Kong: Survivor Instinct Image
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57

Mixed or average reviews - based on 7 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: A sudden Titan attack prompts massive evacuation efforts-but not everyone makes it to safety before the devastation ensues. Caught in the crossfire between battling monsters, many residents become trapped in the collapsing city - your only daughter among them!

    Kong: Survivor Instinct is a
    A sudden Titan attack prompts massive evacuation efforts-but not everyone makes it to safety before the devastation ensues. Caught in the crossfire between battling monsters, many residents become trapped in the collapsing city - your only daughter among them!

    Kong: Survivor Instinct is a 2.5D action-adventure game that combines realistic platforming, challenging combat, and metroidvania-style exploration during a thrilling quest of survival worthy of the Monsterverse franchise.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 7
  2. Negative: 1 out of 7
  1. Nov 6, 2024
    75
    Kong: Survivor Instinct offers an interesting twist by putting us in the shoes of an ordinary man who has to rescue his daughter and not in the powerful primate side. It’s a well-executed Metroidvania based on the Monsterverse, with survival elements and a storyline focused on gritty realism. While it doesn’t aim too high, it manages to keep things interesting.
  2. Oct 22, 2024
    75
    Even with combat that falls short of expectations and little presence of its biggest star, Kong: Survivor Instinct manages to capture the concepts of the so-called Monsterverse well and offer a good human journey in the face of the destruction caused by these great titans, taking advantage of a universal quest narrative and typical exploration and puzzle-solving mechanics.
  3. 70
    Kong: Survivor Instinct is a solid enough Metroidvania. Don’t be expecting much in the way of Kong himself, as he and other titans are reduced to bit parts. You’ll be fighting off human antagonists, with the main baddie being Alan Jonah as previously played by Charles Dance. Combat is OK, but you’ll see little nuance in enemy encounters. The titan encounters are made frustrating due to miserly checkpointing, but we still had a fair bit of fun with this.
  4. Oct 22, 2024
    50
    It's a real shame because there's a promising premise here that could've delivered something unique beyond the usual 3D kaiju brawlers. For a human-focused story, it's unfortunate that more time wasn't put into this, and while exploration is passable, the gameplay soon falls into repetition. Unless you're a die-hard fan of Legendary's Monsterverse, it's difficult to recommend this over other Metroidvanias.
  5. Oct 22, 2024
    50
    Setting a Metroidvania-style platforming adventure against a backdrop of building-razing beasts is certainly an intriguing idea, but unlike its towering cast of kaiju cameos, Kong: Survivor Instinct itself simply doesn’t measure up. Its story and characters are underwritten, its ravaged urban playground is eye-catching but not particularly surprising to explore, and its combat fails to evolve enough to keep the fights interesting over the course of the journey. The occasional room-rocking escape sequences do literally shake things up, but they’re few and far between and only distract from the otherwise uncomplicated platforming for short bursts at a time. Kong and his kind may hail from an alternate world hidden deep inside the Earth’s core, but the actual gameplay of Kong: Survivor Instinct is strictly one-dimensional.
  6. Oct 22, 2024
    50
    Kong: Survivor Instinct looks rather nice, and its 2.5D action-adventure gameplay is somewhat enjoyable despite being quite basic. It's just a shame that there's so much clunky human-on-human combat, which is not fun in the slightest, and that manipulating its gargantuan monsters is simply a case of gathering collectibles.
  7. 45
    By backseating Kong and having a drab human narrative serve as the vessel for this game’s monotonous action, Kong: Survival Instinct ends up feeling like a colossal, kaiju-sized dud that does little to lick the wounds of last year’s Skull Island and, if anything, further dampens the great ape’s reputation.