Super monkey ball adventure review

Reviewing Super Monkey Ball Adventure is a bit like buying the director's cut of a favourite film and realising that the director has nothing useful to add.

Traveller's Tales has perverted Sega's previously charming action puzzle series into a clumsy, frustrating action adventure game. Super Monkey Ball has proven itself to be a singularly bizarre, unique game series. You could draw some flimsy comparisons to Marble Madness, but even then you're not giving Sega credit for SMB's potent cocktail of three-dimensional puzzle-solving and harrowing platform action. Combined with its distinctly Japanese style, which was like equal parts Sonic the Hedgehog and Hello Kitty, Super Monkey Ball felt like it was developed with little concern for market forces or key demographics. It's kind of depressing, then, to watch the series degenerate into a frustrating, haphazard mush with Super Monkey Ball Adventure. It's especially disappointing on the PlayStation Portable, since it's the first Super Monkey Ball game to appear on that platform. Super Monkey Ball gets a new developer and a new direction, and it's not a good thing.

Super monkey ball adventure review

Monkey Ball is a series that has always been pretty important to me. How can you mess up such tight gameplay right? The basic plot here is that a wedding is being planned between two characters. For starters, the wedding is against the rules of the land currently and people are just too busy. Aiai and the crew decide that they are going to have to force everyone to come to the wedding by eliminating any possible excuses that they might have. So that begins their tough journey through the wilderness to set things straight. Can the monkeys do it or is this really game over for them? So, in most Monkey Ball games the idea is to make it to the goal while balancing inside of your little plastic ball. This s tough because the levels are just really difficult and controlling the ball is tough. Unfortunately this is only a small part of the Adventure gameplay. You only play these levels on occasion to unlock new areas to explore. The rest of the game acts more like a platformer.

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There are no user reviews yet. Be the first to add a review. Summary Adventurers discover that in Super Monkey Ball Adventure their monkey balls now have a whole host of new abilities, including sticking to walls, hovering and the ability to become invisible. Super Monkey Ball Adventure also contains 50 new puzzle levels and six new party games to challenge gamers of all ages. Players can select Aiai, Mee Read More. Find release dates and scores for every major upcoming and recent video game release for all platforms, updated weekly.

There are no user reviews yet. Be the first to add a review. Summary Adventurers discover that in Super Monkey Ball Adventure their monkey balls now have a whole host of new abilities, including sticking to walls, hovering and the ability to become invisible. Super Monkey Ball Adventure also contains 50 new puzzle levels and six new party games to challenge gamers of all ages. Players can select Aiai, Mee Read More. Find release dates and scores for every major upcoming and recent video game release for all platforms, updated weekly. We rank the highest-scoring new PC games released in We rank the highest-scoring new PlayStation games released in We rank the highest-scoring new Xbox games released in

Super monkey ball adventure review

Reviewing Super Monkey Ball Adventure is a bit like buying the director's cut of a favourite film and realising that the director has nothing useful to add. At times - and I realise that I'm not so much throwing stones in my glasshouse here as putting a gravel driveway through a spin cycle and then kicking the door open - you really do appreciate it when something's enjoyed a good edit. Monkey Ball's never really been about telling a story - but shoehorned into the traditional narrative structure of a platform game there's no escaping it, and here there's so much redundant waffling, and it's so far beyond saccharine that our teeth rot whenever we pick up the pad. The main thrust of it is that we're on a mission to criss-cross five monkey kingdoms delivering joy - not something with which the rest of the game's destined to be particularly synonymous.

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The Good New puzzle levels and four-player minigames The Bad New gameplay mechanics are often awkward mission design is monotonous and frustrating visual style seems like a faded facsimile of the series' charming art style frequent and lengthy load times. The mini games are also plagued with the excessive load times and when you must wait upwards of 30 seconds between games, much of the enjoyment is lost. To annoy the player? Get stuck on one, and there's nowhere else to go. Sign me up. Super Monkey Ball has previously maintained an ant-burning level of focus on providing a series of independent puzzles that challenged you to roll your cute little monkey in its cute little gerbil ball all the way to the finish line--a simple premise made absolutely diabolical by level designs that required serious three-dimensional thinking and that tested even the steadiest of hands. The level designs are pretty bad though. This is a cookie-cutter sequel that borders on average and occasionally fails to hit the mark, but it's not awful. The setup is appropriate enough, with the adorable Super Monkey Ball team of AiAi, MeeMee, GonGon, and Baby being called upon to investigate an enigmatic sadness that seems to be bumming out everyone in the five kingdoms on Monearth. These are all appreciated, but the control scheme doesn't make any sense. 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. The PSP version looks about as good as its console counterparts, though all of the menu overlays, dialog boxes, and loading screens appear stretched out, as though they're being presented in the wrong aspect ratio.

Traveller's Tales has perverted Sega's previously charming action puzzle series into a clumsy, frustrating action adventure game. Super Monkey Ball has proven itself to be a singularly bizarre, unique game series.

You could draw some flimsy comparisons to Marble Madness, but even then you're not giving Sega credit for SMB's potent cocktail of three-dimensional puzzle-solving and harrowing platform action. But things go from simple to overly complicated and indeed downright clunky when you try to stray from the body of the hub world to its many arms and legs, as each section is separated by a momentum-breaking load time. There are chants that will attach a giant spring-mounted boxing glove to your ball, turn you invisible, give you the ability to increase the size of your ball at will, make your ball stick to certain surfaces, or even teleport you to a new location. There are several problems with this game mechanic. In other words, no one was sitting around thinking about how the game needed a story. Publisher: Sega. There's no enthusiasm - and judging by the six pages accidentally headlined "Part Games" in the manual, it wasn't just the developers who laboured over it either. So that begins their tough journey through the wilderness to set things straight. No reason you have to punish yourself by trying to knock it out. So all the key elements here, from the character models which are all charming monkeys including idle animations for the main four of them dancing and jumping in their balls , to the rich green environments full of dense foliage and glistening water. The basic structure of the game is that each world has around 20 missions to complete. PlayStation 2. Combined with its distinctly Japanese style, which was like equal parts Sonic the Hedgehog and Hello Kitty, Super Monkey Ball felt like it was developed with little concern for market forces or key demographics.