Ape Escape 2

Killing something in front of a pirate ship helps me vent childhood anger over Peter Pan.

From the bright colourful graphics to the cheesy youthful soundtrack, there’s no doubt that Ape Escape 2 was aimed for a younger audience, but yet as all good games should, it has a certain addictive appeal to a wider age range. I can’t say I wasn’t sceptical when I first booted it up; a ten year old protagonist against a mad scientist monkey, but after a few minutes of play, I realised that it stood a chance to keep me entertained, at least for a short while. Seven hours and twenty-one minutes of play time later (not in a row I might add), I was sitting through the end credits, wondering how I felt about this platformer.

A quick refresher

The Professor does Vegas. A lovely fmv sequence to earn.

For those of you who didn’t play the PSX original, Ape Escape 2 is an action platformer, where your character must jump around hitting enemies and finally capturing those that happen to be hairy primates. Carrying on from the first game, ‘The Professor’ has invented a type of hat for monkeys that will increase their brainpower, however once distributed to them, a dangerously evil monkey called Spectre took control of the monkeys and send them back in time where they are planning to take over the world… Planet of the Apes style.

Now after being returned to their rightful island, our hero, Hikaru accidentally sends out the hats again, and Spectre gets back into the swing of things, sending the monkeys to 20 distinct locations (coincidentally) where they are trying to repeat the events of the first. Naturally it is your job to capture all of the monkeys in your monkey net, using 12 pretty varied gadgets.

The Spice of Life

Help! Spectre's firing blue energy rings at me and it's breaking my cookies.

Surprisingly, even though the entire game is basically spent collecting monkeys in a net, there’s a pretty good variety in terms of gameplay styles. Naturally there are a host of enemies littering the various worlds that start off small but end up vast and full of surprises. Every few levels you’ll be challenged by one of Spectre’s henchmen in a boss battle, which are all very individual and mostly good ideas, unfortunately the battles do seem to follow a formula; Meet the enemy, lose a few blocks of health (represented by cookies), work out their attack pattern and finally beat the boss without any trouble, but of course this doesn’t mean that they’re not fun.

During the levels, as well as catching monkeys, you’re also encouraged to collect coins that are strewn around the levels and are revealed when enemies are killed. These coins are put in use once you return to the professor’s lab at the end of each level, as you can trade in ten coins for a random prize. These include the soundtrack, fmv movies from the story, concept art, various photos, stories and mini games, and will keep you collecting long after you’ve finished the game through once.

Monkey See, Monkey Dance

A rather fun little football game. Definitely worth a few minutes of your time.

The three mini games included do seem like more than a last minute addition to increase the durability by another hour or so. You can play Dance Monkey Dance, a clone of one of those arcade dancing machines where you have to step on certain pads in time with the beat, Monkey Soccer, naturally a slightly limited, but still amusing football game and finally Monkey Climber, a strange rope climbing game which I’ve still yet to get the hang of, not that I really want to.

During the main game, you can also play a kind of mini game whenever you take control of (destructible if you’re careless) vehicles with which to navigate through the levels, or destroy your enemies faster. Generally the controls for these feel as natural as the rather impressive control method for Hikaru.

As mentioned before, the graphics are cutesy and sickeningly but acceptably sweet. The animation seems like it’s been ripped out of a cartoon, which negates realism but enhances the fun, and although all of the levels are very varied in style (from Shaolin temples to Pirate ships and coves,) they generally haven’t got a very high poly count, which does however keep the frame rate up. The effects aren’t bad either, with the PS2’s blur effects being used successfully, and various other flashy beams and explosions looking great.

Sounds crazy to me

The Bananarang. Lure out monkeys from their hiding places with it's sweet aroma.

Chirpy over the top sound effects work strangely well in the game, mind you, with the craziness of luring apes out of tree houses with bananarangs only to hit them over the head with sticks and huge boxing gloves on springs finally making them disappear with a net, you can’t complain at a few zappy ray gun sounds.

The voices are performed well in general, again aimed at a young audience, but I do feel that the lead character could have done with a little more emotion. The music does however annoy me a lot. With frustrating instrumental samples (imagine a song where the main tune is performed with a sample that sounds like someone shouting ‘whoop’,) the music slightly lets down the rest of the game unless you take it for what it is, a soundtrack for people who will still be watching children’s television when Star Wars Episode 3 is released.

The themes themselves aren’t bad, and certainly appropriately hold their own with the various musical styles of each level. There is even a song with vocal lyrics in it, which one of the characters sings at some point (during a boss battle if you can believe that).

Angles

It's your home base! Play minigames or look at artwork and movies.

When playing through the game however, there are very few unreasonable challenges that are too difficult to overcome after a few tries, but the one factor that stands out as letting down the game is the frustrating camera system. Generally it works well, but occasionally you’ll need to see ahead, which requires the pushing of the L1 button. Then if you’re still turning a corner, you’ll need to hit it about five times more before you finally settle with what’s in front of you. I’ve got used to having to mash my L1 button to oblivion now, but every change of direction does still get on my nerves.

Again, again!

It's like my dream holiday... with monkeys thrown in for free.

I started by stating how short the main game was, but even though I’d reached the end credits, like GTA: Vice City, there is still plenty more of the game to play. Five hours more according to my playtime. After beating your nemesis, you can still continue the game and play through the levels again trying to capture all of the monkeys which unlocks one final boss, an extra fmv sequence and a replay of the end credits. If you’re still up for more, you can then play through the game again from the start with all of the gadgets available from the start, as the hero of the original game, which will reward diligent players with a sense of final completion.

I do feel that if you can get over the childish feel of the game, it could appeal to gamers of all ages, providing you’re up for a bit of platform action, but as kid friendly as the game is, I still can’t believe that after defeating the end boss the best line your character can come up with is ‘I’m going to spank you, monkey.’