I've been checking out a couple of ape-themed mobile games over the weekend - as you do. First up, Monkey On Your Back, a really well-designed 2D platformer from a new developer named Capybara. You play as a monkey trapped in the lair of an evil genius, Krenwinkle, and must escape through several levels patrolled by egg-headed scientists and trigger-happy guards.
Naturally, you can jump up and scuttle along ceilings - and being a psychic monkey you can also leap on top of scientists and take over their minds, using them to open doors and to attack other enemies. The characterisation, even with such small sprites, is highly amusing - controlling a lab coated geek with a small simian perched on his soldier is much more fun than it really ought to be.
It all sounds pretty daft, but the crisp, finely-detailed graphics are really quite lovely, bringing to mind the golden age of Mega Drive platformers like Robo Cop and Alien 3. Here though, you also get the offbeat comedy and tactics of the first two Oddworld titles. Level design is smart, too, with all the usual traps and features (moving platforms, deadly spikes, etc) accompanied by some more imaginative elements.
Indeed, the experience compares extremely favourably with the excellent Splinter Cell mobile titles - but it may not be possible to check out Monkey On Your Back anytime soon: I've been told that the company is having trouble getting network operators interested in carrying the game on their portals, apparently because it has no TV/film license or connection to a big console release. If that's true it's a horribly depressing state of affairs and the industry needs to buck its ideas up.
I've also taken a quick look at Mr Goodliving's Gorillaz Entertainment System, a collection of retro mini-games starring the virtual pop band and glued together with some pretty astute eighties-themed presentation. The GES logo, for example, resembles a collision of the NES name with Colecovision typography, while sound effects are pure early Namco. You even get a homage to the old Commodore 64 Novaload lines between menu screens.
Anyway, the four games are each named after a Gorillaz member. Muds gets a passable Breakout clone, where you bounce the ball off the top of his underpants. Noodles stars in a rudimentary fighting game stopping incoming objects with high, middle and low kicks and punches. Russel has to eat as many cookies as possible by grabbing at the correct areas of the screen corresponding to different key presses. Finally, 2D appears in a Skipping Stone-style rhythm action challenge where you hit the 5 button four times at the correct points to make him strike a punchball, then hit the button again to time the bag's bounces as it flies off across the room.
It's an extremely limited experience, of real interest, perhaps, only to Gorillaz and/or retro console obsessives - but it's also stylish and daft and will amuse in very short doses. I think we could have done with more mini-games, though. A version of Moon Patrol with the Gorillaz Geep would have been fun (although that has sort of been done on the Gorillaz homepage...).
So, what's the best monkey game on mobile phones? Monkey Ball Mini-Golf is certainly up there, Gorillaz certainly isn't, Monkey On Your Back certainly deserves to be...
