Ape tastic (Planet of the Apes (GBA))

Member Name: rathen1971

Product:	Planet of the Apes (GBA)
Date:	14/03/02 (115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy to play

Disadvantages: a walk in the park

Ubi- soft are a decent games publisher and their Planet of the apes is just as polished as some of their previous good platform games such as Rayman.

The game has you playing as Ben, an astronaut sent to the future to find Taylor who went missing on the last mission. In the game you have to find little flags which Taylor left behind him.

You land on a mysterious planet populated by talking apes with machine guns some of which do nasty experiments on humans. (Sounds like mum and dad.)

Your goal is to find what happened to Taylor and find clues on the way. What takes place is a battle for survival. Hostile enemies which need to be dispatched include snakes, apes, some lighting bolt breathing humans, bears and goats!

As well as the normal platform game diet of jumping, climbing and pulling the odd lever here or there a fair bit of shooting has to be done.

You get a small choice of weapons which are a knife, handgun, shotgun and machine gun. The last couple of guns have to be found on later stages. Your ammo does run out but you'll find there's plenty about to achieve victory. Your knife is best used for the safer enemies like snakes and apes with sticks. You need to save you better guns for the bears and gun weilding apes.

There is actually twelve levels to the game although the game box says there is ten.

Between some of the levels there are some nice story scenes which are of a very good artistic quality. I love the graphics on this game and the way it looks. I give it 10/10 for presentation. Every two levels the scenery changes and you find yourself in new territory. The places you visit include a desert, ape town, ancient ruins and mountainous terrain. Playing it was a joy as I couldnt wait to find out what place I would find next.

The story is based on a mish mash of the films. The ending is pretty decent unlike a certain Planet of the Apes film which saw the planet being destroy
ed by a nuclear bomb.

The control of the character Ben takes some use but doesn't take long to get used to. The good news is the jumping is spot on. Bens movement is great as he catches ledges and the game does it for you more or less so you don't have to worry so much about judging jump lengths.

The shooting aspect of the game is fairly straightforward. Virtually all the animals can be killed really easily. Even the apes lack intelligence and some you can attack with your knife and they continue to make a predetermined walk so all you have to do is wait for them to come back and attack again. Some of the gun weilding apes are much harder to dispatch because you can't jump horizontally with a gun in your hand. There is a slight delay in preparing your gun and the apes can shoot you down if you're not quick. However on the whole their attacks are fairly ineffective and won't take much off your health bar.

With plenty of life potions and med kits lying about it's a fairly easy game to play and finish. It won't take you long. I finished it dispatching every enemy and finding all the flags which might have unlocked those two extra levels. You get passwords every level and in a level if you die you just start from the beginning of that level which is great really but it means you'll finish the game quicker.

Even though it only took somewhere around ten hours to finish (and I took my time!) I can't help but like the game. If a second one was released i'd buy it. It's just got that something special which made me want to keep playing. I just wish it could have had longer levels and be a little bit more challenging. To emphasise how easy it is Disney's Lost legend of Atlantis is almost 100% harder!!

I paid £18 for mine from a dealer in Japan and I feel it was worth it as it was such an enjoyable game. If I had paid £30 I may have not been so generous in this review! However consid
ering you could pay £20 for a 2 hour dvd film of it you could say it's worth the outlay in comparison.

Summary: