Game: "Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie"

Console: PlayStation 2 (also on PC, PS3, PSP, Xbox, X360 and GameBoy Advance)

Developer/publisher: Ubisoft

Genre: First-person shooter

Number of players: 1

ESRB: Teen

Premise: Desperate to save his next film project from being shelved, Carl Denham (voiced by the always-hilarious Jack Black) takes drastic measures. He accompanies screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and other members of his film crew to the mysterious Skull Island.

Game play: The game with a ridiculously long title begins with screenwriter Jack opening his eyes as he's being transported to Skull Island. From here, you have full control of an excellent way to get the gamer immersed in the story right away.

Unlike other first-person shooters, there are no heads-up displays on screen. Your life is monitored by how red the screen flashes when you are attacked; Jack's stamina is measured by his breathing patterns and heart rate, detectable with the DualShock; remaining ammunition can be checked by hitting the circle button or through Jack's comments when you reload. This is a great system that brings an uncanny amount of realism and strategy, and tests your survival skills without making the game too difficult.

The game's controls are very easy to grasp, especially for shooting: one button for aiming, one for shooting, one for reloading. Plus, Jack's marksmanship is astounding, which compensates for even the clumsiest of players. You also get to play as King Kong several times, and his moves are just as simple: punching, running, grabbing and throwing. The execution is clunkier than Jack's, but cooler, especially when Kong snaps an enemy's jaws in half, rips its wings off or knocks a pterodactyl out of the air.

Good/bad: Being able to carry only one gun gets annoying, especially in tight situations with lots of enemies and deficient ammunition or a weak weapon. Sure, having a pistol with a few magazines is helpful, but if it takes several bullets to kill one enemy, it doesn't help much. This leads to having to replay certain areas several times, which turns into a time-consuming chore.

The biggest problem is the absence of replay value. There's absolutely nothing else besides the story mode, which will lose its appeal once you've seen the movie.

On another note, the attention to detail is astounding, most notably the excellent sound effects and score. The developers added a nice touch with the dinosaurs. If they eat you, the controller vibrates after the screen turns black (even prehistoric beasts needed to chew). The visuals are equally impressive. The environments were painstakingly done, which encourages a lot of sightseeing. Also, the character models are so realistic, it's almost scary.

My take: If only all movie-based games were this good. This is easily the best film-adapted title on the PS2, possibly ever if it weren't for N64's "Goldeneye." If the film is half as impressive, Universal Pictures is going to make even more buckets of cash.

Jeremy Castillo is a student at Windward Community College and editor of the college's newspaper, Ka 'Ohana.