Metacritic Games

Super Monkey Ball Adventure (GameCube)

Adventurers discover that in Super Monkey Ball Adventure their monkey balls now have a whole host of new abilities, including sticking to walls, hovering and the ability to become invisible. Super Monkey Ball Adventure also contains 50 new puzzle levels and six new party games to challenge gamers of all ages. Players can select Aiai, Meemee, Gongon, or Baby to adventure their way through five different Monkey Ball Kingdoms to complete quests by solving puzzles and ultimately uniting the feuding Monkey Kingdoms. The original Monkey Ball characters of Aiai, Meemee, Gongon & Baby are back. They are joined by a host of new characters, including a Prince and Princess, who are being kept apart by a feud between their kingdoms. The couple run away to Jungle Island where they enlist the help of the Super Monkey Ball gang, to unite the feuding Monkey Kingdoms and defeat the Naysayers who have sucked all the joy from the Monkey Ball world. [Sega]

Sega
Action, Platform
Players: 4
E (Everyone)
Developer: Traveller's Tales
Released August 1, 2006

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

51 / 100

Critic Reviews

68 NGamer UK
It tries its best, but it simply isn't good enough. Too frustrating for younger players, and too fussy and inconsiderate for anyone else. Still, if you must... [Aug 2006, p.56]
62 Ferrago
Super Monkey Ball, it seems, just doesn't work as an adventure game.
62 Gamer 2.0
While the game has a lot of solid concepts, a ton of stages, and some pretty good “boss” fights, (if you even want to call them that) the game sadly suffers from a horrible camera and just annoying challenge; and in the end, the experience isn’t memorable by any means.
60 eToychest
Those looking for a puzzler will be aggravated by the sub-par platforming, and those looking for platforming will be disappointed by the inclusion of mandatory Monkey Ball puzzles.
60 games(TM)
Despite the bright colours, cute simians, jolly music and overarching joyous abandon, Super Monkey Ball Adventure is a tremendously difficult videogame. And phenomenally frustrating to boot. [Aug 2006, p.130]
60 N-Europe
An attempted brand new direction only proves Travellers Tales didn't have the required monkey balls.
59 GameZone
There’s nothing very super about Super Monkey Ball Adventure and that’s thanks to a poorly conceived story mode that takes us away from the familiar elements we love the most.
58 The Onion (A.V. Club)
Past Monkey Balls have let players select puzzles from a menu. Adventure only offers sets of puzzles ranked by difficulty. Get stuck on one, and there's nowhere else to go.
57 GameSpot
Traveller's Tales has perverted Sega's previously charming action puzzle series into a clumsy, frustrating action adventure game.
55 Nintendo Power
Unfortunately, Adventure falls way short of expectations. [Oct. 2006, p.89]
54 Game Over Online
A very disappointing one. If you want to get the most out of it, buy it for the new puzzles and not the story mode.
50 GameSpy
Unless you're very forgiving, impervious to frustration, or blindly love all things Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball Adventure probably isn't your idea of a good time.
50 GamePro
Adventure's six party games and puzzle-based challenge mode are the best this game has to offer. With multiple players, Adventure flies in the face of its weak story mode and becomes a genuinely fun experience.
50 Sydney Morning Herald
Ambitious and frequently entertaining, but ultimately too frustrating for its own good.
48 IGN
Super Monkey Ball games are popular today partly because of their simplistic nature. They are designed for everybody to enjoy. And yet, Super Monkey Ball Adventure throws all of this out of the window for a half-baked storyline and a hub world separated by load times and marred by technical inconsistencies.
48 Game Informer
Long story short, the adventure motif simply didn't catch. [Sept. 2006, p.88]
45 Kombo
Super Monkey Ball Adventure is not worth your time, money, or frustration.
43 Electronic Gaming Monthly
Play Adventure for the solid traditional modes and adequate multiplayer, but don't expect to get too much enjoyment out of the dull platforming. [Sept. 2006, p.98]
40 Games Radar
With the failure of its flagship story mode, Super Monkey Ball Adventure becomes a rather dull product that has little reason to exist.
40 Edge Magazine
It’s just too hard, the physics too capricious, and the tasks too frustrating for words. [Aug 2006, p.85]
40 GamerFeed
The Story Mode is a joke, and the Challenge Mode and mini-games are mere shells of what's been included in previous adventures. This Monkey Ball got dropped. Hard.
40 Times Online
As any gamer knows, frustration is part of the joy of gaming, but this level of unresponsiveness is something not even the training mini-games on the title can prepare you for. Put that together with poor level signposting and you have an unengaging experience.
40 1UP
The monkeys stick to the comfortable security inside their balls and the platforming stays recognizably formulaic.
33 GameShark
As a game that’s now a franchise, I cannot understand why this game was made and after playing it, I’m even more underwhelmed.

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