Ape Escape: On The Loose
Monkeys! Monkeys everywhere!
Published: March 7, 2005
It's no secret that monkeys are a passion around here. For a time, I don't think we put up a news story or a review without some mention of a monkey, be they drunken or crazy or just plain lovable. That time, sadly, has passed (we only reference them like every other story these days), but they may have had something to do with the lack of Ape Escape deliciousness.
Fortunately, as we discovered last week at an event here in San Francisco, the monkeys are fully prepared to make a return to form, albeit in a slightly tweaked manner. On The Loose is, in effect an updated PSP port of the original Ape Escape that debuted on the PlayStation and helped establish the DualShock controller and its dual analog sticks as the standard that all future controllers would replicate.
How, then, do you take a game that was quite literally made for a dual-sticked controller and shrink it down to fit on a portable system with nothing more than a singular analog nub and two less shoulder buttons? Apparently, you re-map the attack and net controls (along with any other weapons you can think of) to the face buttons and just have someone face the monkey they're about to try to capture. It doesn't work nearly as well as the precision of moving with one stick and capturing with another, but we're happy to report that it does still work... for the most part.
On The Loose follows in familiar story footsteps where a mischievous monkey named Specter gets his hands on a cuddly but quite ingenious Professor's helmet designed to temporarily increase the intelligence of humans wearing it. He quickly goes from innocent and playful to scheming and conniving, releasing the fellow captive monkeys equipped with similar helmets upon an unsuspecting world. This of course requires a spiky-haired hero (named, amazingly, Spike) to take up a fancy laser sword and extradimensional net to capture them.
Sure, it's familiar stuff, but it's also damned addictive. Spike pockets all manner of weapons and equipment to help him capture monkeys in out-of-the-way spots (he even gets an underwater net quite early on as we discovered in our play-through). The platforming elements mixed in with the frantic attempts to net wayward monkeys are a heady mix, and should be the perfect thing to quell any platforming joneses until Naughty Dog and Insomniac release their inevitable uberplatformers to suck away all our free time.
If the single-player game is more or less an updated version of what we played on the PlayStation a few years back, the included multiplayer mini-games, which we played with nary a hiccup through a wireless ad-hoc connection, are something of an inclusion from Sony Computer Entertainment's Pumped and Primed set of party games that Ubisoft published late last year.
Four mini-games await, including Jake Attack, a two-player obstacle course-style race that was a bit too complicated to get right into in the setting we were in, a downhill snowboarding course with limited tricks, which increase the amount of boost you can gain (but not the actual boost reserves) when you fly over a boost pickup, and the two best mini-games by far, boxing and ping pong. The boxing games allowed slow but free movement around the right and a couple of standard jabs and crosses, as well as a powered-up uppercut. The ping pong mode played, well, like ping pong and allowed for an absolutely insane mega-smash where the ball got caught up in a flurry of leaves as it rocketed toward the other side after a bit of volleying back and forth built up a super meter.
While things were a blast playing with other people, the controls during the single-player game took a little getting used to. The camera doesn't always cooperate, requiring regular manual re-centering with the L button. It's not a huge deal, but with all the precision needed in some of the platform levels, it can make things a bit frustrating.
We'll have plenty of time to sit down and net ourselves a few hundred monkeys in just a few weeks, but for now, enjoy the insanity in still form with the screenshots we've managed to capture from Sony and keep your eyes peeled for a full review in the near future.
Fortunately, as we discovered last week at an event here in San Francisco, the monkeys are fully prepared to make a return to form, albeit in a slightly tweaked manner. On The Loose is, in effect an updated PSP port of the original Ape Escape that debuted on the PlayStation and helped establish the DualShock controller and its dual analog sticks as the standard that all future controllers would replicate.
How, then, do you take a game that was quite literally made for a dual-sticked controller and shrink it down to fit on a portable system with nothing more than a singular analog nub and two less shoulder buttons? Apparently, you re-map the attack and net controls (along with any other weapons you can think of) to the face buttons and just have someone face the monkey they're about to try to capture. It doesn't work nearly as well as the precision of moving with one stick and capturing with another, but we're happy to report that it does still work... for the most part.
On The Loose follows in familiar story footsteps where a mischievous monkey named Specter gets his hands on a cuddly but quite ingenious Professor's helmet designed to temporarily increase the intelligence of humans wearing it. He quickly goes from innocent and playful to scheming and conniving, releasing the fellow captive monkeys equipped with similar helmets upon an unsuspecting world. This of course requires a spiky-haired hero (named, amazingly, Spike) to take up a fancy laser sword and extradimensional net to capture them.
Sure, it's familiar stuff, but it's also damned addictive. Spike pockets all manner of weapons and equipment to help him capture monkeys in out-of-the-way spots (he even gets an underwater net quite early on as we discovered in our play-through). The platforming elements mixed in with the frantic attempts to net wayward monkeys are a heady mix, and should be the perfect thing to quell any platforming joneses until Naughty Dog and Insomniac release their inevitable uberplatformers to suck away all our free time.
If the single-player game is more or less an updated version of what we played on the PlayStation a few years back, the included multiplayer mini-games, which we played with nary a hiccup through a wireless ad-hoc connection, are something of an inclusion from Sony Computer Entertainment's Pumped and Primed set of party games that Ubisoft published late last year.
Four mini-games await, including Jake Attack, a two-player obstacle course-style race that was a bit too complicated to get right into in the setting we were in, a downhill snowboarding course with limited tricks, which increase the amount of boost you can gain (but not the actual boost reserves) when you fly over a boost pickup, and the two best mini-games by far, boxing and ping pong. The boxing games allowed slow but free movement around the right and a couple of standard jabs and crosses, as well as a powered-up uppercut. The ping pong mode played, well, like ping pong and allowed for an absolutely insane mega-smash where the ball got caught up in a flurry of leaves as it rocketed toward the other side after a bit of volleying back and forth built up a super meter.
While things were a blast playing with other people, the controls during the single-player game took a little getting used to. The camera doesn't always cooperate, requiring regular manual re-centering with the L button. It's not a huge deal, but with all the precision needed in some of the platform levels, it can make things a bit frustrating.
We'll have plenty of time to sit down and net ourselves a few hundred monkeys in just a few weeks, but for now, enjoy the insanity in still form with the screenshots we've managed to capture from Sony and keep your eyes peeled for a full review in the near future.
