I’m not actually sure where to start with Super Monkey Ball 3D. When Super Monkey Ball 2 came out on the Gamecube in 2002, it was something different. It was enjoyable, fresh, and had a lot of variety, but ten years later, the game offers only three modes: Monkey Ball, Monkey Race, and Monkey Fight. I feel like in the 9 years that Sega has had, they could have come up with some better modes than Monkey Fight.
Vitals
Name: Super Monkey Ball 3D
Developer/Publisher: Sega
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Availability: Now
Monkey Ball tasks you with guiding your monkey (in his ball no doubt) through almost 80 levels collecting bananas on your way to the finish line. While this mode was fun at first, it doesn’t seem to ramp up difficulty and stays consistently easy even throughout the later levels. This is presumably so that almost everyone who buys it on launch day can finish it without much of a challenge. The 3D effects looked the best to me with the slider at around 60% of the way, as it gets a bit disorienting at 100%. If you plan on using the gyroscope to control your monkey rather than the circle pad, don’t bother turning on the 3D at all as the 3DS needs to be viewed straight on and that can’t be done when the 3DS is being twisted everywhere.
Monkey Race struggles immensely. It suffers from poor handling, bad AI, and mediocre pickups, but it isn’t the main focus of the game and won’t be a major selling point. The pickups aren’t particularly useful and feel cheap when used. They either don’t do anything noticeable or are so overly powerful that once used, everyone else stops letting the person who used it pass to the front. One notable part of Monkey Race is that the tracks are pretty well-designed for what they are.
The final mode is Monkey Fight which, while attempting to attract players of Super Smash Brothers, fails miserably. It controls terribly and ends up being an all-out button-mashing contest when it shouldn’t be that at all. While the goal is to collect as many bananas as possible, that doesn’t really work very well when one person grabs them all and the other three opponents do nothing but battle each other. Players can use the Play Coins that they earn via the built-in pedometer to unlock more characters for Monkey Fight. But in all honesty, there isn’t really a reason to. The game’s multiplayer is local only and you probably won’t need to distinguish yourself from the other people playing.
Monkey Ball is definitely the mode to stick to as it is the most fun and functional to play, while the others are mediocre at best and don’t add to the game at all. While it definitely isn’t the best 3DS launch title out there, if you are looking for a quick fix of Super Monkey Ball, then you’ll probably like what Super Monkey Ball 3D has to offer despite its shortcomings. But if not, then I would recommend a look at one of the other 3DS launch titles.
This review is based on a copy of the game provided by the publisher. Images courtesy of Sega.
No Comments