Review: Kong360: Gorilla Warfare (Xbox Live Indie)
Every once in a while, a couple of guys get together with the right tools, talent, and passion and create something truly remarkable. That’s exactly what Martin and Nicolas did to bring Kong360: Gorilla Warfare to life (with a little help from their friends).
This is an unapologetic deathmatch rampage fueled by shotguns and Molotov banana cocktails. Up to 8 players can compete over Xbox Live (or 4 locally via split screen) in either deathmatch, team deathmatch, or capture the flag modes. Some would be quick to classify it as a twin-stick shooter, but it’s really not. In traditional FPS style that defined the deathmatch genre with PC classics like Doom and Quake, you control your forward/reverse motion and left/right strafing with the left sick and you aim with the right stick. Cycle weapons with the bumpers and fire with the right trigger is all standard fare and very easy to pick up.
A quick tutorial is accessible via the main menu to give you not only the basics of the game, but also introduce you to all the weapons available and the wall-jump, optionally augmented with a katana slash to help you reach ledges you couldn’t otherwise.
A top-down view of a gorgeous cel-shaded 3D environment is extremely vibrant and pleasing to the eyes. You can swap out the default Jungle tileset for a Desert theme, which I preferred, for any of the game’s 23 (!) included frag-filled maps.
I have only two minor complaints about the game. The first is that aiming is a bit of a problem for me because hitting your target isn’t as simple as facing them. The multi-leveled nature of these 3D maps means often times you’ll be above or below your target so you have to position your aiming reticule over or at least near your victim to hit them. That’s fine and I think it adds a lot to the gameplay, but I’m used to “inverted Y-axis” controls for vertical aiming. So even though it’s a top-down perspective, I still pull back to aim “higher”. Apparently this is harder to explain that it is to experience, but a simple toggle button on the settings screen would solve my problem and I’d guess I’m not alone.
The other is the fact that this game is designed around an online community that, sadly, doesn’t seem to exist yet. I realize the game is very young, but I couldn’t find any other players any of the times I searched or hosted. I fear it may be a victim of the XBLIG medium because I honestly believe that as a full-fledged XBLA title, there would be plenty of players at any given time. It’s a very weird conundrum for an indie developer. Hopefully, though, exposure and word-of-mouth can help solve this problem because it really would be a shame to let just a fun and impressive game developed by a few passionate dudes wither away. To compensate and to help you hone your skills is single-player mode you can fill with extremely well-programmed bots of various skill levels and funny names (the_pwnerer, for example). Even at the default medium skill level, they’re smart and challenging. It really helps add to the game, but it’s just not the same as real life monkeys, you know?
