Very few games actually make me itch my head while trying to comprehend the logic of the basic premise, Ape Escape 2 does this well. You play Jimmy, a young teenager who has been employed by the good professor while he’s on leave, his first task is to use this warp device to teleport monkey pants, yes monkey pants, to get this, Monkey Park. All is good until Jimmy accidentally loads a crate of Monkey Helmets that boost the brain power of the primates on to the warp pad and send the helmets as well as the pants to the park, then, the 1st games main bad guy, Specter grabs a hold of a helmet, a swanky poncho, and a thirst for world domination. As the old adage says, “You make the mess, you clean it”, Jimmy grabs his lightsaber-esque stun club and Time net, that was used to defeat Specter the first time by his cousin, Spike, and heads off for Ape catching goodness.

    The control scheme in Ape Escape 2 is kind of awkward to begin with, you use the right analog stick to attack with, and you set your other gadgets to the triangle, square, circle and X buttons, for easy access, but you get more gadgets than buttons provided, at least 10 gadgets are available. Another control quirk is the jumping, R1 and R2 can be used as jump buttons, again, odd, but workable, the camera is controlled by the L buttons. All this is hard to handle at first, but after the first stage, you’ll be getting monkeys with all the quickness of the Croc hunter.

    The sound of Ape Escape 2 is overall good, the music accompanies the stages very well (bull fighting music for Spain like levels) but the stage music isn’t all that crisp, in my opinion. The sound effects are great, very cartoony, like the animation and the look of the game, the sounds of frantic and frustrated Monkeys are always fun to listen to, and the voice acting is decent, featuring the talents of Ash and Misty from the Pokemon anime series. On to another topic, the graphics, while a bit dated, are still good to look at and have very little clipping (Clipping is a glitch that has people falling into walls, ect.ect)which is nice, and the fact that the game always runs at 60 frames per second rules too. Overall, I’d recommend this game to anyone who loves platform games, or those who are fans of bizarre pretenses, those skeptical, pick it up and try it.