Ape Out

Good luck not mixing this up with Ape Escape. Also good luck not calling this "Hotline Harambe" or "Hotline Cincinnati".

The similarities to Hotline Miami are indeed striking. You are faced with seemingly insurmountable odds (plenty of heavily armed human enemies stand in your path while you are but a humble 200 kg lowland gorilla), play with a top-down perspective and have to make good use of cover and kill quick lest you be killed quick. However, you can generally survive the first two hits in any given stage and you do only need to get to its end, killing is actually entirely optional, though rather helpful.

But just like Hotline Miami, Ape Out has an integral musical streak - not in the form of a banger soundtrack, but rather by using a large library of samples to dynamically transform the gory but heavily (& stomach-friendly) stylized action unfolding in front of your eyes into a jazzy percussion treat for your ears. And that is quite wonderful. Especially when you realize that the whole aesthetic of the game is inspired by classic Blue Note cover design down to the typography (hell, the different parts of the game are called "discs", with a side 1 and 2). And the all-drums-all-the-time ambience sure as hell gets your blood pumping and pushes you forward. Though you will die and restart quite a few times of course.

On each retry, the layout of the stage you're currently tackling will be randomized. This unfortunately leads to some variance and can make your successful attempts end up a bit anticlimactic. Though even if you find that your pushing people into walls before they can pull the trigger skill is lacking, this is a short game. Took me less than two hours, I guess technically I could get a refund?

There is a higher difficulty setting and an arcade mode to add some replayability, but honestly, there is little point in that. But such brevity doesn't need to be a major detriment when it makes the whole experience so neat, with sweet and unique visuals, swift and engaging gameplay that's easy to get into, and the star of the show, the non-deterministic drum collage that you help to create. Which segues into an ending which I can call perfect in good conscience. Won't spoil it, you'll get there soon enough. But if you feel visceral thrill during the credits, that's a good sign.

Is it worth its full price? In video game terms, no; compared to a movie ticket, probably? It is a cool little game for cool little gamers.

So what if Hotline Miami was with a gorilla instead of a human? That's pretty much with what Ape Out is. An over the top view and you need to escape the room by either killing, stealing and running. Your Ape is actually very powerful and really knocks out enemies and they did if they hit an object in the way. However there are tons of enemies per stage and they all have guns and explosives and whatnot, so you really have to make do the right moves to succeed.

The game isn't very long, there are 4 "discs" which all have 8 stages each, except the last one which only has 7. Technically completing a stage should not take you more than 1-2 minutes, but since the game is very challenging you are going to start over and over as you will die and die some more. When reloading a stage, the objects and enemies are randomly moved a little so each life is going to give a different result. So all in all, it shouldn't take you more than a few hours to complete the game. I generally prefer longer games, but the limited gameplay here makes it that the game couldn't be very much longer as it does get repetitive after a while.

I like that the game is challenging, but there's just something missing in it. It is satisfying to finally complete a hard stage, but it does feel like the RNG had to be on your side for it to work... and then you repeat the process over and over again. It does get harder as you progress, but again you will succeed once everything is place correctly and you don't hit a mob of enemies that would be instant death. I feel that the game is stronger more for its style (which frankly I'm not in love with) than the complex gameplay aspects. Overall I didn't hate it and somewhat enjoyed my time with it, but I wouldn't recommend so much and I'm perfectly fine for not having paid for this one (Epic Store freebie). Like I completed it, it was ok and ready to play another game and never revisit this one again.