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Reviews
Ape Out (2019)
And all that jazz
Ape Out is a free-form, ever-changing arcade action experience in which you must escape your captivity as a raging gorilla.
The main reason for playing it is that it succeeds in transcribing improvisational jazz onto game-play through a combination of adaptive soundtrack that reacts to kills and damage taken, the stylish level introductions, the distinctive, clear visuals and moment to moment game-play.
Speaking of which, the playing experience can differ wildly between levels and difficulty modes: on normal, you're grooving to the sounds of the environment and reacting quickly to pull sick tricks, letting your imagination fill in the gaps with whatever flows best, whereas when it gets hard, you'll learn to be calmer, more methodical, and turning "fast-paced action" into a dangerous last resort against the semi-randomly-generated levels. I didn't expect such variation in game that gets attention from its aesthetics first and foremost.
The game has options for Laptop mode to improve performance at the cost of some visuals, and support for binaural audio in headphones mode - I confess I didn't hear much of a difference in the one level I tries with this option turned on, but that could be just me.
However, the controls can feel inconsistent when holding a guard and trying to line up a shot that misses the target in aim(I played with mouse and keyboard), and I find it annoying that an RPG-wielding enemy can sometimes launch an insta-killing projectile through some thin obstacles such as the orange fences in Disco 4 Side B.
All-in-all, thoroughly enjoyed this game, I highly recommend it to anyone seeking a highly concentrated dose of game design greatness (especially the one-off level Break In in hard mode) , or a cathartic jazz aesthetic simulator. Thank you Gabe Cuzzillo, Bennett Foddy, Matt Boch and others.