BARGAIN BASEMENT
RICH PELLEY goes dizzy over the latest batch of Codies games and JON PILLAR has quite a bit of trouble getting a word in edgeways.
CodeMasters
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley
The title to this game is a rather amusing pun because the 'local' witchdoctor (Witch doctor? Oh, that one. Ho ho ho) has turned Tarzan into a monkey. I mean 'ape'. So he has indeed "gone ape" as the title suggests, as well as no doubt being rather cross. Anyway, you take the part of Tarzan, in monkey form, and your only hope of becoming human again is to to collect the various ingredients needed to make a special magic potion. (Sounds ever so like the up-and-coming Toki from Ocean, if you ask me.)
As with most Codies game of late, it's all a simple concept. You start at the bottom and have to reach the top of each vertically-scrolling level by jumping between platforms and climbing vines, killing nasties as you go by throwing rocks at them. The ingredients have been conveniently scattered throughout, and bananas and doughnuts can be also collected for score as you go. Death is always a result of you walking or jumping into a baddy as they don't actually come at you (and it can be a bit too easy to kill yourself in the process when all you really wanted to do is climb a vine).
There are no other probs as far as the programming goes (the graphics are fine for a start). It's just that after minimal plays I found that the novelty soon wore off and boredom set in. There are different levels, to say nothing of the different baddies and backgrounds and bonus levels too, but so far as the gameplay goes nothing really changes. It's a shame, because with a bit more to it (the screen scrolling horizontally as well for instance) it would have been a bit of a corker. This is just one of those games that's slickly programmed, but at the end of the day everso slightly too simple and repetitive. Ho hum.
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