Whilst stressful, gameplay doesn't get more finely-honed perfected bliss than Ape Out. Combat and dynamic soundtrack are ingeniously married & presentation oozes style. Will be a 2019 standout indie.

If only the title was less ambiguous.

Headaches. Restlessness. Chest tightness. Excessive sweating. Feeling constantly "on edge." Trembling or shaking. Insomnia. Irritability and violent outbursts. This is how I would diagnose someone of whom has been playing Ape Out. Granted, I wasn't very well at the time.

Ape Out, like most products of a creative process, might have been conceived accidentally, but it's fantastically considered in everything it does.

Playing subject 4, an Ape who wants out of captivity, it heavily evokes Hotline Miami in its top-down, split-second ultra-violence - but perhaps superficially so.

This isn't strategic, calculated room clearing. Escape is the literal name of the game. Each level is a desperate, mad dash scramble to an exit - dodging and weaving as you go and punctuated by defensive and panicked combat. The top-down perspective too, refuses to offer full-screen omniscience with walls towering into the screen. Level layouts, whilst conserving key setpieces, procedurally dance around every attempt. Layouts are truly labyrinthian - aping the warped perception of a panicked Ape. Any possible prescience you could have is truly dead.

Where's Waldo: Uncut Edition.

This uniquely positions combat as being reactive, improvisational, and preferably avoidable. You become aware of enemies on a just-in-time basis with only a brief window to throw them out one. The very primal and visceral binary combat options of push and grab are simple for this purpose. Pushing an enemy into a wall or other enemies obliterates them into red paint and disembodied limbs. Grabbing enemies allows a human shield, more finely targeted throwing and the exploitation of their itchy trigger fingers to fire on their friends. You can also grab and throw limbs, doors you've pulled off hinges - as well as throw back bombs. I'm glad, however, they didn't go the route of peppering levels with objects to throw. Where the 'puzzle' of a Hotline Miami is a preprepared dance that can descend into improvisation, Ape Out keeps its combat mostly bare-fists and about cultivating instinctive relationships with the mechanics. It's a very different dynamic to most any top-down combat game.

If you've looked into Ape Out and thought the jazz accompaniment arbitrary, it should suddenly make head-slapping sense in light of this. Each chapter is presented as a record, and the levels the tracks. Never before have I seen implementation quite as astonishing as the dynamic drum solos that are fed situationally by areas, setpieces and the intensity of combat - accompanied by spectacular cymbal crashes telegraphing kills. From a certain perspective, you are composing a unique record every session through gameplay. That's nothing short of genius. It makes sense a Harmonics developer was involved!

Guess the next panel.

I've never felt more like a mortal god - concurrently empowered and disempowered. One thing it DOES inherit is the hard-as-nails difficulty. Three hits and you're out might sound generous on paper, but attacks come with such ferocity that it can be a mere trice before that's reality. It's made a bigger issue, then, that as with any kind of procedural generation there is the potential for unfairness. Sometimes a run-through's placement feels like it simply finally yielded you an easy ride or contrariwise. I think this has since been somewhat addressed by updates and of course, the mark of a good player will be their ability to adapt regardless.

Levels are at their best when they have some gimmick. A novel mechanic like snipers aiming through windows or bombs falling from the sky. Or perhaps, a setpiece like masses of enemies arriving in lifts either side after you set off an alarm, or a blackout period wherein enemies are entirely reliant on flashlights. Maybe even just a new enemy type being introduced. Whilst between the four the variation is there, I think Ape Out could have benefitted from more unique moments to refocus the blur some of the chapters become. That said, feeling out solutions to new mechanics as simple as killing enemies by busting through the door of a shipping container or setting yourself on fire to buy yourself some reaction time by forcing enemies to flee is a constant joy.

Would you kindly.

The minimalistic, shimmering aesthetic style, ostensibly inspired by Pharoah Sanders' 'You've got to have freedom' album, is breathtaking in its simplicity and style. I adore the presentational eccentricities like the faux turning over to 'side B' of a chapter and each level's animated title card-like intro. After dying, a staccato drum pan out to your path through the level sandwiched between 'DEAD.' God, it just oozes style.

