What should have been a home run as a quirky mini-game collection ends up as a difficult, directionless mess (that still has the great Ape Escape charm).
| Developer | Alvion; Shift; SCE Japan Studio |
| Publisher | |
| Franchise | Ape Escape |
| Genre | Board/Party |
| PSTV | Yes |
| PSN | EU/NA |
World-building & Story
A simple game needs a simple premise – Ape Academy is a mini-game collection that follows an academy set up by Specter (leader of the titular apes) to train all the monkeys under his command. The trainers are the Freaky Monkey Five (a set of bosses from Ape Escape 2) and the challenges involve various physical and mental endurance.
The title expects you’ll already have some knowledge of the series before playing (you can read my review of the first game’s remake to find out more), but also plays heavily on personalities from the second title. The Freaky Monkey Five are an interesting bunch, but their personalities are distilled to a set of quirks for comedic effect, nothing more. It’s also a shame to see Specter used so little, as he’s by far the most fun character in the Ape Escape universe.
Still, it’s rare that a mini-game collection has much in the way of plot or character development, so it’s not something I can hold too much against Ape Academy.
Presentation & Sound
Seemingly using a downgraded version of Ape Escape 2‘s engine, Ape Academy looks brilliant for an early PSP title and still holds up well on Vita thanks to some fun animations; fantastic use of colour and plenty of unique environments.
The monkeys have long been the stars of the series – there’s something inherently hilarious and lovable about the way they move around and that’s played up to full effect here, with funny animations like running away from an incoming dodgeball with arms flailing or offering to sell a rose to pedestrians by shoving it in their faces. There’s a humour to everything about the character models (even extending to the Freaky Monkey Five), even if they’re fairly simple in terms of pixels and textures.
The levels the mini-games take place in are an eclectic mix of locations that well represent whatever is taking place – sometimes you’ll be in a busy city street; sometimes in the crater of a volcano and even in outer space. Although you’ll always be focusing on the actual gameplay elements, Shift have made sure that if you do glance at your surroundings you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the level of detail included and the colour palette (which regular readers will know is very important to me) is top notch.
Menus are similarly bright and popping, while sound effects are brilliant. There’s a common set of noises used in the Ape Escape games (things like the ‘whoosh’ of someone slipping on a banana peel when a monkey is confused) which just work really well to add character to everything. I can’t really think of anything memorable about the soundtrack, but there is voice acting which is brilliant as the majority of the cast from Ape Escape 2 return,
Gameplay & Content
Sadly, for all the successes Ape Academy achieves in its presentation, it’s completely let down by the shallow and frustrating gameplay. The mini-games included are bizarre, often take ages to get used to and are over far too quickly – leaving a redundant final package that sucks the enjoyment out of playing.
The bulk of the game is found in ‘Academy’ mode where you undertake nine trials as your chosen ape under the guidance of a member of the Freaky Monkey Five. In reality this means having a bingo card and pressing x to stop a catchphrase-esque moving target over one of the mini-games. Passing will give you a ‘o’ while failure will grant an ‘x’, the idea being that you need to get various lines of bingo to progress to the next trainer.
The mini-games themselves are an incredibly mixed bag that run the gambit of fairly enjoyable to absolutely abysmal. On the plus side, things like the one metre dash are smart (partly due to the lowered expectations you’ll have going in) while the rhythm-based levels tend to be fairly enjoyable. Some are just completely bonkers fun – catching certain foods on a skewer is tough as nails but so satisfying to finally nail; skydiving out of a plane to grab parachutes to pass to falling monkeys was hilarious and enjoyable while playing matador to incoming bulls is silly yet fun.
On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got some truly miserable tasks which feel like an absolute chore. Of particular note is an air hockey clone where your craft controls like crap that seems completely down to luck, while the aforementioned rose-selling game just never seemed to work even after my umpteenth attempt. There’s also an odd rock, paper, scissors level set in space that I found impossible to keep up with even if I did understand the concept of what I was doing.
Everything is let down further by one major flaw – explanations. Ape Academy is more akin to WarioWare than Mario Party at times in that some mini-games are over in a matter of seconds – which works in WarioWare because the actual tasks are incredibly simplistic and can be figured out very quickly. Here, you’re given a brief loading screen which explains the controls (which means nothing without knowing what the task is) then you’re left to figure things out yourself, which almost certainly leads to failure your first time playing. It feels like the title is working against you the majority of the time, aside from the odd level like walking a tower of monkeys to a banana which thankfully gives you ample opportunity to succeed.
There are longer mini-games of course – some have a 60-second time limit for example, but most things are still fairly short. This feels actively against what the Ape Escape series is about – mini-games have always featured in the main entries and they’ve all been fairly substantial, like snowboarding in the first or football in the second. Here, football is represented by a crappy 20 second tabletop version – I’d take the real Monkey Football over anything in Ape Academy as most things are just too brief to bring any kind of enjoyment.
At the end of the day, I can say I had fun at times – some of the mini-games were decent and the sense of humour throughout is on point. But I came away from my time with Ape Academy with far more instances of frustration than joy – which is never really the point with videogames and I can’t see myself returning to it any time soon (which isn’t helped by a lack of game modes to encourage replaying).
Conclusion
I don’t quite understand what went wrong with Ape Academy – Shift are clearly a very talented developer and Ape Escape is one of my favourite IP’s, that was already perfectly geared up for mini-games. Yet somewhere along the way the project took a wrong turn – the traditional slapstick humour is definitely nailed and there’s moments of brilliance, but they’re mixed in with poor instructions, frustrating levels and a general lack of content. I really wanted to love Ape Academy, but it seemed to do everything in its power to stop this – and succeeded.
4.0/10
kresnik258gaming 