Super Monkey Ball has made a pretty good name for itself. Previous games in the series featured devious 3D courses where the player would attempt to roll a monkey in a ball from start to finish by tilting the entire level, and separate crowd-pleasing party games like Monkey Fight (who doesn't enjoy a good monkey fight?), Monkey Target and Monkey Bowling. It was a great formula, but the simple premise couldn't continue sequel after sequel without change. And so, four monkeys with cute names -- AiAi, GonGon, MeeMee and Baby (awww) -- set out to do themselves some adventuring.

This turns out not to be such a great idea. Going in a new direction with a new developer, Traveller's Tales, Super Monkey Ball Adventure is definitely something different. Your monkey is still in a ball, and familiar elements from the series like the Monkey Fight boxing glove and the Monkey Target hang glider are used to reach new areas and overcome obstacles. The ultra-cute look of the previous games is intact, although the new characters and overall look feel a tiny bit out of sync with the rest of the series. There's no reason why things couldn't work, but unfortunately the adventure portion of Adventure just isn't much fun.


A monkey in a ball obviously doesn't have much in the way of traction, so you're going to have to get used to plummeting into oblivion pretty frequently as you explore monkey-inhabited islands, completing tasks to restore joy to the monkey world. You don't need to worry about losing your game by falling off too many times -- you'll just be placed somewhere on solid ground again every time -- but the care and effort you put into just getting around can make the game very unfriendly when you're first starting out.

In fact, for a game with a storyline out of a second-rate children's cartoon, the game can feel pretty punishing. When you take on a task like helping a beekeeper collect his bees (by precisely bouncing through a series of midair trampolines) or helping a monkey in a top hat find his daughter, falling off the level will cancel your task and require you to go back to the person that gave it to you. This gives you more chances to fall along the way. You also can't have more than one task at once, and taking a new task (or even using the game's shop to buy bonus goodies) will cancel whatever you were doing. It can get very frustrating very fast. A twitchy camera doesn't help, and if you value your sanity and don't want to get motion sick, you'll go into the options menu and turn "world tilt" off. It worked in past monkey balls, but it doesn't work here.