Sanctuary of the Planet of the Apes

San Francisco, 2095. The apes came down out of the Presidio at first light and the humans met them with rifles, grenades and whatever else the last seventy years had left lying about. Ten fights stand between the fence at the Presidio and the ridge above the city.

Pick your ape, and pick carefully, because they are six different animals rather than six colours of the same one. Tano is a silverback: the biggest thing in the game, hits hardest, and can barely leave the ground. Oden is an orangutan whose arms out-reach everyone’s - nobody gets inside his punch twice - but he kicks like a man wading. Saba is the reverse, a bonobo with a metre of leg who never throws a punch if a kick will do. Quill runs the rooftops, Pip is far too young for this and jumps twice as high as Tano, and Caesar sits in the middle of all of it with a rifle he would rather not use.

The ladder runs across the city: the fence at the Presidio, the broken bridge, the Sutro ruins where a chimpanzee called Kane fights for the other side, the firebreak on Market Street, the Chinatown cordon, the Montgomery tunnel, the cages on Alcatraz and the last tower in the financial district. Then Elliot Hayne - Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and since the Fall the most powerful human alive - under the floodlights at City Hall. And then the thing he keeps on the ridge, which is twice the size of any ape ever born.

Hold back to block, and remember that a sweep beats a standing guard while an overhead beats a crouching one. The humans fight in uniform. The apes do not need one.

HOW A FIGHT WORKS

Fights are the best of three rounds, and each round lasts seventy-five seconds. If the clock runs out, the round goes to whoever has more health. You get three credits for the whole run of ten fights.

Every ape uses the same five buttons. Punch (Z) is fast and safe. Kick (X) is slower, heavier and reaches further. Down + X is a sweep, a low kick that always knocks the opponent down. X in the air is an overhead that beats a crouching guard. C fires your special. Hold away from the opponent to block. Standing blocks high attacks and overheads, crouching blocks high attacks and sweeps, and a blocked hit still chips away a little health.

The blue bar under your health fills when you hit, when you block and when you’re hit. A special costs a little under half of it, and every special that connects knocks the opponent down.

THE SIX APES

The apes have different bodies, not just different colours. Size, strength, toughness, punch reach, kick reach and jump height all vary, and the hitboxes are worked out from the same numbers, so a long arm really does land from further away.

• Caesar sits in the middle on everything. His special, Rifle Shot, is a fast tracer round across the screen. He’s the best ape to learn on.
• Tano, the silverback, has the most health, hits the hardest and takes the least from a blow. He can barely jump, and he’s slow. His Ground Pound shakes the whole floor in front of him, and while he’s doing it, ordinary attacks don’t stop him: they do half damage and he carries on.
• Oden, the orangutan, has the longest punch in the game by a distance, and a stubby kick. His Long Sweep has the longest reach of any ape’s close-range special. Fight from the end of your arm and don’t let them in.
• Saba, the bonobo, is the reverse of Oden: the longest kick and a short punch. Her Spin Kick covers a wide area at head height. Play her at kicking range.
• Quill, the scout, is quick and jumps well, and he’s lighter than most. Blade Rush is a fast lunge with a scrap of window frame. He’s good at getting in, hitting and getting out.
• Pip is the smallest and fastest, has the least health and jumps highest of anyone, about twice as high as Tano. His Grenade is lobbed in an arc and does the most damage of any ape special when it lands. Air kicks are his bread and butter.

THE LADDER

The first two opponents are soldiers on the Presidio fence and the broken bridge, and they go down easily. From there the ladder climbs through the demolition sergeant who lobs frag grenades at the Market Street firebreak, the officer with the visor feed at the Chinatown cordon, the tunnel captain with a length of rail, the major who keeps the cages on Alcatraz and fires three-round bursts, and the armoured colonel holding the last tower in the financial district. His Breach Charge ploughs through your attacks the way Tano’s Ground Pound does. In the middle of it all is Kane, a collared chimpanzee who fights for the humans.

Then Elliot Hayne under the floodlights at City Hall. He’s quick, he’s tough, and his Order of Fire is the fastest shot in the game, fired in pairs. After him comes Magog, a gorilla grown in the island labs: the most health of anyone in the game, a huge reach, and an Earthbreaker that cracks the ground right across the arena.

TIPS

• Watch the meter, theirs as well as yours. A soldier with a full bar is about to shoot. Crouch-block, or get into the air.
• Learn your range. With Oden, punch at the very end of his reach. With Saba, kick from where they can’t touch you. With Tano, walk in behind your block and wait for the Ground Pound.
• Mix high and low. Someone who keeps blocking low can’t stop an air kick, and someone who stands and blocks will fall to a sweep.
• Use the clock. If you’re ahead on health with seconds left, block and let the round run out.

BEHIND THE GAME

Sanctuary was built on the engine from Lisbon Fury, then largely rebuilt, because apes showed up the limits of the older look. A figure drawn in flat colour reads well enough as a man in a tracksuit, but an ape drawn that way looks like a mannequin. So the screen went up to 448×336. Every limb is now shaded in three tones against a light direction set for each stage, with a fringe of fur along the shadow side. The fur is worked out from the limb’s own position rather than at random, so it holds still from frame to frame instead of fizzing like a badly tuned television.

Anything hot, such as muzzle flash, tracer fire, explosions and neon, is also drawn into a second, smaller picture. That picture is blurred and laid back over the top to give a glow. The backgrounds are six layers deep, plus drifting fog and a foreground layer, so San Francisco has depth rather than being a painted wall behind a floor. Apes and humans share one skeleton so that they can hit each other with the same hitboxes, but they are drawn completely differently. The apes get fur, a muzzle and a brow ridge, and the silverback gets a crest on his skull. The humans get fatigues, webbing, helmets and boots. The apes wear nothing, which is the point.