The closest we'll likely ever get to a true Ape Escape 4. Ape Escape: Big Mission is a Japan exclusive PSP spinoff. If you are an Ape Escape fan, do yourself a favor and play this game! Don't be scared by the fact that it's in Japanese language only. This game can VERY easily be played even if you don't understand a single bit of it.

The story has Specter shrinking down Spike, Natalie, and the Professors lab to a miniature size. He's also kidnapped the Professor, Aki, and the previous protagonists Jimmy, Kei, and Yumi. Now Spike and Natalie need to pilot the miniature lab to save their friends and family and return to normal size.

If I had to compare the gameplay to another game that's more modern, I would say it's like Mario Odyssey. The twist here is that instead of controlling Mario you can only control the cap that possesses things. That's this game in a nutshell. When you begin a level, you start off piloting the small lab and need to locate an Ape to possess and control before your battery runs out. From there, you move through a linear level swapping between apes with different abilities to clear platforming challenges. Catching apes feels almost exactly like it does in the console games, and playing as them feels like the different gadgets you use in those games as well. If you decide to play this game here's the basic controls so you understand what you're doing since everything will be in Japanese. X will always be jump no matter what you are controlling, triangle will always be the capture/unpossess ape button, and square and circle will always be the attack or special move button depending on what your ape specializes in. That's basically the gist of it and what you'll be doing throughout the whole game. Easy as hell to get!

Soichi Terada composed the soundtrack for this game and honestly, it's some of his best work for this series. If you don't want to play this game because it's japan exclusive then at least give the soundtrack a listen.

There are a few nitpicks. Sometimes the game spawns WAY too many enemies at once in some rooms and you can easily be overwhelmed. Also for some reason, the game only lets you have 2 lives and no more then that. A baffling choice but you likely won't be dying too often. If you get nervous feel free to save state. Further, when you are presented with an obstacle you are almost always given the ape needed to proceed through it, so it feels like there's not really much challenge in finding the apes like you do in the mainline titles.

Overall, this is a very good Ape Escape game and it's a shame it was never translated. It feels like a culmination of the previous games, bringing back all the protagonists from series history and having them work together against Specter and the Freaky Monkey Five by controlling all the apes they've fought before. If you are an Ape Escape fan that's hungry for more content, please play this game! You'll see what I mean when I say it feels like it could be the closest to an Ape Escape 4 that we'll ever get.