All of these can then be accessed from the entertainment shelves, which also has a jukebox for the enormously irresistible and catchy soundtrack. Along with the fact that seeing the end credits doesn’t necessarily mean the job’s done, we are also presented with the Gotcha Box, an enormous capsule machine where sundries can be exchanged for gold coins collected in the levels, which include, among other things, concept art, translated comic strips, FMVs, musical tracks, and Monkey Fables. How else could you logically account for the unpopularity of contemporary Woody Allen films?Īs a possible form of reparation, Ape Escape 2 does offer more replay value than the first, but anyone not willing to participate or chase these extra funs (and why wouldn’t you?) will feel severely shortchanged. The proud adhering kinship won’t sit well with some, being cited as unoriginal and uncreative undoubtedly, but when you’ve made one of the most accessible and enjoyable 3D platformers ever, and, more importantly, haven’t even been topped since, why bother losing any sleep trying to make another groundbreaking experience? But it’s still sneered upon and I suppose the blame rests squarely on the world’s voracious appetite for novelty - whose bib is now stained with satellite dishes, broadband connections, electronic phantasmagorias - where everyone now isn’t just looking for the new thing, but the new kind of thing. The goal to catch all the mischievous monkeys and ringleader Specter with a net, the hub system and the themed levels, the control scheme and the game mechanics all of it’s back, so I guess everything gold can sometimes stay. Nearly all of the heroes and villains return, though Spike is replaced by his younger cousin, Jimmy, who’s sounds a lot like Pokemon’s Ash Ketchum and carries over that same precarious distinction between heroic and rose-colored (“They look like they’re having fun,” is the first thing he says of the monkeys after accidentally giving them all a shipment of brain augmenting helmets). So bless the stalwart souls at Ubi Soft for looking past regional differentials and releasing this - which really isn’t much of a gamble in the first place considering how closely Ape Escape 2 sticks to the winning formula of the first. That the act of catching rambunctious monkeys - such beloved iconic, sometimes ironic, animals in the States - is not as American as we were all led to believe in 1999. In this one for example, we have the quirked humor (most of the non-simian enemies are monsters made from a combination of cute little piggies and spirals of feces), an iridescent fantasia of an introduction FMV with a chorus of “Saru Getchu” (the Japanese name of the series) singing in the background, capsule toy collecting, pages of comic strips in kanji, and monkeys dancing in traditional hosiery, all of which can seem very foreign, stopping just short of a sumo monkey (and there are one of those thrown into this mix, by the way) stomping around and yelling, “Dosucoi!” Though SCEA allowed the heavy foreign influence to slide by in ICO, letting it to chalk to mysticism and mythology for that game, I guess they were wondering how they would be able to pull it off with this one. Then the Dual Shocks became standard issue and then what was to separate the series from everything else? Now left to their own devices, sequels started to get released and their true colors were shown and these games were, as they say, turning (too) Japanese. Though the original Ape Escape became a modest success - along with being one of the best games ever made to boot - it also had that curtained main priority of getting the world to come to rubbery grips with the newfangled Dual Shocks, so a game with an appeal more cosmopolitan than usual was necessary. Ape Escape 2 - The Next Level PS2 Game ReviewĪfter a good play through, I think it becomes rather apparent why SCEA opted not to localize Ape Escape 2, this most fine formulation of monkey madness, which I thought was going to be a mystery for the ages.
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