Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed

"A decent try."

I'm a great fan of the Ape Escape series, and when I saw this game I had to have it. And it's a good thing I rented it first, because I was greatly disappointed that Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed wasn't a monkey catching game. It was actually a Party sort of game and thought "Okay, I guess this won't too bad." Wrong.

Story: 7/10

Okay, I admit that this party game actually had a good story. Spike and his friends are entering a virtual tournament in a virtual world, but however a strange trio of monkey cyborgs called the Pipotrons have entered the tournament. The former champion of the tournament, Helga has something against them. It turns out that the Pipotrons were created by her father and destroyed his entire lab, when Helga got home from school she noticed that her home has been destroyed and the only evidence is a video clip on the computer that shows his father being attacked by the Pipotrons. Aside from that, the whole entire cast of Ape Escape has come to the tournament. Casi, Jake, Specter, and a few monkeys.

Gameplay: 6/10

Now here's what I really got stumped about, the Gameplay. You're supposed to complete various tournament courses and obstacles. Such as Fighting, Coin collecting, Racing, Shooting. You get really into the game when you beat your first match and all, but it gets INCREDIBLY boring after a while since you're just doing the same thing over and over again. There's only 8 different challenges and most of them have the same purpose. The only thing you get for completing stages are letter and gifts from the monkey fan club. The monkey fan club is probably the only purpose for doing stages, monkey's send you letters and gifts but most of them are just clothing or new gadgets that for your character. It's completely useless...

Controls: 5/10

If they were coming out with a new Ape Escape game with a different purpose, they could've at least give a different moveset. It's just the same moveset that you get from all the other AEs. Press a button to choose your gadget, use the right analog stick to attack. Plus they kept the same controls when your using a Watermech and a Boat.

Sound: 5/10

The sound gets very old very fast. You're gonna very tired of hearing your character go "Oof!" or "Ow, That's hot!" or "AHHHHHHHH!" You're barely gonna notice the music changing when you progress through the levels. The only music that's remotely good are the ones for the cutscenes. The voices were okay, but I noticed that they changed Spike's voice and appearance alot from AE2.

Graphics: 7/10

I'm not usually a fan of Cel-Shaded graphics, but they were nice in this one. I wished they would've used the graphics from AE2, but they didn't. It was a new look, but not much of a fan of it. The graphics in the cutscenes though, were just plain fantastic.

Overall: 6/10

Another thing that made me mad was how they completely ignored Ape Escape 2. There is no Jimmy in the game, they messed up the monkey designs because when they added Aqua Blue Monkey they forgot that he wore goggles and a scarf, they also forgot the White-pants monkey. The only thing kept from Ape Escape 2 was letters from the Freaky Monkey Five. Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed is not worth buying. Hopefully Ape Escape 3 will cheer me up from the disappointment of this game...

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/19/05