Super Monkey Ball Adventure for GameCube Reviews by Gamers

Everybody who played the old monkey ball games liked them. I loved them. They were insane, they made no sense, and they were great fun alone or with 3 friends. The latest installment in this series, Super Monkey Ball Adventure, takes away all that was once holy and grinds all my favorite monkeys into the dust.

So what exactly is so wrong with it? First of, the story mode. Pathetically written, (basic summary: the monkey ball team solves the petty problems of the world to bring joy to all!) with boring, predictable dialog which could only get worse if they game had voice acting instead of scrolling lines of text. And instead of rolling around cool looking stages, the highlight of the previous games, Story mode puts you through rolling around in a 3-D world similar to something you'd see in a legend of zelda game, where you talk to random monkeys and perform chores for them. You DO get to roll around in those memorable, crazy, arcade style stages from time to time, but it is rare and no fun at all.

Challenge mode, which is just blazing through the traditional Monkey ball levels, is here, though. However, since you cannot unlock hidden multiplayer games by earning Play Points in challenge mode (like in the old games), the frustrating levels will have most people quitting after playing through Beginner Mode.

Then there's the multiplayer. Monkey Ball took away all the cool modes and instead put in tedious, monotonous game types. The only good multiplayer games were taken from older games, and even they have become unpleasant due to unbelievably long loading times in between each 10 second round.

And to unlock more levels and modes and stages, the developers decided that instead of play points, you have to collect bananas lying around in Story mode and buy everything from a shopkeeper. Which basically means that you'll have to run around a story mode you don't enjoy to unlock more ways to play the games that you hate. Doesn't that sound great?

I hate it too

Super Monkey Ball: Adventure proves the old saying "nothing is perfect" wrong. SMB:A is a perfect example of what not to do while creating a game.

The first thing you'll notice when you begin playing the new "Adventure" mode is that controlling your character is very difficult. All of the four playable characters have no traction whatsoever, so you are constantly slipping around the map.

Next you will notice the voice acting. This consists of "KE KE KE KE KE KE KE" in a high pitched voice. It doesn't take many conversations to convince you this game is best played with the sound off.

By now you have probably had to wait through a few loads. One to start the game, one to start your adventure file and one every time you move to a different area of the map. These loads are very long (even small areas take 30+ seconds) and extremely frequent. All mini-games require a load to start up and between the many rounds. It doesn't help that the load screens are hideous.

After waiting through some load screens and talking to some people, you should have learned a bit about the story. This consists of making a marriage between two royal families the greatest wedding ever by finding guests from 4 zones. As you might expect it is simplistic and predictable.

The combat aspect of the game isn't much better. You often need to use abilities for this, which are activated by chanting. Not one of these powers are innovative, and several of them cause the camera to flip constantly, resulting in many deaths. Once you get a power, the intended use is often and extremely obvious and never requires much thought.

There are other modes in the game, but you spend more time waiting for loads then you do playing anything. In the puzzle mode, all three difficulty levels require several minutes of loading.

All in all, this is easily the worst game I have ever played.