Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Game review: Super Monkey Ball Adventure

The Monkey Ball series is known for fun, addicting game play. Does this …

The Super Monkey Ball series has one conceit: there are these monkeys that are trapped in balls and they must very quickly get to the goal of every devilish and hatefully designed level. This takes a lot of fine-motor skills and an almost superhuman resistance to frustration. In the original games you moved the board, not the monkeys, turning the experience into something of a large-scale game of labyrinth. The titles were fun, twisted, and had some great level designs. We didn't care about the why of the game when we were having so much fun with each level, and an even better time in the multiplayer party games. The fact that they were monkeys, in balls, just added an extra bit of silliness. Monkeys in balls were Snakes on a Plane back when Samuel L. Jackson was still eating hamburgers and spouting biblical passages. 

 That is why I just don't get Super Monkey Ball Adventure. There must have been a reason to add a story and platforming elements, but I have no clue what it is. The series has a small—but fanatical—following that gets together to trade best times on the harder levels and to play against each other in Monkey Target. In other words,  no one was sitting around thinking about how the game needed a story. This game has a story though. Although the narrator assures you in the opening scenes that he's (she's? unless there is a bow involved who can tell the sex of an animated monkey?) telling you a story that already happened. Well, if this is a recap I shouldn't have to worry, I know the monkeys win, right? Of course, having to sit through cut scenes while the monkeys talk to each other in that terrible squeaky voice almost feels like I'm being punished, they basically keep repeating the different syllables in word "monkey." If Pokemon-speak drives you crazy, just wait.

The story is pretty light, but the gist of it is that you must restore joy to the land of the monkeys. How do you do this? Through fetch quests, although the single-player game does a good job of throwing in some puzzles as well as areas and powers you'll recognize from the minigames. These are all appreciated, but the control scheme doesn't make any sense. Putting the monkey in the ball was fine when you were making the original game; the whole point was learning how to control the momentum of your monkey and get through each level; it was a high-concept game. When you're making a platforming game why in the world would you want to make your control scheme less precise? The monkeys aren't in balls in the opening cutscenes, so why are they suddenly there? To annoy the player? Do they simply like being in balls? At its heart this game is a mediocre platformer that is harder to control than it needs to be, simply to fit into the Monkey Ball series. Lame. 

There are only seven minigames included, and the minigames are often the draw for Monkey Ball fans. Only having seven is tragic, and three of those are retreads from prior games. There are new puzzle levels, but I felt like I was getting very little of what I wanted and mostly paying for the terribly unfortunate single-player game. This is even harder to recommend since you can buy Monkey Ball Deluxe on the Xbox or PS2 for $17.99 used, and that game includes all the puzzles and party games from the first two titles. That game is an excellent value, and is a blast to play. Super Monkey Ball Adventure? Passable execution of a horrible premise. This series was never meant to be shoehorned into a platforming title, and it shows. 

Status: Skip

Systems: PS2, GC, PSP

Price: $39.99


Developer: Traveller's Tales

Publisher: Sega 

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