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Ape Escape 2

September 1, 2003 By Glenn Turner
These monkeys have been training for years.

I am not a collector in any way, shape or form. I buy things to play with and I pay for entertainment value, not to put a piece of memorabilia in a glass case and mount it to my wall. The same holds true for video games - I will play a game for however long it holds my insect-like attention span. I usually fully intend to unlock everything, but it always turns out the same - I get bored or frustrated with a game, say I'll come back and unlock the rest later. Six months later there's a nice block of dust sitting on it.

Very rarely will you see the ubiquitous 100% marker on any of my save games, quite simply for the following reasons:

1) Collecting is rarely fun. Yes, you get a smidgen of payoff when you actually find the item but...

2) Most items are absolute rubbish and not worth the time to read their title, much less hunt for hours to acquire them.

So what do I see in my Ape Escape 2 save slot? 100%. That's right - 100%. Do you want to know why it's 100%, what drove me to hit that golden number where so many other games have failed? The answer is simple my friends: it's actually fun collect the items here.

For those unfamiliar with the Ape Escape franchise (well, Japanese franchise - over to the east they have a number of Ape Escape based games), you're given a net and told to go catch monkeys through a series of platform-y levels. Throughout the game you'll receive new inventions that allow you to navigate puzzles and capture monkeys more effectively but in the end, you're just capturing those wacky little primates. And I do most certainly mean wacky - each ape is custom tailored for the highest amount of humor; from monkeys with afros mimicking Scarface to lazy monkeys enjoying a day at the spa, reading about the monkey that you just captured (or scan) is one of the highlights of their capture. Each monkey has a separate attributes screen with bits of information concerning how hungry they are to their catchphrase.

Oh, and there are plenty of monkeys to catch. 300 of them to be exact. And that's not all you'll be collecting - each level has the prototypical gaming economy. You find coins found on the ground or by vanquishing enemies and then you spend them in between levels. However, what you get for your cash is a bit more rewarding than most games - yes, there are the typical mini-games (which I'll get to in a moment), unlockable 'weapons' and cinemas but it's the inclusion of Monkey Stories that really make it them shine. Monkey Stories are twisted fairy tales that you unlock in parts, usually there are six to eight of them in one book and they are surprisingly humorous and engrossing such as the story of a monkey Jack & the Beanstalk that takes a very dark turn.

And then there are the mini-games - there's Monkey Dancing, which is a very simplified version of Dance Dance Revolution and similar rhythm games and supplies a healthy amount of entertainment for ten minutes or so if you have a friend with ya, Monkey Soccer which is a bit sluggish but a decent inclusion and finally Monkey Climber which is similar to those wood and rope games you play with as a kid and try to get the monkey to the top by pulling two strands of rope and good for a laugh or two but that's about it.

A giant robo-monkey? That you can pilot yourself? I'm so there.

All of this collecting would mean nothing if the gameplay was cumbersome though, and luckily it holds up quite well. Ape Escape 1 was the first Playstation game to require the Dual Shock controller and the scheme has, largely untouched, been brought over to the sequel. Essentially you use both sticks to maneuver your character - left is for movement and right aims your weapon. Accompanying the sticks are your weapon selection buttons (X, Y, triangle and circle) which allow you to map your various inventions/weapons and the shoulder buttons handle miscellaneous actions like the camera, sorting and controlling some various weapon abilities. The only stickler is that some more multifaceted weapons were difficult to control, such as the hover bat - to execute it you essentially circle all the way around with the right joystick quickly. Sometimes it can knot up and executing any other tricks while using it can be a bear to execute.

Visually it gets the job done - while your character looks decent, some of the monkeys are definitely riding the lower poly-count wave. However, the screen can get absolutely loaded with the critters with hardly a flicker so the trade-off is quite acceptable. The camera isn't perfect, but what 3D platforming camera is? You have a decent amount of manual camera control available to you as a well as a first person perspective so while sometimes it can be a tad cumbersome it's rarely 'trash your controller' frustrating. All technical complaints about the game aside, the design of the game has a great sense of humor (especially with integrating the monkeys into the environments) and the levels are quite large (if not topically a bit derivative as the usual castle, desert, snow mountains based levels all pertain here).

The music is straight out of the 16-bit era - midi reigns here, and it compliments the whimsical feeling perfectly. You can unlock the entirely of the soundtrack, and for a handful of songs you will most certainly want to do so (especially the background music for Spanish-flavored level) but patches of it is rather airy, unsubstantial and a shade above mediocre. Likewise with the sound - it's humorous, never distracting and fulfills it's role.

You should see his underlings.

If it sounds like I'm being rather hard on it, well, let's just say that after spending so much time hunkered down with these monkeys for hours on ends have inflated the problems a tad. Essentially it all boils down to the gameplay and collectibles. While you can breeze through the game on it's first try relatively quickly in ten to fifteen hours, you can easily double that by searching out for every monkey and purchasing items. Additionally, actually can't collect everything the first time through - after beating the game initially a plethora of new monkeys are unlocked. Yes, that means going back through every level again and yes, it's a tad frustrating (especially the final boss encounter) but well worth it for what you get in exchange. That is the essence of Ape Escape 2 - despite it's few flaws, the sheer amount of character, quirkiness and breadth of the game is enough to outshine it's minor inadequacies. Any game that can allure me into the gates a 100% completed game deserves more than just a passing glance.

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