Controlling people and shooting at the same people or humanoid aliens sometimes gets boring. I want something fresh, original, innovative. An action game, the idea of which seems to be on the surface, but has not yet been implemented by anyone. Ape Out fits this description perfectly – here a crazed gorilla runs around the laboratory and beyond and takes revenge on scientists and guards for bullying.
Harambe’s Revenge
The game does without unnecessary cutscenes, introductory videos and dialogues. The story (if you can even call it that) begins in one of the rooms, where a gorilla sits in a cage, and workers around it are busy with something. By pressing one button you break the cage, with the same button you swing your paws and throw your enemies into the walls, leaving in their place only pools of blood. You escape from the room, find yourself in the corridors and kill everyone on your way – otherwise you yourself will die.
At first it seems that the gameplay is terribly primitive – just walk from corner to corner, beat everyone and go on to create chaos. However, very soon you will have to use another gorilla skill more often – to grab people and objects. Thus, you will acquire a shield that repels projectiles, and you will be able to throw the captured guards at other poor fellows in order, as they say, to kill two birds with one stone.
The primate dies from three bullet wounds, which means they are still allowed to make a couple of mistakes. However, at some levels this does not make it any easier, and running into the crowd and hoping for the best is not always the ideal solution. The locations are for the most part quite spacious, often full of shelters, including walls, columns, partitions and pieces of furniture – these objects are enough to turn 90 degrees at the sight of the enemy and go around on the other side, grabbing the victim from behind and turning him into a human shield.
Locations are generated randomly and Bingositesnotongamstop.co.uk change after each death, which not only makes the gameplay more varied, but also forces you to react differently to danger. It may sound stupid, but this feature makes the game a little more realistic – you feel like that same frightened gorilla who finds himself in an unknown place, unable to predict what awaits him behind the next door. Perhaps there will be a hall with several columns and you will be able to zip past everyone in zigzags, or perhaps you will have to quickly look for the next corridor and flee.
Although the point Ape Out does not change until the finale, and the monkey does not acquire new skills, it will not be boring here thanks to the changing conditions. Either you run along the corridors of the laboratory, then you go down from the top floor of a skyscraper to the bottom and throw office workers out of the windows, then you avoid the flamethrowers and try to prevent the hero from being hit by another blast wave. Sometimes the gorilla finds himself in narrow corridors, where there is nowhere to run and he has to destroy all living things, and in one of the episodes the electricity turns off and the opponents arm themselves with flashlights, from the light of which it is advisable to hide.
Intelligent primate
There are also plenty of subtleties that you learn about as you progress. Different types of enemies react differently to hits and attempts to throw them into a wall or their teammates. Wimps like scientists and ordinary security guards fall to pieces instantly. But armored enemies don’t give up so easily – other people need to be thrown at them several times before they die. There are exploding enemies, the detonation of which turns everyone standing next to them into mush. Grabbing them and using them as a shield is a controversial decision, because one bullet hitting them is enough for an explosion. Yes, guards and soldiers here can kill each other, which is also important to consider in some episodes.
Ape Out allows you to play it the way you want. If you want, you can be a pacifist and attack people only in cases where there is no other choice, even if this happens often. Or you can clear every room and not leave anyone alive, but then it will be especially annoying to lose all your progress and start the episode over again if you die. Although, due to the random generation of levels, you still have to combine styles: either be careful and lure people out one by one, or think through tactics on the fly and precisely throw exploding guards into the crowd to eliminate several enemies at once.
Therefore from Ape Out you don’t get tired like you do from some meaningless Hatred. There are enough interesting ideas here so that the gameplay does not get boring throughout the entire playthrough, even if the game is very short and only takes a couple of hours. One of its main features is how closely the gameplay is connected to the music: the death of each person is accompanied by the blow of a cymbal, the tempo increases and decreases depending on the number of people on the screen. It seems that jazz instruments should not go well with the cruelty happening on the screen, where lush electronic compositions in the spirit of the soundtrack would be much more appropriate Hotline Miami, but no – the developers managed to surprise.
Minimalist visual style works great too Ape Out. Despite the simple graphics and top view, it is possible to distinguish between opponents without problems, which is very important for this type of game. The camera is also designed in an interesting way – it is located quite close to the gorilla, so that you can only look at a small part of the level, and you cannot look around corners and into doorways before approaching them. There are often cases when you notice opponents only when running past the corridors in which they stand, which adds unpredictability.
After completing the story, additional modes are unlocked. In Arcade you have to complete levels within the allotted time. When calculating points, the remaining seconds, the number of people killed, as well as the absence or presence of injuries are taken into account. Well, for those who found the game simple, there is a complicated “story” mode, where there are more opponents. Obviously, it is not as wonderfully balanced as the main one, but it will definitely take at least one evening if you are not so interested in simply replaying the game.
There seems to be nothing special about Ape Out no: two-button control, the gorilla at the beginning and at the end throws some people at others. But the idea itself is so fresh and so well implemented that it’s impossible to even find significant flaws. The way the music combines with the gameplay, what surprises the gameplay sometimes presents, how advantageous such a simple visual style looks – all this makes Ape Out one of the most interesting, non-standard and worthy of your attention releases of the year. The only regret is the short duration, but there is a high probability that an extra hour of playthrough would not have benefited the game.
Pros: an unusual idea, implemented almost perfectly; changing conditions make gameplay less monotonous; several types of enemies requiring different approaches; random generation and camera behavior add an element of unpredictability; stylish picture and soundtrack perfectly connected to the gameplay.
Cons: short duration, although it can be increased using additional modes.