Short little game with amazing presentation and style. Gameplay-wise, the best moments happen when you feel unstoppable, such as when you find a very small room packed with enemies that are annihilated in the blink of an eye by the sheer force of the ape. Sadly, the focus is instead on the challenge of overcoming all the obstacles that the enemies throw at you throughout the level. To succeed, you have to play more carefully, waiting around corners until enemies get closer so you can kill them, and such. However, playing like that is just lame. The music and aesthetic urge you to keep running and killing, but the level design, which is randomized in some levels, demands cautious gameplay. In the end, it makes for an experience that was very close to realizing its true potential, but because of the level design and the limited toolset of the ape (grabbing and pushing enemies, you can also grab the limbs of dead enemies to throw them, though this slows you down too much to be worthwhile, and that's it, that's all the ape can do), and the inherent weakness of the ape itself (dying in just 3 gunshots, making charging in not viable a lot of the time), it falls short of reaching it.

The game features a hard mode, so if the first run focused on feeling unstoppable and the hard mode concentrated on the challenge of enemies, it would be a truly outstanding game. Still, it's very short, it's creative in its scenarios for every level, and just for the presentation alone, it's worth playing.

Reviewed on Apr 09, 2024


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