Super Monkey Ball Adventure

"Good, but not without it's flaws."

Super Monkey Ball, the insanely frustrating puzzle game, has been transformed into an adventure game. Hmm, interesting, but how does it add up? Pretty well in my opinion, despite some minor flaws and annoyances.

GAMEPLAY – 8

Essentially, the gameplay feels like the same old traditional monkey ball, tilt the screen, roll a ball, try not to run off a cliff. However, with the added adventure element, the game feels like a mix between Super Monkey Ball and Super Mario 64, where each world you explore is essentially its own level, with a number of goals to complete, and each world has its share of platforming elements. The game has also included a number of power-ups (called chants) to transform your ball into performing a number of various other tasks, all of which are executed fairly well in my opinion. You travel from world to world talking to various monkeys as each will assign you a mission to complete, some missions may simply consist of reaching a certain area within the time limit, or flying through the sky collecting items. All the missions in the game are fairly straightforward, and while some may be challenging, they are not overbearing. This format is consistent throughout each world, which is about as much adventuring there is in the game, see a world, talk to a monkey, complete some silly mission. In addition to these missions, there are locked doors throughout each world, that can only be unlocked by completing a number of puzzle stages, which are stages they play very similar to other Monkey Ball games. And that's all, the inclusion of the chant power-ups help you reach areas that were not accessible before, which is a very nice feature, so you can go back to previous worlds and try to find all the secret bananas and such. All in all, it's a fairly simple design, but it's quite enjoyable.

One major flaw that I noticed about the gameplay was, that some of the areas that require you to have a certain chant to access, can be accessed without the chant, if you conveniently fall off the stage in the right place, some times the game restarts you places where you shouldn't be. But nonetheless, this flaw didn't really make me enjoy the game any less, but thought I would mention it anyway.

SOUND – 5

Now here's where the game developers definitely should have spent more time. The sound isn't terrible, the sound effects merely consist of hearing a ball roll, and hit things, with cartoon style effects, which is fine, and the music, while fitting, becomes very repetitious, and can be quite annoying to listen to after you've been on any given world for too long. But this isn't why I gave the sound category a 5. I gave it a 4 because of how many times the sound glitches. For example, in a world called Moonhaven, if you drop down below the lower half of this level, there are lots of fans, and if you go near them, they make loud fan noises, which is fine, however, once you leave that little area, you can still hear the fans really loud. No matter what you do, you hear this constant blistering sound in the background, even if you transport to one of the puzzle stages, the sound remains, and it's incredibly annoying. The only way to make the sound stop is to either go to another world, or go to another area in the same world that will cause a load screen.

GRAPHICS – 7

Nothing spectacular in this department, but the graphics do present very visually pleasing worlds to explore. So they graphics are good, but nothing to brag about. One thing about the graphics I didn't like, is that the puzzle stages themselves, are too simplistic, in the older games, the puzzle stages had very pretty backgrounds, this game, almost has no backgrounds, but that's okay, because the main aspect is the adventure mode, which does have nice graphics.

REPLAY VALUE – 6

The game is frustrating, and the story stinks. After playing through adventure mode once, you may never want to play through it again. But the inclusion of six party games, and a challenge mode, may have you coming back for more time and time again. The party games are simple and fun, they include the three party games from the original and three new ones, the new ones aren't spectacular, but they are fun. And the challenge mode is a nice addition so people can just play the puzzle stages over and over, without worrying about the adventure mode.

OVERALL – 7 (Not an average)

Overall, I'm giving the game a 7 out of 10, because it was very enjoyable, though not the best game in the series. Basically the game is everything the original Super Monkey Ball was, and more. If you remember the original monkey ball only included 3 sets of Challenges, and Party games, this game has both, plus a whole new adventure element, for those seeking a little more then frustrating puzzle after puzzle.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/06