You’d be bannanas to even give this a glance
Is it a remake? Is it a sequel?! No, it’s a spin-off featuring the Playstation Move…damn. Arguably my favourite platformer of the PS1 era, Ape Escape was a fun and frenzied catch-’em-up revolving around the prospect of lunatic monkeys lost in time. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep up with the series thanks to absences of certain portable consoles and the detonation of my PS2, so the prospect of a motion control orientated is something I’m somewhat dubious to.
When spaceships start slamming into the Earth, everyone braces themselves for the worst. Yet the occupants of the UFOs aren’t blood thirsty aliens hell bent on taking over the world, but rather pants addicted, mind-controlled apes…hell-bent on stealing our supply of bananas, leaving the planet frenzied as if they’re in some sort of famine of the yellow fruit. When a spaceship comes crashing into your own home, however, it’s lucky you have a pair of sibling neighbours who have some clue what’s going on in.
What entails is the usual wacky undertones of the original series with the two neighbourly sisters chucking in stories about how their grandmother has mysteriously disappeared, trying to churn out the tears from your confused eyes. It’s very hard to stomach, and to say the plot is over ambitious in trying to make you laugh and cry is an understatement that’s enough to halt your progress before you start some net swinging antics.
I would’ve been happy shelling out on a navigation controller if it meant being able to run about and snag monkeys to my hearts content, but no, Ape Escape is a strictly on-rails catch-’em-up. Thrown into various eras of time, you’ll be chucked into a shopping trolley and pushed along to batter obstacles with a fan or shoot monkeys donning machine guns with your slingshot. The pace is terrible, slowing you down to near stoned snail-pace levels, and feels like you’ve been leashed and paraded around slingshot in hand like Denace The Menace has been brought to shame.
This whole concept was done a million times better back in 1999
Eventually, the amassing amount of primates force you (or the automatic rail system) to halt, and clearing them out requires some good old fashioned monkey hunting. Donning your net, you’re pretty much just required to wait until the pesky primates get close enough to be snagged by a flick of the motion controller. It feels slightly fresh, just because you’re not pelting everything in sight to progress, you actually have to lie in wait for the little buggers to get within reach.
The controls are actually pretty respectable, mimicking your actions near perfectly so well down to the tee that it has something of a hissy fit if you don’t know how to fully encase an ape. Ape Escape is quite the critique when it comes to net flinging technique, as not slamming your net down fully means that nothing occurs. It’s a frustrating process at first, as the game doesn’t make it clear what a successful swing consists of, but once mastered, it’s pretty easy to swipe away and blitz through the levels.
Overall however, the game just doesn’t entirely fit together practically. When you’re faced with an army of monkeys, it’s nigh on impossible to juggle gadgets to suit the situation. Throughout the whole game, especially in later levels, you’ll be reprimanded by tons of monkeys, some that need stunning with slingshots and some that directly need catching. It’s certainly challenging, but unless you have the reflexes of a ninja wizard, it’s impossible to stop the health sinking away. Boredom soon turns to frustration if you’re gunning for high scores, seeing as clean runs are just too difficult with the amount of gadget juggling needed, and with the addition of having to look around with the O and X buttons, the controller becomes littered with commands which make the otherwise simple affair exceptionally hard to traverse.
The mini-games on offer are barely anything to rave amount. In fact, a now standard ape karting mini-game just adds salt to the wound by forcing you to shell out on that bloody navigation controller so desperately needed for the main game. These bite-size ape based shenanigans are even more shallow than the main game itself, the only saving grace being they actually promote co-op play rather than lumbering you on your own.
The graphics are brilliantly lush and vibrant, and fit in superbly with the series’ aesthetic. Should Saturday morning cartoons start getting the Pixar treatment and going entirely 3D, Ape Escape should be used as a template for all animators. Though it’s doesn’t push the boundaries of the PS3, nor reach any high bars with its graphical quality, it hits a brilliantly basic balance of lush environments without being too sickly sweet for anyone with an age in double digits. The games’ colourful setting is evident as soon as you start up the disc, much like the overly energetic soundtrack, sounding like it’s coming from an organist on a mile long electric keyboard, hooked to an IV of Pop Rocks, Coke and cocaine. Though the graphics may be funny to look at, the soundtrack is certainly so sugary and hyperactive that it’s rather hard to stomach, much like the manga fuelled performances of the two sisters who accompany you in your adventure. If it weren’t for the frustrating difficulty combined with the impracticalities of the controller, you’d be pretty sure this was aimed straight at kids rather than the old fans of the franchise.
Any word of the franchises revival was sure to get any Playstation fanatic bright eyed, and yet the missed opportunity that Ape Escape is makes it a very severe knuckle-duster coated fist to the face of my poor inner child. There’s hardly any fresh content, a disappointing lack of trophies, gameplay that simply doesn’t work without the help of a navigation controller, mini-games that are incredibly poor, and above all, this whole concept was done a million times better back in 1999. There are Playstation Move demos that are better than this budget title, this seems to have been released just to fuel anger and create a few pointless angry online petitions to bring back the real Ape Escape.
The Bad: Gameplay grates all the more the longer you play, Dismal mini-games, Controller feels overloaded with commands
