Ape Escape 2 is a neat collectathon that once again applies the concept of having the items you need to collect being living entities, those being Apes of course.
The game includes a couple of neat features, such as an interesting combat system where your weapons depend heavily on your joystick movement. If you move it upwards your baton will point forwards, if you make slashing movements left and right then the baton will slash, and if you spin it then you and the baton will spin, it's a truly creative and unique system that I don't even see modern games coming close to utilizing much. The gadgets you can earn during the game also hone in on the system, mostly by requiring you to rotate the joystick to do something such as fly or hula hoop. I do think some of the gadgets are a miss though, the magnet one only leads to trivial waiting segments whilst the hose one just wastes time and has no real gameplay use.
Each level of the game brings about some nice variety, at one point you'll be at a lovely beach resort, whilst another time brings you to a martial arts dojo high in the mountains. Each comes with some great music as well, making this one of the most varied soundtracks on the PlayStation 2 Accompanying the variety of stages is the variety of Apes to collect, whilst there are quite a few normal apes, there are usually at least 2 or 3 per world that is truly special and worth catching. Some of them ride giant robots, some of them have incredible hiding spots, and of course, some of them even fight you in boss battles. The bosses for the most part are both pretty easy and fun, though I heavily disliked the one before the final boss.
Overall, I think Ape Escape 2 is a pretty solid game that shows an interesting take on collectathons. If you end up playing it and enjoying it, I would also recommend going into the 3rd game as well, which takes the same formula to even greater heights.
The game includes a couple of neat features, such as an interesting combat system where your weapons depend heavily on your joystick movement. If you move it upwards your baton will point forwards, if you make slashing movements left and right then the baton will slash, and if you spin it then you and the baton will spin, it's a truly creative and unique system that I don't even see modern games coming close to utilizing much. The gadgets you can earn during the game also hone in on the system, mostly by requiring you to rotate the joystick to do something such as fly or hula hoop. I do think some of the gadgets are a miss though, the magnet one only leads to trivial waiting segments whilst the hose one just wastes time and has no real gameplay use.
Each level of the game brings about some nice variety, at one point you'll be at a lovely beach resort, whilst another time brings you to a martial arts dojo high in the mountains. Each comes with some great music as well, making this one of the most varied soundtracks on the PlayStation 2 Accompanying the variety of stages is the variety of Apes to collect, whilst there are quite a few normal apes, there are usually at least 2 or 3 per world that is truly special and worth catching. Some of them ride giant robots, some of them have incredible hiding spots, and of course, some of them even fight you in boss battles. The bosses for the most part are both pretty easy and fun, though I heavily disliked the one before the final boss.
Overall, I think Ape Escape 2 is a pretty solid game that shows an interesting take on collectathons. If you end up playing it and enjoying it, I would also recommend going into the 3rd game as well, which takes the same formula to even greater heights.