Super Monkey Ball Deluxe (X-Box)
At the beginning, there was the monkey...and it was good, then later, came the ball...also good, until the early 21st
century, when Sega decided to combine these longtime favorites to create an imaginative and addictive game, the likes of which hadn't been seen in some time.
In Monkey Target, your objective is to score points by launching your monkey off a huge ramp, opening up your ball to sail, and collecting floating bananas and closing your ball to land on target zones in the playfield, scoring points. You can utlize varying power ups, such as Magnet Ball, to lose all momentum upon landing, 2X and 3X point multipliers to increase your final score, and the no wind power up to eliminate the often unpredictable wind. There are several playfields to play through, differing in the size, layout and proximity of their target zones. In addition to the varying wind and targets, if you choose to enable it (and it is enabled by default), at the beginning of your turn, a roulette wheel of obstacles is spun, which contains cloud cover, bombs and spike bombs, but also contains a few safe spots. The game can be played in two gameplay modes, there is the standard single ball game, and the much more challenging multi-ball mode, where you command a group of several linked monkeys, and the risks are greater, as are the rewards. Monkey Pool is a fairly standard game of pool, with the main exceptions being that the balls contain monkeys, and your character choice has some impact on your shots. There are 3 different pool lounges to play in, and several play variations, such as Japanese Nine-Ball and stanard Eight-Ball. the "Y" button switches between the standard and overhead view of the table, and the shot line indicator allows for closer approximation of complex shots. Surprisingly, this mode meets or exceeds the physics and realism of most standalone pool games (of course, the other games don't include monkeys). Monkey Bowling adds pinache to the standard game of bowling by offering a practice mode where the player progresses through different pin layouts, and unconventional bowling lanes, such as the wave motion lane, and the curved lane. After you have maneuevered your monkey behind the lanes with the analog stick, hitting the "A" button starts the aiming reticule, you must press A a second time at the right time to line up the perfect shot. For a short time after the shot is made, you can adjust the curve of the ball with the shoulder buttons. Baby allows the most time for lining up a shot, while providing little power and spin, while Gon-Gon has plenty of power and speed, but requires quick reflexes to line up decent shots, Ai-Ai and MiMi are somewhere in between the two extremes. Monkey Fight is quite different than the other mini-games offered...this is a game of pure reflexes. in "Monkey Fight", you play as Ai-Ai against 3 other monkeys with gloves attached to their balls. The object is to score the most points before the timer has reached zero, by knocking the other monkeys off the edge of the various stages with your boxing glove, the player with the most points at the end of that round wins that round, you can play for 2,3, or 5 round victories. Holding down the A button slowly increases the size of your boxing glove until it is huge, at which point one tap of the A button will send any ball(s) in its path flying, while also returning the glove to normal size. There are several power-ups to aid you in your fight, including the giant golden spiked glove and the long range glove. This is perhaps the most entertaining mini-game of the set, as 4 player fights with human players can get quite frantic, and are good for a laugh. The X-Box version of Monkey Ball is virtually indistinguishable graphically from the Gamecube version, the visuals have been cleaned up a bit, the water looks slightly different, and perhaps higher resolution textures. Suffice it to say, the graphics are relatively simple, but effective with nice texture effects and stage design. The most prominant graphical elements are the backgrounds of the stages themselves, with stages taking place over lush forests with waterfalls, underwater, and in the depths of a volcano. Audio wise, the game ranges from average to good. Some of the techno music of certain stages can be infectious (if repetitive), and the cool Jazz beats of Monkey Pool stick in your head for some time after playing. The sound effects are fairly standard, and if you are a non-hardcore gamer, you will become quite familiar with the yell of your monkey as he plummets to the infinite bottom of a stage after a wrong turn. Overall, it's nice to look at, and doesn't sound too bad as well. I don't feel this review would be complete without addressing a grievous error in the process of porting this game from the Gamecube to the X-Box. The game lacks the control sensitivity of the original, now, you may blame the controller, but the fault lies in buggy control code for the port. In the original, you only need to twitch the analog stick slightly to start moving in a direction, for the X-box version, you must almost move the analog stick to the absolute extreme for movement to begin. Now, this is not much of an issue for earlier stages, but it makes the later stages much much more difficult. Suffice it to say, a veteran 'Cube player will find the control somewhat alien, and it takes some adjusting to get used to. If this one very important issue had been properly addressed, I would have no problem giving the gameplay a 5/5 rating, but as it stands, this issue mars the gameplay somewhat. Some leeway has been given, as your ball will be held back a bit at edges before going over the edge, but it hardly addresses the issue. As owners of Both original Gamecube titles will have little reason to purchase this game, it's really not an issue, as the experienced monkey ballers(me) are most likely to notice. Even so, this issue does not ruin the game, just makes what could have been an outstanding compilation, merely a very good compilation in my opinion.
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