Ape Escape 3

8.5
Great

Gameplay	9.0	"The best damn Monkey Catching Sim yet."
Graphics	8.0
Sound	9.0
Value	9.0

By Sam Leitch

The undeniable fact of the matter is that games with monkeys are cooler than games without. Ape Escape has always had 99% more monkeys than the opposition, but does this really matter? Some of the other games out there that only have a few, or even one monkey in them are pretty damn good! Is more always better?

For Ape Escape 3, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’ While I won’t compare it to other games like Super Monkey Ball, Ape Escape 3 offers more Monkey for your dollar than any other game in the series. As well as more all-round monkey goodness, the third game also features a huge selection of levels and little extra touches to monkey around with.

Those of you that have played the previous Ape Escape games will find this game doesn’t offer too many new ideas gameplay-wise. The controls and gadgets are the same as the last game. The main difference is the new character transformations. During the game you can morph into a range of personas, including a Ninja and a Cowboy. Each character has a unique attack and a unique way of capturing monkeys. Your net is still the primary means of monkey capture, but the monkeys are now smarter, faster and more aggressive, and will even steal your net and start to chase you with it! Advanced apes are much easier to capture using character ability - often you can use these at range and save your hands from getting dirtied.

The main reason for Ape Escape veterans to play through the third game are the brilliantly designed levels. Each level is a spoof of some kind and nothing is safe from ape mockery - you’ll see apes dressed up as anything from Howls Moving Castle characters to Star Wars characters. The levels themselves are often based loosely on the setting too, making for some bizarre and hilarious moments. This is the first game I have played in quite a while where I can’t wait to see what’s around the next corner. What will those darn monkeys get up to next?

If you have yet to play an Ape Escape game, there is no disadvantage in starting your monkey catching career here. Ape Escape is a very easy game to get into and the controls are incredibly intuitive. The left control stick controls your character's direction, while the right stick controls which way you swing your net or attack. True, there are a few other things like jumping, items and character selection, but that’s the bulk of it, and the extra abilities are never complicated either. One thing that can be complicated, however, are the vehicles that you find throughout the level, each with their own unique (and often fun) control scheme - but you’ll suss these out fairly quickly too.

Presentation has been taken up a notch from previous titles: everything is extremely polished. Graphically the game is simple and admittedly bare in places, but all the levels and the apes themselves pack so much charm that it really doesn’t matter. The enemies, however, do look slightly generic. My only problem with the game is that the camera can sometimes make close up monkey capturing trickier than it needs to be, but honestly the camera isn’t that much of a problem and is handled better than most third person games. Also be on the lookout for perhaps the best mini-game ever, ‘Mesal Gear’ – as you may have guessed a spoof of Metal Gear.

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