While most of the games featured at EIEIO this year were not playable, Hail to the Chimp was one of the few that were, and thank goodness for that. In the past I had heard the title described in several ways, sometimes as a party game, then as a fighting game, with never a clear explanation. Let me tell you exactly what Hail to the Chimp is. It’s Power Stone, with a boatload of game modes, animal combatants, highly interactive environments, being broadcast on the animal kingdom version of the Daily Show. Now, let me expand on that.

As I said, Hail to the Chimp is, at its core, a Power Stone clone. Up to 4 players fight in a 3d arena with varying objectives. The first game type I played involved collecting clams, the currency in the animal kingdom, which appeared randomly, and you could collect other players’ clams by beating it out of them. The winner was the one who had the most clams for two minutes. In the second mode, a ballot box would fall from the sky every 30 seconds or so, and the character to inflict the necessary damage on the box collected 100 ballots, with the goal being the first to 1000 ballots. We ended the session with a game with an odd Reversi-like objective. Scattered over the arena were a multitude of squares, and you could activate a square if you collected 10 clams. Surrounding opponents’ squares with your own captured their squares for you, and the player with the most squares at the end of the time limit was declared the winner.

The back story to Hail to the Chimp is really quite simple. The king of the jungle, the almighty lion, is unable to fulfill his kingly duties, and the jungle decides it is ready for a democracy instead of a monarchy. All sorts of animals, from Chumley the beaver, to Toshiro the octopus are vying for the presidential office. The way the election is presented is interesting in and of itself. The main menu is the GRR television station (an obvious parody of CNN), and Hail to the Chimp pulls off the homage perfectly, down to a scrolling ticker on the bottom of the screen. As you play through the campaign mode, you will unlock everything you would expect to see on a TV station during a campaign, from infomercials, to clips of “Orcah”, the whale Oprah Winfrey imitator, to mud-slinging attacks on various candidates.

One thing that really stood out to me is that on the main menu, the multiplayer option is above the campaign option. This shows that Hail to the Chimp knows what it is; a fun, light-hearted, party game. Available on the PS3 and the 360 upon its May release, and bearing a $39.99 price tag, Chimp looks to be a promising title.