Ape Escape Review

Game: Ape Escape

Developer: Sony Computer Entertainment: Japan Studio

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Available on: PlayStation 3 (Move controller required)

Once upon a time there was a platform game called Ape Escape. It was a bat-shit crazy tour-de-force of nonsensical monkey-grabbing, gadget-using, time-traveling wackiness. It was also the first game on the PlayStation that required two control sticks to play, making it a Trojan horse that allowed the now ubiquitous DualShock controllers to infiltrate the living rooms, bedrooms and games rooms of the world.

More than ten years later, Sony and the Pipo Monkeys have re-appeared in a new guise on the latest Sony machine. This time, they require you to grab out your flash, new Move motion controller and start wafting your Time Net at those damnable simian pests, orchestrating yet another Ape Escape. Will this game do for the PlayStation Move what the original Ape Escape did for the DualShock controller?  Only time will tell.

STORY: You can’t beat a little bit of harmless gibberish, and that is exactly what the Ape Escape storyline provides in abundance. Alien invasions, a maniacal talking monkey called Specter, female scientists who trip over each other, Ape Escape Move’s plot is a cross between The Cartoon Network, a Japanese game-show and a trip to the zoo on acid.

In the cold light of day, the story has very little bearing on what happens in the game. It certainly does little to explain why the player is chasing monkeys around a haunted house or why there is a monkey spa-break hotel on an island only accessible by UFO. It is sufficiently irreverent and non-sensical for us to conclude that it is best not to discuss it in polite company, lest you be dragged off to monkey psychological clinic halfway up a mountain, only accessible by magic carpet. Moving on.

GRAPHICS: From the minute you calibrate your move controller and a tiny green monkey head screams at you from the middle of the screen it is clear that this is an Ape Escape game. The visuals retain the intense colour and stylised simplicity of previous Ape Escape titles, and the levels are jam-packed with moments and details that grab your eye.

The Apes themselves are the stars. Although they will be instantly familiar to fans of the series, they are still wonderfully animated. Watching the monkeys struggling and and scrambling to avoid the mighty sucking power of the Ape Vacuum is a moment that can’t fail to raise a (borderline sadistic) chuckle. Each monkey has their own name and most have a unique style, all of which are viewable in the “Monkeypedia”, and add to the game’s charm.

Despite this vibrancy and personality, the visuals hardly mark Ape Escape Move out as being a technical masterpiece. Items in the distance, particularly the different bunches of bananas, are hard to distinguish, which leaves the levels colourful and detailed but somewhat flat. Other items in the player inventory, like the banana-izer (a gun that, you guessed it, turns everything into bananas) do not illicit funny animations from the Pipo crew or even give off a particularly thrilling pyrotechnic display, which is disappointing.

So, visually, Ape Escape is a mixed bag of bananas. Playful visuals full of personality are let down simply by being very basic, and opportunities for some exhilarating visual moments are wasted.

SOUND: Ape Escape has a unique and instantly recognisable personality, something that many bigger franchises could only dream of. Although it’s nowhere near the same level, its familiarity has an almost Mario-like quality. This is certainly true of the game’s audio, which is full of cheeky, ludicrous monkey chatter, crazy noise and dog whistle-high voices that shout, squeal and squawk throughout the game. It adds to the foundation of fun that the visuals have laid but, like the visuals, the in-game audio does pay the price for being a budget release. Because the action is almost all in front of you, surround effects are minimal. Off-screen apes are never identified with directional audio (an on-screen visual prompt has to suffice) and the music is totally forgettable.

Despite being in-keeping with the tone of the game, the voice acting is stilted and players will find themselves skipping cut-scenes that they have not watched before to get through the clunky dialogue and cries of “Oh! It’s SPECTER. Go on, get him. Quick!”. After a while, it does get a little tiresome.

Aside from the basic sound effects, the player also gets the chance to star (a little) in Ape Escape. A “record” function will take the player’s voice and turn it into a sound effect which activates when a monkey is caught. The game asks you to say “GOTCHA” but, frankly, any good expletive will do.

GAMEPLAY: So, Ape Escape is a PlayStation Move based on-rails game, where the player has to catch a variety a wacky Pipo monkeys who seem intent on causing havoc and stealing bananas. Initially, its abundance of personality makes it very easy to like Ape Escape. The levels are simple enough and all provide an excellent playground for using the stash of gadgets available to the player, the highlight of which is the aforementioned Monkey Vacuum.

The gadgets, though, are fiddly to use. The slingshot in particular forces the player to adopt a peculiar position with the controller (arm straight out in front, ready to be drawn back) that does not jibe well with the stance they must take up when holding the net (a much lower stance, arm in at the waist, just like … holding a net). Considering how quickly the player must switch between the two to maximise their score, (an important factor to the game’s longevity), this should have been handled better.

Using a single Move wand also makes the controls quite “button heavy”, with button presses controlling weapon switches, weapon activation, changes of view angle and more. The only motion control is swinging the net and loading the slingshot which feels a little unimaginative, and gets repetative after a while. This is a real shame because Ape Escape is loaded with imagination elsewhere.

The game also lacks variety. In fact, with its wacky control mechnaism, it feels very much like it is taking cues from late nineties arcade titles. All the tools are made available to the player immediately, so the excitement is all experienced straight away, before the difficulty ramps up to keep the player interested. A lot has changed since these mechanisms were mainstream, and there is a good reason why arcades are going out of business; those experiences are just not satisfying any more. This sort of lightweight experience just doesn’t cut it against other titles on the market, motion-control or not.

LONGEVITY: How long this game will last is an interesting question. On the one hand, it is not a huge game, with only eight levels and a handful of mini-games to explore. On the other hand, whilst the levels are easy, getting gold medals on those levels is no easy feat, with high scores requiring a degree of perfection and chimp-combo-ing skill that only a seasoned Move master will muster.

But therein lies the problem. Who is this game really aimed at? Adults might enjoy the challenge offered by getting gold medals and topping leaderboards, but how long will they put up with this kind of cutesy fare when Killzone 3 and the forthcoming Resistance 3 will give challenge, competition and medalling in spades? Younger kids will probably love the character, graphics and sense of fun, but how long will they stick with the game if the medals are overly taxing or the fiddly controls require too much dexterity? Maybe this is doing the younger generation a disservice, but Ape Escape Move does feel like a game that is trying to appeal to absolutely everybody who owns a Move controller and in doing so, not really appealing to anyone.

A single player experience with a lightweight story and tacked on mini-games that is bolstered by unappealing and incredibly basic multiplayer elements leaves Ape Escape Move feeling like another tech demo for Sony’s hardware rather than like a full title or even a party game.

VERDICT: Owing to its buckets of personality, Ape Escape is an easy game to like and a hard game not to think back on fondly. Bright colours, crazy levels and absolutely no pretensions of being  anything other than lightweight entertainment, it is a game that PS3 owners with a Move will smile at and enjoy.

However it is a simple game and, possibly worse, it isn’t immediately clear who it will appeal to. The original Ape Escape was an effective means of getting the DualShock controller into people’s living rooms because it offered a genuinely new experience and an alternative to Nintendo’s (with Mario 64) dominance of the 3D platforming space.

Ape Escape Move doesn’t provide a new experience. It doesn’t provide anything that we haven’t seen before. Whilst it is charismatic enough to make any player smile, it is not deep enough, new enough or engaging enough to make it an effective undercover weapon in Sony’s ongoing quest to fill your coffee table with their plastic.

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