Ape Out

A gorilla will fuck you up.

They are not violent creatures but, if sufficiently motivated, have the capacity to liquefy a human being’s internal organs. In the case of Ape Out, a top-down brawler by Gabe Cuzzillo with assistance from Bennett Foddy and Matt Boch, well-armed humans have imprisoned a gorilla and the gorilla wishes to leave. To prevent this, the humans try to confuse the gorilla with rudimentary mazes and kill the gorilla with guns and explosives. The consequences are grievous and messy.

Jazz is a wonderful genre of music that some find frightening and out of control. It is characterized by, among other features, outrageous polyrhythms and its cordial relationship with improvisation. Some hear a cacophony while others hear a symphony. From either perspective one has to conclude that jazz, at least in the mind of its musicians, is a lot of fun to create and play.

Ape Out combines rampaging gorillas with roaring jazz. Skull cracking with symbol crashing. Frenzied machine gun drums with actual machine guns. It features four distinct areas, all but one with eight levels, where a gorilla escapes its confines and uncharitably obliterates scores of human resistance. When the gorilla lays into a human they visually explode and audibly strike the symbols on the drum kit. A furious drum track plays in the background, transforming perpetual warranted murder into a massive Art Is Violence installation. Ape Out is like Rez if Rez traded psychedelic rail-shooting for beating the crap out of people.

Hotline Miami’s brand of room-based systematic destruction is the foundation upon which Ape Out builds its encampment. From a top-down perspective, you play as a gorilla leisurely roaming the corridors, rooms, and open spaces of office buildings, transport ships, and other heavily hallway’d environments. Each level is composed of a series of four or five connected rooms, each with their own distinct pathways. Obstacles, structures, and enemy placement inside of the levels seem to be routed through some form of procedural generation, but the general length and layout always stays the same.

The gorilla’s primary means of expression is issuing catastrophic body blows that blow up bodies. One hit fatally separates a person from their torso and/or arms while a superfluous second hit reduces them to an impartial splash of color. The drawback is a simple gorilla punch, given sufficient runway, is ineffective. The target has to either collide with nearby wall or another human target, who would also be killed. A solid surface is all that is needed for complete physical human detonation.

Human opponents come in several varieties. The standard single-color person carries an automatic weapon that they will aim and fire after a few seconds. Smaller fellows with green caps like to play keep away, fleeing as the ape gets closer. People with explosive backpacks are great as human grenades, but will also kill the ape if punch-slammed too close to a wall. Flamethrowers create proximity challenges while rocket launcher foes, with their one-hit kills, are perhaps the most dangerous.

Ape Out’s point of conflict lies with closing the gap between man and ape. There are a few moments in between a person realizing the ape is loose and that their life is in immediate danger. Play Ape Out long enough and you’ll start to internalize the distance at which you’ve either got them or when they’ve got you. Each human has a specific tell, a gun-cocking noise or otherwise, that signals when a shot is about to fire. The ape can absorb three normal shots before dying, each increasing the amount of liquid dispersed in a blood trail.

It’s not required to kill everyone. Levels are quite large and entire sections can be traversed without raising alarm. Ape Out is not a stealth game, but it is possible to be sly about your movements. Along similar lines, passing in front of a column or into a doorway and blocking a gun’s line-of-sight is a risky but effective way to avoid taking a hit. Some levels have large metal doors that need to be wrenched off, demanding three or four seconds of unaffected tug work, but cowardice is otherwise a valid means of progression.

The only other mechanic is the grab move that enables the ape to take a human hostage. In addition to the worrying imagery of a gorilla-initiated hostage situation, it makes for a great bullet shield for one or two hits. Each hostage, for some reason, also fires their weapon one time while they’re in the ape’s death grip. Working with the right analog stick allows the player to aim the person like a projectile, essentially saving them up to be dispensed as needed. I didn’t use the grab-a-hostage mechanic much but I could imagine it helping more methodical and less impulsive players.

Ape Out relies on causing chaos and requiring the player to deal with the fallout. Finding yourself quickly surrounded with a variety of enemy types, especially in the later levels, induces panic which sometimes causes incredible victories but mostly leads to fast defeats. I died a lot. Sometimes the lights go out, sometimes windows are an OK thing to throw people out of, and sometimes it’s OK to be set on fire because it makes people run away from you. It doesn’t take long to finish Ape Out, Steam is telling me it required four hours, but it’s dense with intense situations.

Screenshots really don’t sell the charm of Ape Out’s visual performance. The stark color contrast of simple 3D models is enhanced by some kind of sketch filter that adds to the spastic nature of the entire experience. It’s impossible to capture in a static screen, and it also ignores the quaking screen shake (which can be turned off as a comfort setting) that occurs whenever human turbulence is being renegotiated. Ape Out’s entire aesthetic conditions horrific carnage into a more cartoon-like climate.

Ape Out runs into trouble in a few areas. Sequences that feel overly designed, like the hallway full of humans that closes out the second series of levels, seem to reflect luck more than skill. In other instances, like when a guy is pointing his flamethrower right at me before I exit a hallway, feel impossible to have avoided naturally. Ape Out’s last normal level features a considerable expansion to its basic operation and it’s almost a shame it wasn’t a larger part of the basic game. I get it, though. Anything that strays away from a gorilla wreaking havoc is probably best left as a cameo.

After the first few levels I thought Ape Out was going to burn out hard and fast. I, too, am enraptured by the idea of a game that goes all-in—frenetic visuals, exasperated jazz, outrageous violence, dedicated objectives—on such a ridiculous premise. You never see this level of consistency and commitment in the AAA space and seem to find it with smaller-scoped games with only a handful of designers. It gives me joy to see this treatment given to help an ape seek justice through a rambunctious arcade brawler. I’ve played ridiculous games before but few that are also good at being a game instead of being just good at being ridiculous.

Ape Out parades the alliance between thunderous jazz and an irritated bloodthirsty gorilla. Two unrelated objects defined by being out of control are both under your control in the form of a violent top-down brawler. Symbols crash when gorillas and humans clash and the performance is beautiful and preposterous.