The four records won't expend more than a few afternoons, but thankfully there's plenty to stay for. A devilish harder mode ratchets up enemy numbers and introduces certain types early, but I think the arcade mode is the mainstay mode. It's pure arcade scoring and leaderboard nonsense. but demands no less than a whole chapter run-through without dying (and no regen of health points between levels). Already, there are some remarkable feats of skill that show the very limits of the mechanical potential here. I fear that particular exclusive club is probably forever out of my reach.

Iceberg DEAD ahead.

Whilst stressful, gameplay doesn't get more finely-honed perfected bliss than Ape Out. The combat and dynamic soundtrack are ingeniously married and the presentation oozes style. This will undoubtedly be one of the standout indie games of 2019.

Ape Out bursts into life with a barrelling momentum embodied through a lively percussion based soundtrack and the sheer power of the titular Ape.

Every element of the game informs the pace - the aforementioned strength of your character making each encounter last a split second; the long range capabilities of the enemies that force to you duck for cover, run straight in, or take a hostage; random generation that keeps your gameplay quick and reactive; and the soundtracks heart racing bpm that swells and crashes with each fling of an enemy.

Immediately reminiscent of doing Tony runs on Hotline Miami (If you know what that is then I highly recommend this game for you) I really appreciated the quick, dirty and not to mention violent core mechanic - run to the exit and turn anyone you encounter into jam.

A way of describing this that came into my mind during the final chapter was action stealth. In essence you are evading capture, and sneaking out of a facility... only sneaking really isn't the word here and the idea of stealth is 'leave no survivors to give you away' (Which is an equally valid way of playing stealth titles, albeit de-incentivised). Whilst I'm sure it's possible to creep through each level limiting encounters to very few, the random generation of the level limits your ability to strategise and prioritises fast and reactive gameplay.

The art style is also certainly worth a mention, using bold colours and textures the game is brimming with vibrancy. The top down view is slightly modified by walls extending above the camera and to a certain extent limiting your field of view and therefore your ability to avoid encounters which again all adds to the thrilling pace that really is the game's main selling point.

The game is structured into four main scenarios, titled 'discs', and within them is 8 levels, titled 'tracks'. Each of the levels seamlessly flows into the other and are more there to give you regular checkpoints, along with level themes (like turning off the lights) and of course, soundtrack developments. Each disc has an album art reminiscent of old Jazz LP's and again re-enforces the strong ludo-auditory connection. (Yes I just coined that on the fly, don't judge me)

Without giving it away I thought each scenario had a pretty varied in-medias-res plot considering the result, an Ape escape, was the same goal for each disc. There is also a hard mode for each disc (having only briefly explored this I believe it adds more enemies rather than doing something like a one hit kill) and an arcade mode (that is somewhat like crazy taxi) that lets you generate points for different aspects of gameplay. I also found the unlockable epilogue and musical shift for the credits to be nice surprises.

With all my talk of pace and momentum I best mention my few small issues with the game.

I took a two day break after the second disc, having really thoroughly enjoyed the first two discs in one sitting. This did somewhat dispel the pace that is there right from the starting bell, that coupled with what I feel is the weakest scenario meant I hit a bit of a lull and made it a bit more difficult for me to get back into it. To this end I do really recommend doing this in one sitting, it's not a long game (I believe Disc 3 and Disc 4 took me about 18 minutes each) but I felt that stretching it across two sittings hurt it more than it enhanced the longevity of excitement for me.

My second nitpick is simply that it crashed more than a few times. Which is actually what triggered the end of my first gameplay session. Perhaps this was due to it being installed on a rather slow internal HDD, or something to do with xbox game pass for pc - but it did kill that all important momentum a bit.

In summary - Ape Out, means go ape, it meas get out, it means hearing the drum of the jungle, and it means making anyone who stands in your way turn into jam.

I consider this a strong 4/5 and would highly recommend it to anyone who would like fast paced Hotline Miami style gameplay packaged with some truly bonkers percussion and a hella strong art style.

12/06/2020