Beat your chest with joy! This is the true king of the jungle...

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Peter Jackson's King Kong. An out-and-out rollercoaster ride in film and - more specifically in this case - game form. A piece of masterfully executed entertainment, designed to spin you round, flip you over and leave your broken, bruised and physically exhausted body drenched in a thick, steamy sheen of fun sweat. A non-stop action blast that forces you to run for your life from Prehistoric monsters, fight cannibals armed with nothing more advanced than sharpened animal bones and beat your hairy chest as the largest simian ever to walk the Earth. And yes, if you haven't guessed already, we rather enjoyed it.

Needless to say, in the interest of safety we ask that you sit down, fasten your seat belts and ensure you keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times. Things are about to get very hairy indeed...

Okay, seriously, who better to take us on such a ride than Peter "Lord Of The Rings" Jackson, a man best known for creating some of the most jaw-dropping cinematic experiences on record? Never has the rollercoaster analogy been more appropriate. King Kong is a game that buffets you from one adrenaline rush to the next, a virtual freefall of fun that'll have the tears streaming from your eyes as you hurtle forwards, powerless to do anything but sit there and shriek. Like the old carnival shout goes, "Open your knees and feel the breeze: scream if you wanna go faster!"

The plot, for those of you completely unfamiliar with the whole King Kong shebang, is pure monster movie fluff. It's the 1930s, and filmmaker Carl Denham needs a big-screen hit badly. In desperation he and his scriptwriter Jack Driscoll, along with leading lady Ann Darrow, charter a ship to mysterious Skull Island in the hope that the previously unexplored island will prove a fitting location for his next big picture. Unfortunately, Skull Island turns out to be a rain-lashed jungle populated by giant insects, dinosaurs, a freakish tribe of natives and, of course, one oversized gorilla with a serious attitude problem. Cue the immaculately choreographed kidnap of scream-happy Ann by the locals as a sacrifice to giant ape KKong, leaving you, as hero Jack, to rush across the jungle and rescue her from her big hairy captor.

So it's an action game, then, and a first-person one at that. But it isn't just a first-person shooter. As much as it might appear that way, most of your time spent as Jack is spent running from the lethal monsters that populate Skull Island. It's like the bushtucker trial from hell. That, and simply being astounded by the brilliant atmosphere and set-pieces of the game. Like the first time you see Kong for instance, his huge form appearing from the mist to scoop the bound and chained Ann away from you. Or watching Carl get swept up by giant flying reptiles (followed by a desperate scramble to rescue him). Not forgetting the awesome sequence that has Jack desperately fighting off a pack of predators while dodging the giant moving legs of a passing herd of brontosauruses.

Find one of the incredibly scarce ammo dumps spotted about the island, though, and you get to let rip with an assortment of period rifles and machine guns. And when the ammo runs out - and it will, frequently - there are plenty of native spears lying around. And fire, and therein lies one of King Kong's nicest touches. It's not just about shooting monsters in the head: you have to be more thoughtful than that, luring them away with bait, or setting fire to bush-clogged escape routes. And the further it goes, the more convoluted it gets, with some levels forcing you through several steps just to shift a flame from one end of a valley to another.

The other reason King Kong isn't really a first-person shooter is that every few levels or so you'll briefly switch control from Jack to Kong himself, and that's when things get interesting. Played out from a third-person view, being Kong means having the awesome destructive power you'd expect of a mythical giant monkey. What was lethal or impassable to Jack becomes child's play for Kong. Huge canyons can be jumped in a single bound, giant boulders chucked about with ease and fearsome T-Rex's can be mangled and broken with hairy fists of steel. It's like being a God among monsters and it's this raw sense of power alone that makes King Kong worth playing.

What's most amazing though is the sense of involvement King Kong gives. Here is a game that sucks you into its world like nothing else. This isn't just a game 'aping' its big screen influence: for all intents and purposes Peter Jackson's King Kong on Xbox is Skull Island, a virtual world full of danger and excitement. From the stormy waves surrounding its shores to the peak of Kong's mountain at its centre, every square inch of Skull Island is laid bare - and it's all thanks to one tiny, if blindingly obvious, trick. By completely ditching the on-screen interface, King Kong starts to resemble a film far more than it does a game. And not just any film, but one that you're the star of.

