3.5/5 ★ – AvatarAang's review of Ape Escape.

Ape Escape is an interesting beast. In many ways, it plays like a Nintendo game. All the hallmarks of Nintendo's experimental game design is here, and historically it is interesting because the big "gimmick" is the dual analog sticks, something that today we take for granted. The entire game is built around exploring and showcasing what two analog sticks can contribute to gaming. It also has a very unorthodox control scheme. Jump is R1, camera control are the directional buttons (not the right analog stick like it so often is today), and you attack with the right analog stick. Yikes! It is unideal but I got used to it quickly. Jumping and attacking is okay, but the camera controls are just bad. You can only rotate the camera while standing still. Most of the game is like Ocarina of Time (which seems to have inspired it to an extent), in that you don't really NEED camera control and can just center the camera with L1. But there are some apes that explicitly require you to rotate the camera to even find, and that's where using the directional buttons feels out of the way and crummy. The characters aren't remarkable, but they are charming (sort of like Astro Boy or MegaMan characters). The English voice acting, honestly, needs to be heard to be believed. It is extremely amateurish, in both a good way and a bad way. I quite enjoyed the professor's voice acting as well as his assistant's. Much like MegaMan Legends, their voice acting feels natural and organic in a way that modern games just cannot compare to. Your rival's voice acting was a weird take but it adds to the charm. The villain's voice acting...who approved it? He speaks with you calmly with a pleasant voice the entire game. Not in an intimidating or "I'm not afraid of you" way, but like he's literally just reading lines off of a script. (the rival is like this too, but I dunno I kinda liked it there, since you are supposed to be friends with him) As for the gameplay, there's good and there's bad. First, the good! The majority of the game is a blast, or at least really good. Every level is basically a big open space to go hunt monkeys in (they are tailless apes but the game refers to them as monkeys). These monkeys are very cheeky, like the ones you would imagine in the "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" song. Capturing them and putting an end to their folly is very satisfying. Every time I played the game I got excited to catch more mischievous monkeys, and after every level I had that "Just one more!" feeling. The levels boot you out after you catch X number of monkeys, but the levels always have more than that. It was a bit annoying at first because I just wanted to keep going! But towards the end of the game I began to appreciate it, it encourages you to visit every level twice. Some monkeys cannot be caught until you get gadgets later in the game, so it is worth it to wait to double back on these levels until you reach the credits. Many levels have great music (jungle is one of my favorite genres, if you like Super Monkey Ball you'll be happy here). But, here's the bad. The last two worlds (future and circus), really maybe the last three worlds, shift from non-linear levels to linear levels and a greater focus is put on platforming. In the earlier levels, you're running around looking for monkeys to capture. But in these later levels, it is more like you are playing through a traditional platforming level, and maybe catching monkeys on the side as you go. This is where the "boot you out after catching X monkeys" becomes a noticeable problem. I have zero interest in revisiting these levels because I will have to go through the entire platforming gauntlet to get back to where I left off and continue searching for monkeys. Ape Escape's platforming is fairly weak and dated too. I would compare these later levels to something like Tick Tock Clock or Rainbow Cruise from Super Mario 64. They have a format that later games like Super Mario 3D World would really master, but so early in the history of the genre these levels are clunky and very punishing (e.g. you miss one jump and you have to do an entire room again and/or die). Ape Escape's controls really start to struggle in these levels. The absolute worst is the final level, which is enormous. We're talking multiple hours long. If I want to go back and get any monkeys that I missed, I will have to redo huge stretches of (sometimes frustrating) platforming. That will never happen. Oh yeah by the way, the majority of the level has one single song and it has a short loop. So much awesome music in this game and yet you're better off muting the final level! I really felt the contrast after beating the game and going back to the first level. Suddenly, I was having lots of fun hunting down monkeys again! They should have kept the non-linear collectathon gameplay structure for the entire game, it just works so much better with what they were going for. So it's kind of hard to rate the game because I would definitely give the early to mid game an 8/10, but the late game ranged from a 4 to a 7. The average would be fairly mid but I think the game is more than the sum of its parts. When you beat the final level, there's still all these fun worlds to go back to and find more monkeys in. So I think giving it a 7 is fair. I liked it. I look forward to checking out Ape Escape 2 and 3 and seeing how the series grows!