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Dom Robinson reviews
Sony 
- Price: £34.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: Yes
- Online: No
- Multiplayer between PSPs: Yes
Ape Escape Pis the first tranisition to the Sony PSP for a franchise borne out on the usual Sony consoles andsees you as Spike, friend of the Professor who has a problem.
A mischevious monkey named Specter has not only stolen the Prof’s Peak Point helmet, whichcan increase a human’s intelligence, but he’s also mis-used the man’s latest device, a time machine,to go back to the past and create chaos with it there instead.
However, Specter didn’t just go backby himself but also took hundreds of monkeys from the zoo, and given our cheeky monkey the willto be a power-hungry megalomaniac and take over the world. Obviously, as Spike, you’ve got to put a stopto this.
The opening segment takes a long time to play through, and can’t be skipped past when it’s gettingtedious. We do get to the game eventually though, and level one sees you having to catch three monkeys withyour ‘time net’, or use your sword to bash some other obscure creature over the head at which pointthey turn into cookies to boost your health or bonus points.
It’s not massively difficult once you get the hang of it as the monkeys stop moving and wave their armsat you as you approach, giving you enough time to cast your net and capture them.
All other levels are pretty much the same with a few variations as you have to entrap over 200 monkeysspread throughout 8 worlds and over 20 levels with gadgets such as the Monkey Rader and RC Car, evengoing underwater to catch the ones with a net who are trying to escape.
For those wanting a bit more, you can use the PSP’s wireless Ad Hoc connectivity mode to enables gamersin close proximity to utilize the multiplayer mode and play a variety of mini-games with friends.Such add-ons include variants of snowboarding, boxing, racing and Ping Pong.
There’s very good sonic placement in the stereo output to help you determine precisely where a monkey is ifit’s in the vicinity jumping about and you need to turn to track him down.
The graphics are crisp and colourful which will aid the appeal to kids, but like the aspect of whatyou have to do, they are undemanding. There’s been hundreds of games like this over the last few yearswhere you run about over a 3D landscape with your character able to turn the full 360o andwhile this game does it just as good as all the others, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth a purchasegiven that you’ve seen it all before.
In fact, since 1996’s originalTomb Raiderrelease, this has to be one of the most frequently-used game engines in recent times, particularlyin kids games.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.