Super Monkey Ball Adventure

"I want my puzzles back."

A few years ago, some nut job at Amusement Vision decided to stick a monkey in a ball and drop it onto a platform. The result was what I consider to be the peak of civilization, Super Monkey Ball. The game was relatively simple for beginners to pick up. The objective: using careful maneuvering, get your monkey to one side of the stage to the other without falling. The result: an incredibly addictive single and multiplayer experience, pushed along with its slew of clever mini-games. Times were good.

When Super Monkey Ball 2 was released, it stuck to the same formula, except improved essentially everything. More mini-games, more puzzles, and an element of strategy and planning was thrown into the mix. Times were still good.

Super Monkey Ball Adventure is a pretty big departure from the series, although it tries its best to stick to the formula that made the first two games so great. However, the game's true focus is on the five massive worlds littered with unhappy monkeys, each of which has some kind of mission that you must complete. Taking a back seat for this sequel are the addictive puzzle stages and the mini-games that people have come to love. And you know what? I want my puzzles back.

Super Monkey Ball Adventure focuses on the Super Monkey Ball team of AiAi, MeeMee, Baby, and GonGon as they travel throughout the five kingdoms of Monearth to spread happiness throughout the land and put on the best wedding ever (in a Romeo and Juliet-type setup). The story should be disregarded immediately, as it's not the reason you'll want to be playing the game. You'll begin the game on Jungle Island (as the game's twenty second loading screen will tell you), and right off the bat things start to get screwy. The five worlds in the game are massive, yes, but they are incredibly difficult to navigate. Narrow platforms, awkward hops, and weird enemies will have you falling, thrashing, and flying over the ledge again, and again, and again. The re-spawn points are seemingly random, trying to place you in the general area of where you fell. However, you'll constantly find yourself re-spawning in places completely opposite of where you were, causing you to make a tedious journey across the world to get back.

Pretty much every which way you turn, there is a monkey that is needing some kind of assistance in... something. These missions span from waking up sleeping guards to picking up banana peels to delivering a sandwich. The missions are the primary focus of the worlds, but I'm sorry to say that they feel more like a chore than anything else. You can't take on more than one mission at once, there is no option to retry a mission without going back to the starting point, and falling will immediately end your mission. Completing these missions net you nothing, and a sense of accomplishment is replaced by a sense of relief.

At least not everything's gone up in smoke. Scattered throughout the lands are a total of fifty puzzle stages. The puzzle stages are the game's strongest point, and they are the only reason a Monkey Ball fan should even consider trying out this game. They have managed to, on a simplified level, capture the charm and intelligence of the puzzles in the previous Monkey Ball games. However, something has still been lost in the translation - mainly, awkward camera angles and a difficulty level that increases much too soon, so that anyone but the most advanced Monkey Ball players will have a difficult time getting through the stages. However, if you can get past the few problems in the puzzles, you'll definitely find that they have something to offer.

Unfortunately, the mini-games do not share the same feelings of the puzzles. These little diversions have been watered down to the point of boredom. Traveler's Tales has reduced the number from twelve to six, and have somehow managed to make even the most enjoyable Monkey Ball mini-games very... bad. Games like Monkey Race feature loose controls and unoriginal race tracks, while a game such as Monkey Tag offers no variety to its gameplay and gets tiresome quickly.

The gameplay is saved only by the puzzle modes, and luckily a classic mode is included where you'll play through a series Beginner, Advanced, and Expert challenges. Though Adventure mode offers a few unique twists, nothing is executed properly, resulting only in frustrating and, ultimately, boredom.

In addition to watering down the gameplay of the previous titles, Adventure manages to water down just about everything else. Graphics are, quite frankly, some of the worst I've seen from the Gamecube. Bland environments, few polygons, and horrible resolution makes Adventure look kind of... uninviting. To make matters worse, the game doesn't support Progressive Scan, so there's no hope for improvement on your trusty HDTV. And the load times... my gosh, the load times. Fans may recall that the previous titles had absolutely no loading screens whatsoever, but they'll pop up every five to ten minutes during adventure and probably ever one to two minutes during a mini-game. And while the PS2 version has an interactive loading screen, the Gamecube users are forced to sit there and wait for twenty seconds at a time.

And while Super Monkey Ball has always had its share of framerate drops from time to time, Adventure just takes the cake. While the puzzles thankfully have few framerate drops, the adventure mode will see to it that your 60 FPS drops about 15 frames every so often, which is quite surprising considering how there is literally nothing onscreen at any time that should cause a framerate dip.

As the storyline progresses, you'll sit back and watch cute little cut-scenes unfold between the monkeys. These scenarios are atrocious due to the horrific, repetitive sounds that serve as the voices of the simians. Do yourself a favor and turn down the volume during this game, because the music is nothing to write home about either. Tracks may seem like they have some potential, but it's too difficult to get into them because they're either resetting, skipping, or just stopping altogether. Everything in the music department just seems unfinished, while the attempt at adding dialogue fails on a new level of badness.

Super Monkey Ball Adventure has put a black mark on the series. While the game isn't completely lost due to the great puzzle stages, the rest of the game is bland, annoying, and tedious. Challenge level is high to the point of frustration, and replay value is a pretty laughable thought. If you're new to the series, do yourself a favor and check out a great game like Super Monkey Ball 2. If you're a returning fan, you may want to rent it for the fifty puzzle stages, but be prepared for the steep challenge of the levels that may possibly throw you off. Super Monkey Ball Adventure is proof that trying to improve an already-working formula isn't always going to work. You'll find something here that you like, but you'll plenty to dislike as well.

FINAL SCORE: 4.7/10

Over and out.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/06