Skull Island: Rise of Kong

Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a boring, buggy, totally unambitious game that isn't even interesting in its failures.

The game barely qualifies as playable given its myriad of technical issues, but even when it is working as intended, you'll wish that it wasn't.

Skull Island: Rise of Kong has badass cover art, and that's the only good thing you can say about it. I've played plenty of bad games in my life, but this just might be the worst.

Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a truly awful, mundane and strangely perplexing to traverse linear experience where Kong deals with deep emotional trauma.

It’s the kind of game that makes the case for some sort of independent trading standards body in the game industry. I say this with all due gravity - The Game Mill should not have been allowed to sell Skull Island: Rise of Kong. In an industry with adequate customer protections, it should be recalled.

I was sure Skull Island: Rise of Kong was going to be a surefire disaster of biblical proportions, but its Xbox Series port just ended up being a halfway competent, albeit an utterly mediocre platformer. It has some borderline acceptable controls and performance, but is marred by poor level design, uninteresting combat, hilarious cutscenes, and possibly the worst sound design to be included in a commercially released video game.

Skull Island: Rise of Kong, more than anything else, feels like a hollow attempt at cashing in on the Kong brand. The game has no real redeeming quality aside from the fact that it didn't accidentally set my PC on fire, and it can't even bother to be the kind of bad where it's interesting, rather, just being bad enough to be a boring waste of time.

Ultimately, while respecting the work of the developers, we are sorry to tell you that yes: to date, Skull Island Rise of Kong is without a shadow of a doubt the worst game of 2023.

Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a bug-filled mess that's defined by an empty world with no exciting gameplay. With no simple QoL features like a useable map, it's a pain to complete each level. For $40, there's not a chance Rise of Kong is worth your money or time.

Skull Island: Rise of Kong is a bad title, an obscene glorification of one of cinema's most famous monsters, a video game that is simply unacceptable in every respect. Don't buy it, unless you want to spite yourself or some of your enemies.