It's so brilliant that we can't help wondering why this hasn't happened more before. Want to know how much ammo you've got left? Simply hit a button and Jack tells you. "Three magazines on back up! he'll or often - more worryingly - "Damn! I'm dry!" Likewise, there's no health bar of any kind, just a simple visual sign to help you keep track of things: if you're hit and take damage the screen goes red, things slow down and the music takes on a strange choral motif. Get hit again while like this and you die, but if you manage to survive long enough, things will go back to normal. And that's it. Simple, but effective.

It's amazing how such a little thing can help draw you into the game, but King Kong's lack of head-up display is its masterstroke. Even mission objectives are spared any kind of boring on-screen text. Instead, like Half-Life 2, everything is portrayed through cut-scenes you actually take part in. Either it's obviously clear what needs doing (hold off the giant T-Rex to give your friends enough time to move the gate baring your escape), or your companions will shout instructions to you, generally while trying to fight off an aerial barrage of vicious pterodactyls, or wading through neck-high swamp filled with vicious mutant crocodile-things.

If there's anything to complain about, it's that King Kong is unbelievably linear - so linear as to feel like it's played out almost entirely on rails. Every level carefully guides you from one set-piece to the next along a predetermined path; there's no free-roaming exploration or multiple routes to take here. Then again, given how plot- and narrative-driven the whole game is, it's only to be expected. Besides, King Kong is a rollercoaster, remember, and once you're strapped into its dizzying freefall from one heart-thumping chase scene to the next that's it. There's no getting out of this rail car mid-ride.

While the constant stream of monsters and fire-transporting puzzles during the first-person sequences helps to distract from the linearity, the same can't be said for Kong himself. What at first seems a genuine thrill, punching velociraptors and running along mountainsides (sequences that have obviously been adapted straight from Ubisoft's Prince of Persia games), soon reveals itself to be a basic fight engine with limited moves, and a running and jumping section that's so linear it amounts to little more than holding up and tapping jump. Picking up tree trunks. to crush weedy natives is undeniably fun, but once you've played one chapter as Kong, you've pretty much played them all.

Nor is King Kong a particularly long game, its 40-odd chapters amounting to a mere six or seven hours of gameplay in total, especially when what's on offer is so compelling that you simply have to keep playing to see what happens next. Admittedly, the chance to replay completed chapters for points to unlock bonus extras helps, but it never really compares to the thrill of exploring Skull Island first time round.

But that's us moaning just for the sake of it. It's our job. Sorry. What we really should be emphasising is just how many amazing things there are here. Like the constant driving rain that gives Skull Island its creepily brilliant atmosphere. Or the incredibly lifelike monsters. Or the awesome music, speech and sound effects. Or the fact that King Kong perfectly captures the likeness of its famous stars (Mmm, Naomi Watts...). Even the ending, which admittedly feels something of a let-down given the fact we all know what happens to Kong when he climbs the Empire State Building (don't we?), can't tarnish our Kong-sized enthusiasm for this fantastic game.

Xbox owners have a lot to thank Peter Jackson for. It's clear that if it wasn't for him, or his personal enthusiasm for games in general, King Kong wouldn't have been nearly the professional or polished product it is. Instead of the weak, rushed, generic pap that's usually slopped out from the movie-to-console games bucket, Peter Jackson's King Kong not only looks and sounds exactly like the film on which it's based, but expands upon the big-screen version in all the ways a decent console game should. Never has celluloid transferred so well to Xbox since The Chronicles Of Riddick blew everyone away. Okay, so King Kong's short, principally on-rails and the ending doesn't quite live up to the gut-wrenching excitement of the middle, but isn't that always the case with the greatest rollercoaster rides?

Put simply, King Kong is going to the biggest thing this Christmas since Jesus invented presents. Better still, it's every bit entertaining as its hairy star is huge. Whether you're watching the movie or playing the game, our advice to you is the same: sit down, buckle up and hold tight - you're about to go on one hell of a ride.

1. Perfect realisation of the film's look, style, pacing and atmosphere. Once you start, you're off on a rollercoaster ride of thrills and spills.
2. Movie-to-game conversions rarely have this much thought and effort put into them. Supremely polished and breathtakingly playable.
3. The sense of strength and power you get when playing as Kong is amazing. You really will feel like you can bench-press 50-odd tons.
4. The use of sound effects, voices and music from the film sucks you into the action perfectly. You won't ever want to leave Skull Island.

1. Linear, over too quickly, the ending feels lame, and Kong's control can be a bit random in places, but these feel like minor complaints.

The perfect Xbox accompaniment to the rollercoaster film. Short, but still Peter Jackson at his jaw-dropping best.