Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I’m not entirely impressed with the new King Kong game by Ubisoft on the PC. Visually, the game is pretty to look at, and that’s all I feel it has going for it right now. I grabbed the high-res version from Direct2Drive as opposed to the standard edition that was offered, as my computer is decent enough to handle the enhanced features. For that, I was looking forward to the cinematical adventures that await me.

I’m really shocked with the poor controls and game play thus far. The demo seemed to play smoother than the full retail copy I just bought. The lagging mouse movements really bother me. It’s not smooth like a lot of the popular FPS out there. Trying to move and look around is as finicky as a game would be in the very early stages of development. There’s only one mouse sensitivity setting but it really doesn’t help.

Aside from the mouse issues, when you start out in the game, you must get inside the island from the outside cliffs by climbing stairs and opening gates. I’ve noticed a lot of serious bugs throughout this portion. At one point the characters/actors that assist and guide you won’t respond to the progressive story point cues. For example: upon one saved game level I loaded, you (Jack) require a bit of help from another character to turn the lever in order to open a gate. Well there was one instance when this guy wasn’t even there! A second reload of the game revealed the character this time, but he wouldn’t budge, nor would the girl or the guy with the camera – sorry I forget their names. Another example is right at the very beginning of the game where you land on the island. I saved it here and came back to this point a few hours later. The characters were gone! I could hear their voices shouting “Jack! Jack where are you?” I looked everywhere for them but no where to be seen. King Kong is VERY buggy to say the least, and is in desperate need of a patch. I’ll give you another example of this first person monkey glich-fest; I needed to light of bush of sticks on fire with my spear in order for a platform to fall and an opening to appear. One of the characters started having what appeared to be a vertical seizure and he wouldn’t stop. Although humorous, it was not my idea of what a big budget, high profile game should act like.

I have to say I’m really disappointed with the rough game play and bugs this game is full of right now. It was nothing like how the demo played out originally. This game does have potential with a good patch job to turn things around though. There is one thing that just dawned on me while writing this review. When I was downloading the game from Direct2Drive, I noticed that in the URL, the game came from a sub-directory called “betas”. Now I know better than to take that literally, they wouldn’t make you pay for a beta release now would they. But I think it has some truth behind it. Right now, I give King Kong two hairy thumbs down.

*UPDATE: Mark from King Kong Lives tells me that the High Def version I obtained has a lot of bugs…no kidding! Thanks for the heads up though Mark. I can sleep a bit better now. If I had known this I would’ve bought the standard edition instead. I do hope a patch arrives soon.