesting touch, most sections of Kong: Survivor Instinct are actually you working towards calling on the giant monsters deliberately, David finding a device called the ORCA Σ he can use to lure the beasts to areas where the devastated environment needs to be cleared away. However, while he can often trick these titans into helping, the most exciting portions are where David has to contend with the kaiju as they threaten his life more directly.
During specific portions of the adventure, David finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time as the titans begin to wreak some havoc. Whether it’s directly pursuing David in anger or just happening to nearly crush him as they move about, you’ll need to put aside puzzle solving for a bit and focus purely on sprinting as best you can, navigating damaged buildings at speed with death a single brush with the beast away. You will die the moment the monster catches you and the giants can dominate a great deal of the space around you, meaning you do have to be quick and reactive but will likely die a few times figuring out these chase scenes. The repetition of the action can get a bit frustrating, but these sections are normally not too long and it is nice the game does not wish to compromise on this dash for survival. You are incredibly fragile and these titans can crush you even by accident without much work, and considering the damage elsewhere has built up the power of the kaiju so well, it makes sense that the game doesn’t budge and make the chases lenient just to make the overall experience a bit cleaner.
An area where Kong: Survivor Instinct does need to work on its action though are encounters with creatures much smaller than Kong. While there’s a few tiny monsters that usually are quick and unobtrusive, you are also contending with a group of terrorists known as the Hyenas who want that kaiju-summoning device David found back. They come at you with improvised weapons as well as actual ones, later enemies getting things like guns and riot shields to make them tougher and more deadly. You start off with simple weaponry like a pipe and can eventually get a firearm, although bullets are limited and sometimes used for puzzle-solving. A bullet used in battle will probably speed it up and Normal difficulty will eventually dish out a good deal more ammo than you need for navigation, but it doesn’t change that the battle system is pretty plain. A big focus is put on parrying physical attacks and dodging bullets, and neither requires too much thought to pull off with regularity. Most fights end up a bit dull, an interruption when you’re ready to move onto the next puzzle and the fight format doesn’t change too much no matter what point in the game you’re at. Admittedly, the regular navigation puzzles do need something to break them up, their design not always the most adventurous so even in the game’s current state they’re a bit repetitive, but the fights with the Hyenas really don’t bring much to the table save a chance to try and get some PlayStation trophies by killing them in unusual ways.
THE VERDICT: Kong: Survivor Instinct realizes its idea of navigating a city after (and sometimes even during) a kaiju attack well visually and in smaller moments, but the navigational puzzles as you explore the ruins do start to blur together as they rarely get too inventive. Breaking them up with the sections where you outrun the giant monsters adds some much needed excitement far better than the samey fights with humans, but at least the little platforming puzzles you encounter keep the game alive long enough for those big showstopper moments that help Kong: Survivor Instinct keep its head above water.
And so, I give Kong: Survivor Instinct for PlayStation 5…
An OKAY rating. Kong: Survivor Instinct isn’t a very daring game, but it also seems to understand that people who come to a Monsterverse game will want to see the big beasts beyond them just walking away from the wreckage you find yourself in. The chase scenes take on a few different shapes and make good use of the different titans, a burly animal like Kong attacks differently from an acid-spewing sea serpent after all. When they do show up it’s often a showstopper that shows the city destruction at its best, the player moving from seeing the rubble to experiencing it being made. Walking through the damaged structures gives a lot of quick puzzle-solving challenges that could afford to be more complex or varied but still keep you engaged better than something like the underwhelming Hyena conflicts. It would be easy to say the Hyenas should be excised entirely if they didn’t tie so heavily to the reason the kaiju rampages are happening in the first place, but it is possible they could work better as surprise dangers where one might spring out at you for a quick scuffle rather than a slow exchange of parries, dodges, and strikes. Even as you head to new areas with new considerations thanks to the ways the giant monsters have ruined things and what supplies you have gathered, Kong: Survivor Instinct can’t shake off its repetition too well, threatening to push it into Bad territory, although the game length means it doesn’t wear the gameplay down to that point. Some little optional bits of navigation for files and the like also give you little disruptions and reasons to explore a touch to reinvigorate it a smidge, but Kong: Survivor Instinct also misses the chance to get more emotion out of encounters with other people primarily because David isn’t really a great lead in terms of performance or personality. He’s very much an acceptable protagonist but not one you’ll think about after the game’s over, he’s there to be the playable part of this story that gives an interesting look at the toll of living in a world of titans but it’s mostly a surface scan rather than a deeper and well considered examination of it.
Kong has far more star power than the other names from the Monsterverse here to wreck the city so its no surprise he’s the one given top billing, and it is a bit fun to see the big gorilla go ape at parts when he’s normally not as much of a destructive force as the titanic company he keeps. However, you can almost find yourself wondering the same thing you do when watching giant monster movies, and that’s why won’t the kaiju show up more often to add some additional excitement? Ruin exploration does work well enough to tide you over here, but perhaps some extra time in the shadow of the massive beasts would help to energize this experience that does often threaten to get a little dull.