Apestorm: Full Bananas Review

Apestorm: Full Bananas may have an interesting title – to say the least – but that’s about the most the game appears to have going for it. Well, that and you’re an ape dropping bombs on a steampunk-themed world for the good of nature!

If you’re looking for what Apestorm truly is, then I will tell you right now that it is a side-scroller where you must fly your ship from one end of the level all the way to the other, completing objectives along the way and boosting your score. The game is entirely 2D, so the depth of needing to be on different planes for bombing runs doesn’t apply here.

Speaking of lack of depth, the bombing itself isn’t all that integral. At first it’s rather fun and enjoyable, because if you’ve got the ship swooping and flying around, the directions and whatnot for the bomb can really be quite significant and fun. After some time though, it becomes vastly easier just to hit the button whenever you want to drop a bomb, because almost every time, it is bound to just drop straight down onto the house you’ve just flown over. There’s such little depth here that it feels more of an arcade title where there’s no real objective, and your high-score is what dictates how well you do.

I feel the game would have fared a little better if the intention was to make it an arcade game. That way, bombs could have some much more interesting and wacky effects, score would matter considerably more, rather than just some afterthought that’s been tacked on for no reason at all. Not to mention that the rather minimalistic upgrades the game totes is rather unnecessary. Strip all of that away from Apestorm, and you’ve got yourself a silly, but fun side-scrolling arcade game. Instead, we’re left with an okay game, but one that finds itself getting too stale too quickly.

When it comes down to story, it’s nothing too special in particular really. The gist of it all is that three rogue apes have escaped, commandeered a steampunk airship, and to prevent the humans from claiming all nature as their own and destroying it, the apes proceed to bomb everything they see that resembles a human settlement. You gain points for hitting anything that has been built by humans, however, if you hit something relating to nature; such as accidentally flying into a bird or having a bomb miss and crash into the ground, you will lose points for it. Honestly, Apestorm’s story is easy to miss and doesn’t need to be paid too much attention to understand; before long it takes a backseat anyway.

Controls work just fine for an iOS game, as they don’t get any more complicated than wiggle a virtual joystick on your screen to speed up the ship, slow it down or use it to avoid any oncoming obstacles. Then, if you wish to fire a bomb down onto the villages below, simply tap the button and that’s exactly what will happen. There’s nothing wrong with the controls and they do their job exactly as intended, without any other issues cropping up.

Aesthetically, the game isn’t too much to look at, overall. The colour pallet for the game as a whole seems fairly lacking, as there is a worrying amount of just brown and grey, a colour scheme that isn’t all that pleasant to the eye. Even though steampunk focuses on steam-powered machinery, it doesn’t mean it’s a theme that is devoid of colour; something that this game pretty much conveys the moment you load it up.

There are voice actors in the game, mainly for the three apes aboard the ship, and every single one of them has some rather laughable dialog. The voice actors themselves did not do a great job on this one, and it shows. At times you’ll hear someone talking on board the ship, but the accent they’re forcing for this ape really throws off the dialog, making it almost impossible to listen to what in the world he just said. These three aren’t as all bad as each other, but every one of them has a disappointing and lacklustre voice to them, with a couple of the apes having it worse than the other guy.

While the majority of the bomb-dropping gameplay isn’t all that interesting, there are alternative bombs that you can incorporate into a mission to make it a bit more fun. For instance, there’s a bomb that bounces, and depending on how well you fire the bomb and how many hits it proceeds to get in a row, your score will rack up. For me, it was less about the score, and more about seeing just how long I could keep one bouncy bomb going for, whilst watching the sheer destruction in tow, although the animations for the explosions for said bomb weren’t quite as impressive or enjoyable.

Overall, Apestorm: Full Bananas isn’t necessarily a good game; it’s just that it’s quite a stale game. For the first few missions, dropping bombs on unsuspecting houses below was enjoyable to a point, but soon enough it started wearing a bit thin for my liking, if I’m honest. New bomb types and variants did add to the game itself a little more, but it didn’t warrant enough to make me want to go back to the game anytime soon, that’s for sure.

Apestorm: Full Bananas clearly doesn’t take itself seriously, which I appreciate, but the overall design of it all isn’t all that fun, so it leads to some pretty quick tedium. However, the game does work and play just fine; it’s just a touch too boring that’s all.