E3 Hands-On: Ace Banana is Top Banana for VR

By: Quentin H.

The very last title I played on the E3 showfloor this year was Ace Banana. Ace Banana is a VR experience four player co-op title where you play as one of five legendary guardians of Banana Village, and you must protect the banana babies from the various monkeys that will try to steal them away. Yeah, the story is a bit ridiculous, but in the end, it all comes down to the gameplay doesn’t it?

For the demo, I played this with a Vive headset, two controllers, and another player. The objective is to shoot the monkeys with your bow and arrow and knock them out before they can grab one of the banana babies and escape. You shoot by holding one controller up with one hand, pull the other controller back while holding a button (like you’re drawing a bow), and then release the button. You have to draw for each new attack. In the Ace Banana demo, there were three locations in the same map that I had to jump between to protect the banana babies during each wave.

The combat played very smoothly, and it felt very very natural to draw the bow and attack with it. There were multiple types of monkeys, ranging from monkeys with jetpacks to armored monkeys, that my partner and I had to shoot. Every so often I would earn powerups that would enhance my shooting, such as shooting a powerful fish instead of my standard ammo. Thanks to our teamwork, we quickly got to the last wave, but we weren’t able to protect all the banana babies before losing.

Overall, this was a very fun way for me to close out E3 and Ace Banana is expected to be both a PC release and a day-one title for Playstation VR. It came across as a great party game and one that frankly does not require a lot of skill to be good at (at least initially). The graphics were incredibly gorgeous (though it was with a Vive headset, so that’s to be expected) as well, and the colors of the world just popped around me.