Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj (Saturn) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Sega's 1996 license-based first-person shooter for the Sega Saturn, Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj.

Played through on the medium difficulty level.

Poor, poor Michael Crichton. RIP. His adventure/sci-fi novels were absolutely phenomenal. They were always supremely entertaining, thoroughly researched, and somehow managed to make the fantastic seem reasonable. He is one of my favorite modern authors.

I cannot say, however, that I share the same appreciation for the majority of games based on the movies that were based on his works.

Congo is a perfect example of this. The book was excellent. The movie was complete garbage that was saved only by how unintentionally ridiculous it was. The game is just as ridiculous as the film, but the biggest problem is that it expects you to participate this time. Oh no.

So then, how might you game-ify gorilla sign language and combine it with the consequences of corporate greed? The simple answer: you don't.

Congo really has little to do with the film, save for the setting. It sets itself up with a hammy FMV of the main character, a survivor from the trip shown in the movie, screaming about how he has no water and no weapons (though he clearly has both) and that he doesn't know if he'll survive. Then, after a loading screen, he grabs a heap of ammo and proceeds to sprint through the jungle unloading his pistol at anything that moves.

Wait, what?

Yup. The story blatantly contradicts itself within the first five minutes of the game. Thankfully, outside of a small bit of text between each level, the plot doesn't really make an appearance again until the ending that lazily tacks on a "well, that's over" sort of scene.

A lot of the early 32-bit games had the tendency to shovel terrible FMV at you to remind you that your game came on a CD, but many of them had good game play, as well. Congo, I assure you, does not.

It's a first-person shooter in the vein of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and the engine (recycled from Ghen War) does allow for some interesting terrain-deforming effects and a fair amount of verticality in the level design. The framerate is generally quite jittery, though, and the levels are so thoroughly covered in 2D sprites of bushes and trees that it's virtually impossible to see where you are going or what is attacking you without constantly watching the minimap, and the enemies (all made of 2D sprites) are not only completely at odds with their environments, but they look ridiculous. They all look like cheap rubber props, and since there are so few enemy types in the game, you'll be seeing a lot of clones. It's not good when your final boss is a palette swap of an enemy you saw in the first third of the game.

The gameplay is pretty poor as well. The controls are straightforward and intuitive, but the wildly inconsistent framerate has a direct impact on their sensitivity. On one stage you might take a solid second to do an about face, whereas on another it happens almost instantaneously. The enemies are programmed to swarm you when you pass certain invisible boundaries, and though they don't do much besides walk into you and grunt, this can end you quite quickly. They don't make any noise during their approach, so good luck not getting trapped in corners while exploring. It's hard to avoid, and usually it will kill you. Fun.

Overall, I have to say I had some fun with it because of the camp factor, but Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj is ultimately just as disposable as the film its based on, and just as laughable as its ridiculous name might lead you to believe it is.

What possessed me to play this? Who knows? I suppose, as people like to say on Craigslist, my loss is your gain. At least I hope it is more entertaining to watch than it was to play. I don't know how it couldn't be.

Btw, the quiet spot during the intro was muted because of that stupid chanting in the background. YouTube identified it as "Amy's Song" or some such nonsense from the movie soundtrack, and since it was nothing more than some drums and some yelling, I axed it.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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