Title: Super Monkey Ball Touch & Roll

Date: 03.08.2006

Genre: Puzzle

Platform: Nintendo DS

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

After being a massive fan of the monkey ball games on the GCN I was very excited when seeing the news that the series would be reaching the DS, and rightly so, Super Monkey Ball is in my top 10 games ever.

The game offers 3 options after the title screen these are:
-Single player
-Multi player
-Options

Singleplayer Mode

Everyone familiar with past super monkey ball games will be aware of the concept; guide your monkey in a ball from point A to point B on a platform that you control as oppose to the monkey itself, a simple concept but one that is so brilliant. Failure comes from running out of time or falling off the platform.

The main DS feature that this version of super monkey ball offers is touch screen control. The DS lacks an analogue and so often the touch screen is used to offer analogue control, and this game is no different. The screen is set to recognize that touching the screen at the very top is recognized as tilting the whole platform forward, and touching the touch screen at the bottom is recognized tilting the whole platform backwards, this took a few seconds to realize but once you do it isn’t such a problem and you soon become good at controlling the platform accurately to smoothly control your monkey ball. This use of the touch screen doesn’t require the player to continuously drag the stylus round the screen and control can be gained from tapping the screen to get small movements when required.

The use of the touch screen is a great way to add a much more accurate control of the monkey ball other than an analogue stick or a d-pad, I feel that the control aspect of the game is well designed and reflects the precision needed for a monkey ball game.

Challenge Mode
The main mode in this game is challenge mode, using the touch screen or the d-pad you guide you monkey ball from a pre determined point A to point B by tilting the platform to roll the ball, sounds easy but its not all the easy when you’re avoiding obstacles out to get you or carefully balancing your monkey ball across a platform half the width of the ball.

The single player game is without doubt really good, but if you played the super monkey on the GCN (the 1st not the 2nd), then you'll recognize most of the levels, and this is its main problem for me. Many of the levels are taken straight from the first game, although built on the DS extremely well, you remember those levels and have a really good idea how to complete them immediately, and really only get stuck in the same way you use to on the GCN, not by not knowing how to get to the gate to exit the level, but by not having the luck or skill to get there.

All the hard levels from the first game are here yet again, but the single player is still really challenging and worth the buy in that respect, but if you’ve already played and mastered the first GCN game then this is really just too familiar and you’ll feel at many points like your playing the same game. Some of the ‘new’ DS exclusive levels are really fun and fit in well with the general theme of monkey ball but the ones I seem to get stuck on are the levels that got me years ago, which is really frustrating. The single player game experience also includes a practice mode to perfect those individual levels causing problems and a replay mode to see optional saved failures or successes on played levels

Party Games
Again for those familiar with the super monkey ball series the party games will be held high with expectation. The party games allow for a pleasing break from the challenges and have limitless multiplayer fun…or at least they do in the console versions of this game.

The mini/party games are poor. All have forced touch screen controls when some such as monkey race really don't require them, most of the games are missing the original quality they offered. Many of the mini games are presented on the lower screen meaning that the touch screen control actually obscures your own vision of the game. This can really take away the fun that could be had with these mini games as they are well designed and graphically nice.

The mini games include: Monkey Race, Monkey Fight, Monkey Bowling, Monkey Hockey, Monkey Wars and Monkey Mini Golf. The best mini games are without doubt Monkey bowling and monkey mini golf mainly because the control and presentation of the game both complement each other without obscuring the player vision.

Multiplayer
This mode offers both download play with one DS game cart and multiplayer with multiple game carts, the reviewer has only played multiplayer with one DS cart so can only review this aspect.

With a single cart between 2 DS's only 3 games are open; race, hockey and wars, in all fairness the worse 3 mini games. Although the experience of these mini games is made available with one game cart between multiple DS’s the control aspects of these games reduces the fun to be had and hardly acts as advertisement for the other DS owner to buy this game.

PRESENTATION
Super Monkey Ball for the DS is a well-built game and this can’t be denied, a lot of effort has gone into producing the game and any new comers to the Monkey Ball experience could easily get hooked on the series just like the first game on the GCN. The game feels complete and there are very few bugs that I have come across. Overall the game feels well made and not rushed to meet a dead line release date.

GRAPHICS
The graphics in this game are really impressive. The levels from the GCN game still look really good, and in no way could the graphics be criticized in this game. Fully 3d levels compete well with previous console versions of Super Monkey Ball. The only graphical difference between this and the console versions is that the monkey in the ball is presented in 2d but this really doesn’t take away the great graphics this game offers for the DS.

SOUNDS
The sound effects are nice and do the job they are meant to achieve. Never the most important aspect of this game, but sound effects and music are in there and do nothing to worsen the game.

GAMEPLAY
Everything the single player challenge originally offered is here on the DS and still gives the same challenges it originally did. This is genuinely a great Super Monkey Ball game for the DS but for those that have played the series on a console previously it offers nothing new.

LASTING APPEAL
Within 24 hours of buying the game, I’ve completed 60% of the game (or at least I assume I have). Rumors are that the game has 10 worlds to complete; having done 6 worlds already I do feel like this game will be short lived for me. This short lived aspect of the single player challenge mode is disappointing but thinking about the game itself I believe that a new comer to the super monkey ball games would not be affected in the same way I am by the number of levels. As I have already mentioned many of the really hard levels are from the GCN game so I’m already equipped with the past experience of getting past those levels but others may not be. A gamer that has not played super monkey ball before should not worry about this game being short lived as these challenging levels will be everything they were for those who played them the first time round. If you've not played monkey ball before on a console then the single player game is worth a shot but otherwise don't bother.

Game Score

7.6

Reviewed By: Contributed