The theme to Madagascar Escape 2 Africa is escape.

You start your story on Madagascar. The mighty king, Julian the lemur, needs some good photos for his new brochure. Alex, the lion, is the first to be volunteered.

As the main stars are introduced into the story, the player gets the chance to play as most of them for a brief moment (usually a very quick quest such as kicking soccer balls). After the main characters are introduced the purpose of the story is finally revealed. The gang is trying to escape Madagascar and get back to civilization; back to New York.

One thing that was very clear in the story is that penguins do not make good pilots; although, if they did then the gang would not have crash-landed and we would not have this game right now. Anyhow, after crash-landing in Africa (something that our characters don't know yet), the player is faced with completing different quests. While individually they seem to be just time-fillers, the quests slowly direct you towards one major goal: rebuild the plane so you can escape the wilderness one again and make it back home. But where is home? Is it in the New York Zoo or is it in Africa? Are our characters just too city-like to survive in the wilderness? Does Alex know that scorpions are dangerous? While I will not answer all of these questions for you, what I will tell you is that Alex does not know that scorpions are dangerous; not at first anyhow.