The appeal of Super Monkey Ball was always in the deceptively simplistic arcade gameplay - move a ball from one point to another, collecting bananas and avoiding obstacles, then repeat. Super Monkey Ball Adventure has taken this formula and shoved it into the body of a 3D platformer, despite the fact that, no matter how hard they tried, it just wouldn’t quite fit. The result is a horrifically boring experience that will have you napping in record time. The story involves selecting one of the SMB team to roll around the various game worlds, collecting bananas in order to restore joy to the kingdom. It’s about as interesting as it sounds. As well as collecting bananas, you will have to complete menial tasks for the incredibly lazy population, and occasionally some traditional maze levels in order to progress past stone barriers. These simply don’t happen nearly often enough, though.
In case you had the memory of a goldfish, those helpful button reminders never go away.
Helping to make things slightly more entertaining are the chants. At various intervals in the game, the chimps will learn chants, giving them a new ability in their quest for joy. For example, the boxing glove chant will attach, shockingly, a boxing glove to their ball, allowing them to punch certain barriers and crates for extra bananas. The sticky ball chant is a highlight here, allowing for the monkeys to stick to walls and roll up into previously impossible-to-reach areas. But, despite this addition, the SMB formula - with its lack of a jump button - just does not work as a platform game, and is ultimately never engaging.
So, that’s the main chunk of the game a write-off then. Despite this, Super Monkey Ball Adventure manages to save a fair bit of face, thanks to, unsurprisingly, the Challenge mode – ie, the standard SMB maze levels, without the platform game rubbish shoved in between. There aren’t as many levels as in the original games, and the ones that are here are not quite as good. Nevertheless, they are fairly enjoyable, and should satisfy those craving a Monkey Ball hit. There are three levels of difficulty, with each difficulty level having a series of mazes to complete, the idea being to get a really high score.
So here's this giant enemy crab...
In addition to Challenge mode are the party games – basically, mini-games in which up to four players (with computer opponents making up the numbers if need be) battle it out. None of them are what you would call world-beaters, but prove to be a sufficient distraction. There’s Race, which has the chimps spiralling around rather poorly designed tracks (speed boosters before a dip in the track and a sharp turn, for example), but is still entertaining enough. Target has you opening the ball and gliding to a distant target, whilst Boxing sees all players with the boxing glove chant enabled, trying to punch the other monkeys off a platform. Bounce is probably the best of the lot. The goal is to bounce your monkey ball on as many blocks as possible, until there are no more blocks left – the person who grabbed the most blocks wins. Simple, but effective.
There’s also Cannon, where you have to shoot your monkey ball into the towers of the other players in order to destroy it, and ultimately triumph by having the last tower standing. Finally there’s Tag, which involves players running around collecting balloons. While these are nothing extraordinary, they become very useful when the main game is as boring as it is. These party games almost single-handedly drag the hours you’ll spend playing the game up into the double digits, too – it’s hard to imagine anyone staying awake long enough to play the Story mode through, and the Challenge mode won’t last any hardened SMB players too long.
Basic, but oddly compelling.
As soon as you see the first screens of Super Monkey Ball Adventure on your TV, its clear that the game hasn’t had anywhere near the polish of the other SMB games. Environments are suitably colourful, but very bland. Other monkeys in the game world possess about three frames of animation, and are generally lifeless things. Cut-scenes are really basic. It’s not awful to look at, but it just doesn’t grab you in any way. The audio on the other hand, is flat out terrible. All chimps make the same four noises over and over, making their speeches about as interesting as a maths textbook. Thankfully, you can skip them. Music samples seem to be of low quality – not that they were worth listening to in the first place. On the whole, the presentation of Super Monkey Ball Adventure is very disappointing.
Which, as you can tell, is a common theme throughout the game in general. Ultimately, the game was doomed from the start. Super Monkey Ball Adventure is just a bad idea - putting a basic, addictive arcade game that only used an analogue stick and no face buttons into a 3D platformer was never going to work. Ever. But Traveller’s Tales didn’t help things along the way, with a narrative that couldn't possibly be any less entertaining, and those damn manual load cranks. Thankfully, the Challenge mode and party games do mean that there still is a somewhat decent game hidden in here – unfortunately, there aren’t enough of either to drag this game into average territory. Even the most hardened of Super Monkey Ball fans will have a tough time digesting this one.
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