Ape Escape

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>> " Ape Escape is one of those games that requires abstract thinking, its controls perfectly delivers a way to experience games with more of a oneness with the character you control, and expanding how you interact with a character with the second stick being a primary means of achieving that control is a stroke of genius. Mario 64 is a game that is at its height when you are being pushed to use your movement techniques, to long jump, wall kick, flip and lunge the way you want to go, and Miyamoto in his brilliance saw the best way to engage the player with this movement was to use a rabbit the player chases around. Unfortunately he forgot to think of anything else that really pushes the player in the game, levels are otherwise bloated with hyper-simplistic objectives that basically equate to get to the correct x-y-z coordinates and then do it again a few more times before the level is 100% complete. It gets to be a real chore. Ape Escape observed that master stroke and said "what if every level had an objective that good?" expanded on it with the monkeys, made them all unique, full of personality and far more dexterous than any enemy in Mario 64 and gave you the tools to get them. Ape Escape is a correction of Mario 64's failures and is genuinely without flaw. The only problems it has lies with the player who must not be so close minded and rigid with how they're willing to control a game, put aside the knowledge they learned from earlier games and rethink things the same way Mario 64 made them learn what an analog stick does. It is literally a game too smart for Mario 64 fanatics. "

>> " Depends on how the creator's of these play-areas treat the people that visit them. 64 always had this rather patronising tone to it as if I was always a dumb kid who didn't know any better, that I was playing pretend and swimming around in a bathtub. It never sat right with me. Ape Escape had the tone of someone who knew that, while I was a kid, wanted to prepare me for the dangers that lurked outside in the real world. And that its my duty to protect them at the same time. And mature gamer posture puh-leez. Why is that even part of the conversation? Both are kids games but its the way they communicate with the player that is far more important. And if you enjoyed 64, thats ok with me. I'm just saying how I felt when I was running around its world. If it kept you happy, then I'll leave you be. "

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