f these flea-infested poop throwers don’t suffer the horrible death of asphyxiation inside of their wondrous rolling balls, I may be forced to push them off of a cliff onto what I hope are the sharpest rocks in the world. And don’t even think of calling PETA on me. These fiesty hairballs are capable of inflicting a lifetime of suffering upon people within just 20 minutes of coming into contact with them.
Strangely enough, two days ago, I would have told you that I was a huge fan of the Monkey Ball series. Whenever I play these games, I always find myself in awe of how they make your nerves tense up as you try to apply a feather touch onto the ball. It’s a wicked feeling, and it only becomes more intense as the difficulty level ramps up with each passing stage. Just the slightest touch to the left or right could lead to completing a level or having to restart it. Thankfully, this series is built on the idea of every stage being incredibly small. Levels last for only a few seconds, and you usually don’t have to make too many drastic maneuvers. You just have to find a safe passage across the dangerous terrain.
With Super Monkey Ball Adventure, developer Traveller’s Tales is plucking these primates from their dangerous bite-size habitats and is placing them into a peaceful world that sprawls as far as the eye can see. Unfortunately, the idiotic anthropoids are still incredibly difficult to control. The slightest misjudgment in movement won’t necessarily lead to death, but rather to you sliding off of a ramp before you reach a house or sailing past a monkey that you need to converse with. In other words, it’s like playing Jak & Daxter with characters that are drunk and uncooperative. Even without an enemy in sight, just exploring the surroundings can lead to curse words flying past your jowls at record speeds.
Menial activities like opening doors prove to be an even bigger ordeal. I have to rotate this lever 10 times? It’s a pain in the ass to do it once. That’s like having to find 10 security cards to open a door in any other game! And what does all of this hard work usually lead to? A transporter that will warp you to a normal Monkey Ball stage. Adding salt to the already gaping wound, most of these classic-styled stages are completed more through dumb luck than skill.
The only area where this game shows signs of its former glory is within the new party games. Bounce, a game that pushes players to turn over as many squares on a grid as possible by bouncing on them, is one of the series’ best, and Tag, a game as simple as it sounds only on a spherical world, can suck away hours quickly.
Long story short, the adventure motif simply didn’t catch. Even if the character controls had been more user friendly, the design that Traveller’s Tales dreamed up fails to elicit any semblance of fun.