MetaReview -- Peter Jackson's King Kong (DS)

It seemed that Ubisoft had a great thing going by tossing epic director Peter Jackson and gaming genius Michel Ancell into a room and allowing them to create the ultimate movie tie-in. The console versions of King Kong earned critical acclaim and even looked set to eradicate the dreaded movie-to-game curse that we've all suffered under for so long. Not content with that success, however, Ubisoft released the game on every single platform known to man and beast, a decision that may have left some employees in the lurch. Most specifically, the team that worked on the DS version, as they apparently saw fit to pluck this one straight from the lemon tree.

• IGN (30/100) "...the game draws Naomi Watts as having one big, heart-shaped nostril in the middle of her triangular nose. Jack Black looks like a burlap bag -- not even a burlap bag with eyes, just a sack out in the jungle."

• DS-x2 (33/100) "...if you didn't know that UbiSoft were behind the whole thing you'd swear that it had been produced as a first time shareware game."

• Gamespot (28/100) "The DS version of Peter Jackson's King Kong is a wreck, not because of the hardware's weaknesses, but because the developers just didn't put any effort or inspiration into their game."

Common complaints include boring level design, atrocious graphics, a lack of enemies, an abundance of programming glitches and poor collision detection. Oh, and you know the climactic part of King Kong that takes place in New York? That's a cutscene now.

Oh well, at least the movie was excellent.