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By Justin Crowley on October 22nd, 2001
Introduction Lisa: Hey look a chimp!
Bart: Maybe he will lead us to more bananas.
Homer: Or more mouth watering monkeys!!! Well if Homer ever got a chance to play Ape Escape for PlayStation, he would be in heaven. As a small boy named Spike, it is your job to go backin time and stop the evil Spectre and his army of monkeys from changing history and thus making apes the dominant species on the planet. Presentation The game starts you out in the professors labratory. IT is from his central hub that all the dfferent areas of the game can be accessed. There is the main teleporter whic bring you to any of the levels you have ocmpleted, the training room where you can try out allo te gadgets you have earned, and the options room where you can load/save your game change the controlsand sound and check on the monkies you’ve cought. It all wks out relly well and you can’t really get lost in the hub. Graphics & Sound The graphics in this game are very cartoonish (i.e. bright and colorful). The landscapes all look good and while not up to the level of quality in let’s say Spyro, they really show what the PlayStation can do. All of the monkeys look like... well monkeys and they are all very distinct. Some are in snowsuits, some have binoculars, hell some have uzis. All in all the
game looks really nice.The sound is a mixed bag. On one hand all of the music is right on target with some cheerful melodies that you will be humming along to while you play. The monkeys random shrieks of terror as they realize you are there are pretty funny too, and they usually succeed in making me crack a smile. On the other hand though, the voices are atrocious. They sound like they were pulled out of some B grade UPN Saturday morning kids show. The only one with a good voice over is Spectre the evil monkey
Gameplay This game has got to have the most innovative control scheme ever. First of all you need to have the dual shock analog controller to play this game, because through out the game you will be using both analog sticks to manipulate different gadgets and objects. For instance when you hop in a row boat you rotate both sticks in unison to row straight. If you stop rotating one stick the row boat starts to turn in circles. Other scenarios have you using the left stick
to control your self and the right stick to control a remote control car. All in all the control is great and it is definitely different.In fact I can only find two real flaws with the
control setup. One is that you have to press in the L3 button to crouch. It gets annoying when you have to crouch, move, and swing at a monkey. The other thing is the swimming controls. Once again you have to hold L3, this time to dive. The other stick controls which direction you swim in, and the R3 button fires an underwater net. Fortunately you don’t have to empty the underwater net too often. Basically in each stage you have to capture a set
amount of monkeys. You do this by capturing them with a net. It is not as easy as it seems. Each monkey has a helmet on that senses your presence. If the light is blue the monkey is unaware of you, when it turns yellow the monkey suspects something and uses caution, and when it is red the monkey will run away and/or attack you. So basically the best tactic is to use stealth and
sneak up on the monkeys. The game also arms you with an array of gadgets that you amass over time. These range from the monkey radar to the sky flier. Once you receive a gadget you can go back to a previous level and use it to reach areas that were previously unreachable and contain items or
more monkeys. Lasting Appeal With over 150 different monkeys to find this game is going to keep people nusy for quite awile (I have yet to finis it myself).Finally within each level is a set number of Spectre coins. After you collect a certain amount of coins you can cash them in to play a series of mini games including a skiing, boxing, and shooting game. Theseare all relatively fun and add a bit of replay to the game Conclusion In conclusion, Ape Escape is a great platformer and it rivals any one of Rare’s collection based platformers on the Nintendo 64. Also as one of Sony’s greatest hits games, you can pick this up for about $20. What are you waiting for? The monkeys need to be stopped!
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