Super Monkey Ball Adventure review

So you're having a BBQ in the forest, as you do if you're a hungry monkey. Above you, a hang glider is in trouble; it flies out of sight, so when the alarm bells of the tree palace ring, you know that the faecal matter has hit the indoor cooling device.Your simian of choice with their spherical cage rolls over to see what all the fuss is about. Starting off in your home of Jungle Island, you spring and roll about the place until you work out where to go. Bananas are liberally scattered around the place to be collected, as are a few of your monkey chums, who need you to carry out some tasks for them, such as finding a lost child, or leading bees to the hives.It's hard to say what the completion of these tasks achieves. Signposted from your main village is something that you eventually work out to be the king's castle. You roll towards it, and build up a pleasing sense of speed, and then you get to the gate. Kings don't leave their castles unlocked - security is usually fairly good, with a couple of guard monkeys outside, but to get anywhere in SMBA, you have to go through a lengthy process of turning a key around, using your Monkey Ball to turn one way, then another.This key-turning palaver is central to the fault of Super Monkey Ball Adventure. The first two Super Monkey Ball games were mini-games of skill, timing and frustration, with excellent multi-player games, such as Gamestyle's favourite Bowling, Tennis and Race. The cheerful heroes were Monkeys like Ai Ai, somehow encased in a Ball, but happy enough to navigate the head-spinning levels.As a platform game, this effort is either subversive or inappropriate. A platform game where you can't jump! That's subversive. But SMBA isn't engineered to be that way; it wills you to navigate its areas, as a sphere, when you should have legs.It doesn't work. If the levels had been designed to accommodate this sphere shape, as a 3D pinball-inspired experience, then it could have worked. But it doesn't because the environments are traditional 3D platform levels that are more frustrating because of the limitations of movement set by your encasement. What Travellers Tales needed to do was make the central areas enjoyable to navigate, with objectives and missions to increase the dexterity of Monkey movement. However, what exists is badly signposted and frankly annoyingly constructed areas.After a while of objective-passing and level-navigation, you are transported to some traditional SMB levels, which you need to pass to progress any further. These are more enjoyable than the platforming business, but can be very difficult indeed, which makes the cutesy-platfomer theme even more bizarre - what kid will enjoy these testing games of skill after this cutesy monkey world that they've been hacking away at?This juxtaposition makes Gamestyle doubt the initial Super Monkey Balls. Were they really a breath of fresh air, beautifully designed levels to test skill, nerve and patience, or were they a compendium of random designs that went from relaxing to requiring absolute precision in the blink of an eye? The new levels make Gamestyle swear and restart a lot, which seems familiar. The sense of relief in finally conquering a tricky level is enormous - maybe that's why they were good.The best part of SMBA is unsurprisingly the multiplayer sections. The new 'cannon' game is excellent, where you have to destroy other castles and try to protect your own. It's fabulous, a brilliantly balanced and enjoyable multiplayer experience that is so rare in games. 'Tag' is also new, requiring you to roll around an undersized globe in search of balloons ahead of your opponents. It works best as a one-player game, and is a bit too chaotic with many players. 'Bounce' has a board that you need to bounce on to turn it your entire colour, with your opponents doing the same. Monkey Race has been spruced up, while target is as good as ever.So it's a misguided romp. Patches are enjoyable, but mostly you realise that you are playing a game that's out of tune. The key-turning is such a waste of time, it's fiddly and needless and should have been ditched in development. The worst part of all is the dreadful cacophony of twee music and sub-teletubbies babble that sounds when the Monkeys talk.This is a misadventure for the spherical simians. It's frustrating, and does nothing to encourage you to continue to play it. Gamestyle hopes that the Wii title will be able to put a smile back on our faces.