Ook. Eeeeek!
By Ahchay

Poor AiAi.

Past glories

His problems go back to SMB2 on the hoary old Gamecube. Why the need to tack on a story that no-one cared about? Never mind that the game was, pretty much, exactly the same as before but with added stupidly impossible bits.

The less said about the GBA version the better, but we expected more (or, at least, the same) for his multi-platform debut in Super Monkeyball Deluxe. Shame they broke the glorious handling. The monkeys fared a little better on the DS, but only by comparison.

So what's this thats dropped through the Rodent letterbox this morning? Super Monkeyball Adventure? Dear god no.

And the 'Adventure' part is every bit as awful as it sounds. Roll around doing menial tasks for increasingly little reward. It's every dodgy RPG cliche there has ever been, all rolled up in annoying Monkeyball levels - "Fallout" and it's back to the last checkpoint. Every. Single. Time.

About as exciting as it gets

Examples of said dodgyness. The first 'quest' is to go off and find some prince monkey or other who has crashed on your island. The king sends you off with a spurious "I'll ring the bells when I need you" remark and you have to run around doing chores for the villagers. Your reward for completing each task? Nothing. Not even a banana.

But that's not the heartbreaking thing. The heartbreaking thing is that, dodgy adventure-mode aside, this is quite possibly the best Monkeyball yet.

They've fixed the stupid handling from the PS2 and Xbox versions, the mini-games are universally ace, (albeit a bit thin on the ground) and challenge mode is satisfyingly difficult. What's not to love?

Hang your head in shame.

If only Travellers Tales had seen fit to divorce the two halves of the game more. As it stands, you are forced to play through the dire adventure mode in order to unlock courses, modes and characters for the good bit.

If everything was unlocked right from the off, then this really would be the best game in the series, but having to plough through the adventure sections is a literal turn-off. As it stands you start with a very basic set of levels for the various mini-games and you unlock extra levels, play-modes and that as you progress. Same with Challenge Mode (which is the same as it ever was) - beginner courses are unlocked from the off (and are roughly equivalent to the advanced stages in the original), but the higher modes are unavailable.

So, if you're willing to trawl through the bad bits, or you have a team of trained monkeys to do it for you, then you may get some enjoyment out of this. For the rest of us though? Avoid.

August 2006

Comments