Now is the perfect time to revive Ape Escape

If you’ve played Astro Bot already, then you know that its best levels are it’s “hero” stages. After beating the boss in each of its five worlds, players must complete a special end challenge that puts Astro in the center of a different PlayStation game. One level turns him into Kratos and has him tossing a tiny Leviathan Axe at enemies. Another sends him on an Uncharted adventure complete with shootouts and chase sequences.

The best hero level, though, is the very first one. At the end of the first world, Astro is tossed into the world of Ape Escape. It’s not just a nostalgic throwback to a forgotten PlayStation classic; it’s a reminder that Ape Escape is a darn good game that deserves to make a full-scale comeback.

For young readers, Ape Escape was at one time a major PlayStation series. It began in 1999 on the original PlayStation and got three mainline entries in total. It had several spinoffs outside of those three games, but its final installment was a PS3 game built to showcase Sony’s Move controllers. It’s been dormant ever since then — well, at least until Astro Bot.

Astro Bot’s Ape Escape level is a pitch-perfect recreation of the original games. In it, Astro gets an oversized butterfly net and needs to run around a small open area catching wandering apes. He can use a radar to point him in the direction of hidden monkeys, some of which are well-hidden. Once he figures out where they are, he needs to chase them down and snag them in his net.

Despite being a recreation of a 1999 game, the formula holds up remarkably well. Part of that is a credit to Team Asobi and its ability to create tight, responsive gameplay that takes advantage of the PS5’s DualSense. But even beyond that, the core Ape Escape hook is still enjoyable in its own right. The series is a clever puzzle-platformer hybrid that rewards players for sleuthing around every corner of its colorful levels. There’s brainy satisfaction that comes from finding a well-hidden monkey, followed by a great