Puzzle

When I first heard about Super Monkey Ball, I was looking forward to a couple of other high-profile GameCube titles, like Star Wars: Rogue Leader and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Super Monkey Ball had nearly slipped under my radar screen since the arcade game from which this game is ported never saw the light of day outside of Japan, and I knew very little about it.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Violence

Game Description: In Super Monkey Ball, you're in control of a cute little monkey trapped inside a transparent ball. The objective of the game is deceptively simple: tilt the floor with your analog stick so that your monkey ball rolls towards the goal. Your success is all in the thumb: the more you tilt, the faster the ball rolls. Just be sure not to fall off the edges! You can play with up to four others to see who can master the tilt and get their monkeys to the finish line ahead of the pack.

While I agree with Peters review for the most part, I wouldnt say that the barrel of monkeys was completely full. I had to knock a few points off, partially because I dont think monkeys are intrinsically entertaining, and mainly because I found the games technical shortfalls were serious enough to detract from my overall enjoyment.

Innovation is not the end-all and be-all that turns dirt into gold. A great example of this is Oddworld: Munchs Oddysee, a game that combines its own original, undercooked ideas with redundant elements culled from many different genres to form an innovative, uneven, tedious mess.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Comic Mischief, Violence

Game Description: The power-packing Xbox hardware delivers the third Oddworld title in one of the most brilliantly realized settings to grace any gaming system. Blending unique gameplay, humorous characters and interactions, and the aforementioned graphics, Munch's Oddysee simply feels unlike any other game in the 2001 console gaming lineup. Players control two characters in the game: Munch, a wheelchair-bound hero, and Abe, a character some gamers will recognize from previous Oddworld games. Their goal is to find and free the Mudokon queen, keeper of the remaining eggs of an endangered species.

I really had high hopes for Munch's Oddysee, as I feel that the Oddworld series is one of the most unique and beautifully realized game concepts of the past few years.

Now free from the burden of hardware manufacturing and in need of cash, Sega has been on a tear announcing any viable piece of software it owns for release on every conceivable gaming platform. It's for this reason that some may decry the release of Chu Chu Rocket! on the Game Boy Advance as nothing but an opportunistic business move by a publisher/developer trying to make a quick buck. But an objective analysis reveals this move to be one of the most beneficial towards gamers that Sega has made in a long time.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Language, Violence