3/5 ★ – bokonon764's review of Ape Escape.

So I’ve been wanting to replay this classic from my childhood for a long while, just haven’t gotten around to it. I just beat Astro Bot, and it’s featured pretty heavily in that game; not only that, but Ape Escape’s influence is all over Astro Bot. I’ve never beaten this game, so it was cool to come back and 100% the whole thing. Or at least, I think I never beat it. I kept getting to the points I thought I had never gotten past and then something would jog my memory. So I don’t know, maybe I have beaten this before. In Ape Escape, an escaped circus chimp named Spectre has gained super intelligence through a helmet. He mass manufactures said helmets and gives them to his chimp brethren, who become his army. Spectre also has a Time Machine, which he has used to spread his influence and chimp army throughout time. It’s up to teenaged boy Spike, his sister(?) Natalie, and the Professor (who let Spectre get ahold of all this shit in the first place) to stop Spectre and catch all the chimps; who are often referred to as monkeys. I don’t know, Ape Escape is cartoonish, it’s not trying to be an accurate portrayal of, well…anything. There’s also this guy Jake who works for Spectre and is like Spikes best friend. So he’s like a traitor or whatever, I have no idea why he is even here. Ape Escapes story is fine, it’s really not why you play the game though. The English voice acting is comically clumsy translation that plays like bad anime. All that being said, Spectre is a solid villain Negatives out of the way first: some of the platforming sections in Ape Escape are pretty awful, and this is only exacerbated by Ape Escape’s experimental controller tech. The button mapping and control schemes are bizarre as fuck. Press R2 to jump? Weird. Schlocky, slow, and unresponsive controls made the most seemingly simple platforming sequences a massive pain.. I abused the fuck out of the PS5 retro emulator rewind feature, and that made it much more bearable. I don’t think I would have gotten through some of those sections if I was playing it on PS1/2. I think that Ape Escape is a lot weaker than its sequel, Ape Escape 2, but that’s not to say it’s not a good game. But if older games frustrate you, you might want to just play Ape Escape 2, available on the PS4/5 emulator thing, free to premium members. Hopefully 3 will be available at some point, I don’t think I ever got around to playing that. More on the analog stick action: Ape Escape was the first videogame to require the use of a controller with two analog sticks, making it a historical release. The game uses the functions of the PlayStation Dualshock controller in really unique ways. Some of the ways the sticks are used are endlessly frustrating, such as the tank, the life boat, the boxing mini game, etc….however, Ape Escape’s gadgets are all used with the right stick in a few different ways, and that’s probably where the games unique control scheme shines most. I’d note the stun baton and net as the best examples of this; the right stick is just pushed in the direction you want to swing the baton or net. This particular rinse and repeat will be done in that order for most apes you capture in the game. There’s something very satisfying about slamming the net down on that last ape, the camera rotates slowly, the music crescendos…yeah, the net is probably the coolest gadget. Ape Escape is a bonafide, trailblazing classic. Sometimes, I feel like PlayStation has lost the whimsy of its Ape Escapes, Crash Bandicoots, PaRappas, Locorocos, etc. Despite its iconic status, Ape Escape is rife with issues, and id only suggest it to certain people. If you are cool with a retro game being pretty rough around the edges, don’t skip this one.