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MONKEY CHEW

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: August 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The first two SUPER MONKEY BALL games were a blast.

Easy to pick up, easy to learn, easy to handle - and yet, at times, harder than a diamond to master. It provided challenges, worthwhile frustration, and endless amounts of fun both alone and with a group of friends. It seemed that SUPER MONKEY BALL could do no wrong... and then comes SUPER MONEY BALL ADVENTURE. This is my first MONKEY BALL on the PS2 and it's a major disappointment. While the graphics are bright and colorful, and everything is as clear as a bell - from the sounds to the animations - the LOAD times on this game are awful. They seem to take forever. If you're not the kind of person to read the instruction booklet, have it handy to pass the time while waiting for the islands to load... you'll learn something.

Once you're in the game the real horror begins. Instead of just presenting us with a light and tight story mode that moves us from one world of board challanges to the next (ala: SUPER MONEKY BALL 2) - the designers have instead opted for a action/RPG style of game play. The islands are populated with monkeys with troubles - from collecting escaped bees to finding missing children in top hats - you'll find yourself labored with one boring task after the next. And perhaps it wouldn't be so boring, or so frustrating, if they had managed to get the camera to work properly.

But they didn't - be prepared to spend a lot of time falling of edges and cliffs in this game. And it's not so much your handling of your monkey that does it, but the ball itself - it tends to drift a bit, to COAST to a stop more than just come to a complete stop when you move it. It likes to scoot - and sometimes that little scoot can kill you. Each island is populated with a series of quests and story points that you have to meet to bring JOY to the island. Which is all well and good - but once you're in the game it's almost impossible to figure out which way you should be heading and where to go next.

Everyone and everything has a problem - and instead of pointing you in the right direction the game play is so non-linear that whatever task you had first in your head suddenly becomes the last and before you know it... you're lost. This should be a warning to parents with young kids who might have enjoyed the previous games - they will get lost, they will get frustrated, and they will be bored quickly. The designers have tried to amp up the powers of the monkey balls themselves, and some are very clever and fun - but not enough to rescue the game from the sheer pit of frustration you'll fall into over and over again. This direction for the series was a BAD MOVE.

Mini-games help to boost the series - but while most are clever, they're not enough to save the game. Also, what was once the main game - that of solving, rolling and making your way through the very creative board challanges, has been reduced to an afterthought here. There are a series of new boards and they move from too easy to impossible in almost a single bound.

I don't mind a challenge - but in the previous games when you PAUSED the game you would be given the chance to review the board and plan your attack. In SMBA you don't get that - you just get an OPTIONS screen - and there all you can do is QUIT GAME and SAVE. I chose QUIT and haven't bothered to go back to it - and neither will you.

It's a sad end to such a great and creative series. A major disappointment. Avoid.

Fun, I only like multiplayer mode.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is fun, but the meuns are hard to understand and it isn't easy for my 6 year old younger sister to even stay on the board! She keeps falling off in every race or quest or minigame, and its kind of hard for me (i'm 10),too. The instruction booklet doesn't tell you what each game is or how to play each quest, so you have to try all 60 quests to see what each one is like. One good thing is that it is a 1-4 player game, which is rare for a ps2. It doesn't tell you this on the box, but you can only play multiplayer in one of the 6 different categories you see when you first start the game. I only like the multiplayer games, because if you have to play a game where steering is hard I would like to play it wiht a friend to laugh at ourselves for falling off the course with. This game is 4 stars when playing in multiplayer mode, but 5/6 of the game isn't multiplayer. So, over all it is 3 stars.

Incredibly disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Since Sega's Super Monkey Ball series debuted on the Gamecube way back when, the series has been noted for it's insanely fun yet simple gameplay elements that has always made each installment such a blast to play. Enter Super Monkey Ball Adventure, which finds a new developer attempting to take the series in a new direction, with close to abysmal results. This time around, our favorite ball trapped monkeys are populating an interactive world with platforming elements. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if the game had a fleck of originality to it, not to mention the incredibly touchy and frustrating controls, lagging frame rate, and painfully long load times. The only thing that saves Super Monkey Ball Adventure from the scrap heap is that the Party Mode mini-games are here, and for the most part they still offer fun, and definitely the most fun elements you'll find overall in this game. If you want a really fun Super Monkey Ball game, look elsewhere at any of the older titles on any other system, because Super Monkey Ball Adventure is definitely not worth your time.

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