Ugh, ugh, ughaaa!

While there are quite a few really not so good games at the yoyogames comp04, ChimpVenture shows that even a competition entry here can stand on it's own.

ChimpVenture is a loveable game, from start to finish. You take control of a monkey trying to save the world. Yes, you all saved the world countless times already but doing that in form of a monkey armed with a wooden stick is no familiar experience and it is defintely fun. You walk and jump about levels, fight the occasional enemy and collect bonus bananas for the sake of "catching them all". Your mission is to destroy mankinds 4 power generators and they're guarded by all kinds of evil animals and malicious robots you can come up with.

The controls in ChimpVenture are passable. They don't do any fancy stuff and feel a bit robotic at times but they make do. You can control your monkey with pixel precision in jumps and that's what really couns for this game. The game does not value it's own battle sequences, not giving you any rewards for actually sticking it to the man (pun intended). If you jump over enemies, they'll chase you and eventually fall off a cliff.

What sets ChimpVenture apart from the competition are it's lovable graphics. They are cute, vibrant and fit the style of the game. The amount of polish that went into the game's graphical presentation is amazing, everything is animated, fades into view or does some other effects to show that the creators thought about what their games look like. There are occasional boring parts in some levels, for example 4 swinging blue platforms over a brown background that make the screen feel dull and empty but those are the exception. Most of the time, ChimpVenture is beautiful.

Sadly, the sound side of things isn't as good. The sound effects are basic to say the least. I couldn't help but wonder if they were ripped straight from one of the earliest Donkey Kong builds out there. The background music is repetitive MIDI and doesn't really fit. Thankfully you can turn that off.

Closing comments
ChimpVenture is a cute, adorable game that revolves around an unused plot but doesn't do anything new in the gameplay part. It is well executed, features 4 giant worlds with intriguing level design and some nice replay value with the banana-collection-bonus. As good as the graphics are, the sound is truly lacking and thus prevents this game from getting the 5 star rating it would otherwise have deserved. Still, play it. It's a great game.