Unless you've been living in a black room for the last couple of months, you should know that the Academy Award-winning director of The Lord of the Rings has made a great remake of the classic movie, King Kong. And wanting to make a good game as well, Jackson had UbiSoft's Michel Ancel, the man behind games like Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil develop it this time. And that certainly was a wise move! The multi-platform game, Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, was released in December and got great reviews for the consoles, the Xbox 360 version included - but not on the handheld platforms.

The game dumps you in the middle of the movie. You're Jack Driscoll, the scriptwriter on Carl Denham's latest and, if his company had it their way, last movie. As you sail, with the rest of the crew, ashore to the notorious Skull Island, your boats are broken by falling rocks and, after a swift swim between nasty waves and stone faces of Kong himself, you stand upon the shore. The storm is over and the only way to rejoin your crew is through a lot of hungry creatures.

Right from the minute you first stand upon the shores of Skull Island, you feel like Jack Driscoll, a skinny and not quite regular hero, wet through and chilled to the bone after a hard swim from your boat. The waves are crashing on the beach, you're panting and you can hear something not-quite-human up ahead. You've only got a vague idea of who you're really playing, where you are and why, as the game didn't really bother to tell you that, but you do know one thing - you've got a gun and ahead there are monsters. With this being the basic thought of the game, you don't have to worry about anything else. Because right from you setting your foot upon the shore to Ann being sacrificed to the great gorilla, to the climactic end atop The Empire State Building - there's just you and the enemy.

From time to time you'll find a few simple puzzles, like turning a pole to open a gate, or setting fire to grass that's blocking your way (and yeah, grass is blocking your way). These are all very easily solved and do not play a very big role in the game. The ability to use other creatures as bait to draw out something bigger is a more useful feature, though. You've got dragonflies, swampcrawlers and small larval creatures that you can spear and use as bait. Simply throw a spear or bone with a helpless insect stuck on it and throw it in front of a black hole in the wall. And then shoot the head off the giant megapede that crawls out to feast. You can also use killed animals as bait - shoot something and then its partner will forget about you and start feasting on its fallen companion.

One thing that does, unfortunately, play a big part in the game is the scenes in which you control Kong. Twenty-five feet high, he can battle V-Rexes as if they were nothing but playful puppies. And, there being no Ann to save, you don't have to hurry. This just kills off the last drop of a challenge left in Kong. He's a bit hard to get going, but once he starts, he also takes quite a while to stop, so even though he was graceful in the other versions, here he steers like a too-big truck. The parts where he has to swing between trees protruding from the rock, you only have to press a single button - he handles the rest. The final levels in New York are way too easy, the greatest challenge being trying to find the right way to go. The game's main character is definitely Jack, so be happy when you're controlling him!

The people in your team - Hayes, Jimmi and Carl - they've all been cut out in this version. Even as Kong, when you have to save Ann in the home console versions, here there is no Ann to save! This means that there is no time limit, so you have all the time in the world to take care of the still starving dinosaurs. Some people might say that this is a good thing, since it gives you a lot of time to explore the locations. But it also makes the game unforgivably easy. You might sit, frustrated, swearing at the same megapede that bites you to death every time you round the next corner, but once you learn to throw your spear just right, you won't be troubled by it again. And after finishing the game (something which is achievable after just around 3 hours of play), you're likely to put it on your shelf and forget about it (unless, like me, you're stuck in Norway with nothing else to do). The extra point-scoring mode of play does not lengthen the experience drastically. And there being no multiplayer, downloadable content or even just a scoreboard, gives it the final push needed to be a dusty shelf-filling game.

Even though the team at UbiSoft didn't do much to lengthen the game, they worked really hard making sure every other bit of the game was great. And it is. Even though there are a few glitches in the graphics, like rocks cut in two by an unnatural-looking white line, the game manages to hold up quite well. Especially the sequence with the brachiosauruses (the long-necked ones) walking past you shows just how well the visual system is working, as you're filled with a sense of awe - they're that big!

The sound and general music of the game has been taken care of extremely skilfully as well. Despite using an original score, the game manages to catch the feelings from the movie just right - when you're meant to be scared, you're scared! If you're meant to be relieved, you're relieved! A lot of the game is centred around the sound as well. When you're close to death, all other sounds are tuned down to a minimum, and a woman sings, a lot like Boromir's death scene in The Fellowship of the Ring. It's not much, but it works amazingly well. I was delighted to discover that the excellent voice acting is performed by the actual cast of the movie, which further enhances the atmosphere. It's great to see this level of commitment from the filmmakers and cast, something all too often missed out in games of movies.

In the scenes as Jack, the controls are working surprisingly well. Walking sideways and back and forth with the analog stick gives you the right-hand buttons to control your view. This does not make your shooting beasts and anything else that comes your way, extremely accurate. But face it, throwing a spear at a pterodactyl, you're not guaranteed it's going to hit. The shoulder buttons are used for picking up the guns and spears that you find on your way. You also use them for shooting, keeping creatures at bay and other useful things, which are very easy to figure out. In around an hour you've learned the controls and are ready to rescue Ann from the hairy hands of a large, loving ape.

This game is one of the best shooters available for the PSP at the moment. Dripping with atmosphere, helped on its way by the breathtaking soundtrack and the creepy caves and majestic areas, it is a title well worth the price of a rental. Unfortunately, you should stick with that. The horribly short lifespan and the bad controls of Kong degrades this title from a must-have to a must-rent. But if you're planning on going somewhere and you've got about three hours of spare time, then make sure this game is in the back of your PSP! Because even though they didn't do much, most of what they did was right.

Reviewed by Niels Jakob Kyhl Jørgensen for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).