You’ll immediately recognise the noises of the monkeys if you’ve played any previous Ape Escape title – they have a distinctive squeak which is fully present here and masks the rather generic background music which definitely isn’t up to franchise highs. Menus are a little on the generic side, but again this is just a small issue. ![]() Still, there’s so much variety here particularly with the mini-games that it’s hard to focus on this too much – one minute you might be fighting pirate ships and the next running to find a toilet, which always looks amusing. There’s some funny animation work here particularly in battles, but there is a certain janky-ness to it all like it’s obviously been done by a b-team – which is pretty disappointing. The stars of the Ape Escape series have always been the monkeys and that hasn’t changed here, with their beaming pink mouths and goofy tenancies on full show. There are moments when Ape Quest shines environmentally – you might be going over the top of a mountain and gaze out over the glistening ocean and trees below and think “this is really pretty”, but overall there’s a lot of drab repeated elements and mostly the game is comprised of things that we’ve already seen dozens of times before in plenty of other PSP titles. ![]() The biggest shake up to the formula is that this entry is set in a fantasy kingdom, full of rolling green hills and medieval stone castles – although these locations do switch as you progress to include a desert kingdom and an ice landscape. Reusing the graphics engine from the Ape Academy titles, Ape Quest is colourful and retains that series charm, despite not being particularly flashy in any way. This is a game for children after all so shouldn’t be too unexpected, but the mainline Ape Escape titles have always been fairly interesting in their plots, which sadly isn’t the case here. That’s all helpful, since the actually story here is nothing to write home about – it’s just a reason to send you on a massive long fetch quest. There’s a lot of thought gone into so much here whether it be the special attacks you unlock, which involve things like throwing tables rather than stabbing with swords, to the armor and weapons you equip which can be things like a toy hammer or ‘nekkid’ as a choice of clothes. As any long time Ape Escape fans might expect, humor is strong here and it’s very much in the slapstick variety as you’ll witness the son sneakily munching yet another banana as he’s told off by his dad or falling over when running away from spirits. That son, of course, is the playable character that you control in Ape Quest and like so many of the monkeys in this franchise, he’s a goofy yet lovable soul with a penchant for eating food he finds lying around. Unfortunately, this was a rather ill-advised decision as his son eats the banana that was sealing this evil in force – so to make amends, the king sends his son on a journey to beat them once and for all. In Toqsica Kingdom, the benevolent king grows weary of his useless son who never seems to grow up, so sends him on a mission with stoic knight D’Apetagnan to ensure that the chains which holds the evil Pipotron Brothers in place still hold strong.
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