Super Monkey Ball - Review

Back in unproblematic schoolhouse, I one time chip into a piece of fried okra thinking it was a Tater Tot. What should take been a delicious, tiny hash brown actually tasted similar dark-green death, forever ruining okra for me.

Super Monkey Ball on Windows Phone is a lot like that. On the outside, it has all the makings of a quality game – beautiful characters, a fun premise, adequately good graphics, and catchy music. I was really looking forward to it before it came out. Beneath Super Monkey Brawl's tasty exterior, however, lies an unpleasant surprise: utterly abhorrent tilt controls.

The Super Monkey Ball series has made quite a name for itself since its debut in Japanese arcades and subsequent release as a GameCube launch title. Players guide one of four monkeys (each inside of a clear ball) across one or more floating platforms and through a goal, avoiding hazards and collecting bananas along the way. The merely significant difference between the monkeys is the annoyingness of their voices – I found GonGon to be the most tolerable. Anyway, instead of direct controlling the monkey, you tilt the maze itself and effort to steer the monkey where it needs to get. It's a fun and unique concept.

Roll past the intermission for our full review.

Games Modes

Super Monkey Ball has iii modes to play: Chief Game, Instant Play, and Practise. The series is famous for its artistic mini-games, but this version doesn't take any.

• Primary Game: The game is divided upward into five worlds: Monkey Isle, Smooth Sherbert, Detritus Desert, Volcanic Pools, and Space Case. Each world contains two sets of 10 levels, for a full of 100 total levels. Actually, immigration all x levels in a ready while collecting every single assistant and without dying unlocks a hugger-mugger level for that fix. Then technically there are 110 levels. Withal, information technology's extremely unlikely if non impossible to see the conditions for getting to the hugger-mugger levels in anything but the showtime world, and then simply about nobody will ever see most of the undercover levels. They might equally well non even exist.
• Instant Play: Throws the actor into a random level with a random monkey. Completely pointless.
• Practice: Here any level you've reached can be replayed. It'due south a decent fashion to learn how to navigate troublesome levels. I just wish succeeding in Exercise actually counted toward progress in the main game and thus, Achievements.

Tilt to live… just kidding. You're going to dice.

The but control input players have in the Super Monkey Brawl games is tilting the maze. There are no buttons or photographic camera controls to worry most. Console versions, including the recent 3DS sequel, utilize an analog stick to control the tilt. The Windows Telephone version relies exclusively on tilting the phone itself. In theory it should be a decent way to play the game, but information technology doesn't work well in exercise.

The showtime problem is the neutral position of the phone. To avoid making the ball roll, you have to hold the device at an odd angle that tin't be reconfigured. Thus when I started playing, the monkey often rolled forward and off the stage to its decease. After a few minutes of playing, I usually became accustomed to the mode the game wanted me to hold the phone, but information technology never became natural.

Super Monkey Ball's tilt sensitivity is also troublesome. Sometimes moving the phone just a millimeter or two causes the monkey to accelerate uncontrollably. Once it gets going, there's basically no stopping it, so death is almost bodacious. The absence of a sensitivity slider or alternate control options similar a virtual analog stick is really unforgivable. Challenge should come from the levels themselves, not fighting awful controls.

100+ levels of hatred

Oh, but the levels will claiming players too. Despite Super Monkey Ball's coincidental, inviting appearance, the stage blueprint is super hardcore. Platforms seldom have safety barriers to keep the monkey from falling off the edge, and so whatsoever little error guarantees decease. Hazards like moving platforms, annoying rotating platforms, and super-annoying pinball bumpers create tons of tension without much fun.

Ramps are ofttimes angled, requiring a sure corporeality of momentum to scale. Just once the monkey gets up there (assuming yous fifty-fifty arrive that far), you lot have to quickly adjust your momentum in social club to avoid falling correct off. Subsequently levels often comprise long, thin pathways that angle and fork frequently. Staying on the path and turning is stressful since it's hard to accurately turn on a dime.

As if all that wasn't enough, every level also has a fourth dimension limit. They can get quite strict. You want to take things slowly and carefully to avert falling off and dying, but that oft leads to death from the timer. Basically, everything is meant to kill the role player, who lacks the proper tools (adept control) to do much near it. Super Monkey Brawl's stage design shows an incredible amount of animosity towards gamers.

Achievements

Super Monkey Ball merely has 8 Achievements (worth 25 points each) – pretty stingy considering Windows Telephone games can have upwards to 20. Conquering each of the game'south five worlds is worth an Achievement. Practically nobody will encounter the one for chirapsia Infinite World though; the final level of the final earth is merely about impossible due to some truly evil pattern. This is the first time I've had to review a game without beating it. Many gamers won't exist earning the Crowned Champion Achievement either. Its requirement – earning a Crown on every stage of a world (thus unlocking a hush-hush level) is the opposite of easy. Just in reality, you must earn a Crown on every level of every globe, a Herculean task given the poor controls and stage blueprint. At least information technology's somewhat accessible now, as the Achievement was originally glitched.

Overall Impression

Playing through Super Monkey Ball was a traumatic experience when it should have been fun. Manifestly the iPhone version's controls were bad besides and the sequel greatly improved on them. Sega should accept done the smart thing and skipped direct to porting Super Monkey Ball 2 to Windows Phone, or at least stock-still up this i'south controls into something less insidious. It's no surprise that the game's price dropped less than 6 weeks after release – who would purchase this later on playing the demo? Unless a patch e'er comes along to address its issues (update: the glitched Achievement at leasf got sort of stock-still), beware this version of Super Monkey Ball for any price.

Super Monkey Ball costs $2.99 and at that place is a free trial, thank goodness. Masochistic gamers can get it here on the Market. Update: the game has dropped to 99 cents, making its drawbacks a chip more forgivable.

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/super-monkey-ball-review

Posted by: raynorfrossion86.blogspot.com

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