The game has no health pick-ups. Instead, the player's health will regenerate if combat is avoided after being injured. This is now commonplace in action games, but was a fairly unusual practice in 2005.
Several creatures seen in the game do not appear in the film, such as the Scorpio-pedes (giant centipedes with upright tail pincers like an earwig). They did, however, appear in the extended version. The game also includes several lines of dialogue that only appear in the extended cut of the film.
To immers the player, the game has no traditional heads-up display. Health is shown by the screen slowly turning red and blurred as the player is injured, and ammo counts are done verbally by the player character.
Peter Jackson confirmed that some concepts seen in the game are actually ideas that didn't make the final cut of the film. The alternative ending is one of these, they were considering to include this but decide to stick with the original sad ending. So the game was a place for the concepts that didn't make the final cut to be shown to King Kong fans and gamers.
It was one of several "launch titles" for the Xbox 360 console.