Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed

"Far from perfect"

As a loyal fan of the Ape Escape series, I was stunned to walk into an electronics store and find that there had been an Ape Escape game that had come out without my knowing in advance. At $39.99, I couldn't resist, and I picked up Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed.

Story:
Let me begin by saying that this game does quite a bit to impress initially. It's pitched as a party game, so I was expecting something like Mario Party (bleh). Thank god there was no board game involved, otherwise I would have sold this game right away. We get a short backstory explaining why there's no monkey catching involved, and are then thrust off into a tournament, of sorts, between various members (and some new ones) of the Ape Escape cast. After learning the controls, and receiving that first win, I was hooked. There's early variety in the levels, ranging from whacking your foes with StunClubs, using the "Sky Flyer" to race through a level collecting coins, firing missiles at each other with slingshots, all rounded off with a carpal-tunnel-inducing boat race.

The game would be great if it expanded on the variety from there, but, in truth, there's not much more to the game than that. Sure there are marginal changes in the format in which you are whacking people over the head or shooting missles at each other, but the game starts to feel boring after a while. You're initially quite pumped by defeating your first boss, but your hopes of more engaging fights are dashed by the fact that there's really only 2 or 3 actually different boss fights, and they're not terribly difficult. Let's face it, the game gets tedious after about 2 hours of play time. The one thing that keeps you involved in this game is if you are like me and have a terrible case of "Gaming OCD," where it's a matter of life and death that you get every single last item for everyone in the game, no matter how dull the tasks you must complete or or how long it takes. Really, that's the games biggest single-player merit: A whole slew of unlockables. Of course, only about 1/2 of them actually do anything--they're mostly just clothing for your character or an extra Monkey Friend, who only can be used in certain levels when you've inflicted a certain amount of damage.

Controls:
It's an Ape Escape game, so one can only expect to use both analog sticks to control your various weapons and vehicles. The problem is, vehicle controls are needlessly complicated, and weapon controls, while generally exactly the same as those used for the corresponding items in Ape Escape 2, seem clunky and unfinished, as if the developers didn't take the time to make sure the controls worked in something other than the basic form of the previous Ape Escape games. The game itself also makes it so that with the sometimes frenetic pacing of the levels, it's far too easy to die and then have the computer drop you straight off a cliff, causing major frustration when you're going for those hard-to-get unlockables. Overall, the controls feel clunky when they're working, and just plain terrible when they're not.

Sound:
The generally quirky music and sound effects of Ape Escape and Ape Escape 2 make another appearance, but this time there's even less variety. Should your character get hit with something, you'll hear him/her grunt in pain. Heaven forfend you land on something fiery, you'll get the typical "Ow, that's hot!" kind of response. The in-game character voicings basically end there. It'd be alright if the game weren't so focused on hitting other people with stuff and knocking them into fire, but such as the case is, you hear the same sound effect played over and over and over again without relent throughout the entire game, and it gets beyond annoying. The voicings for cutscenes are very good, but beyond those, I'd play without the sound off. It's too difficult to listen to time after time.

Graphics:
Generally speaking, this game has very good graphics for a game of its type. The cel-shaded style of animation really works with this game's cartoony atmosphere, and the cutscenes show no obvious flaws in framerate. There's occasional lag in single player, which only slightly worsens in multiplayer when there's all that button-mashing going on. It's nothing special, though--there's nothing really new, innovative or mind-blowing on the graphics front.

Multiplayer:
This is where this game supposedly shines, and while I was hoping for something as beautifully addictive as Monkey Soccer in Ape Escape 2, it was basically the same story as the Single-Player mode. You and your friends will spend about 2 hours laughing it up, hitting each other with clubs and missiles while trash-talking each other into the ground, but then everybody gets kind of bored of playing the same old minute-and-a-half long minigames, and the interest leaves. As much as I wish I could say that this game would be worth buying a multi-tap for, don't use one for this game unless you own one already.

Overall:
I wish I could score this game higher than a 5, but even though I'm a fan of the Ape Escape series, this game isn't exactly brilliant, and doesn't have the quantity or quality of mini-games or controls that one expects and hopes for in a party game. Those first two hours of gameplay would give this game an 8 for sure, but as the game wears on, even people with huge attention spans start to lose interest. All in all, Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed is a decent game, but it's so severely lacking in variety that it's not worth buying.

Final opinion:
Rent it, but don't buy it unless you can get it for under $20 and are a devoted fan of the Ape Escape series.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/04