I hate this game. Not usually the most appealing way to start a review, but I had to say it. I enjoyed Super Monkey Ball on the Gamecube for the most part, and most would expect the game to easily translate to the DS system with the touch screen functionality. Nope - it's awful. I'll tell you why, too...

Who doesn't love Monkey Ball, though? How could you not? It's cute little monkeys... in balls! Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Go is like any other Monkey Ball game; there's a main mode where you move your ball (complete with monkey) around a floating platform as you attempt to reach the goal within the time limit, without falling off the landscape. Along the way you'll probably want to collect the bananas, as they offer 1UPs (you'll know when you get an extra life, because it annoyingly covers the playing area to tell you). There are various worlds such as jungle world, sand world, volcano world and so on - nothing out of the ordinary.

Whilst many of the worlds have a good amount of unique designs, they simply aren't any fun to navigate and that reason can be attributed to multiple things. First of all, the controls are simply horrible and too 'touchy' (I made a funny!) In Super Monkey Ball you seem to be tilting the landscape to roll your ball, yet you do this by putting the stylus on an image of your monkey ball on the lower screen and moving it in a specific direction to control the landscape on the upper screen. The result obviously leaves the player very uncoordinated and confused, as it's nearly impossible to tell exactly how the environment will react to your touches. It would have been much, much easier had the lower screen been used as a display for the game as well. It's so bad I ended up playing with the D-Pad (the developers must've realised how user friendly their stylus control isn't when they added this option) and though it's quite a bit more reliable, you'll soon find that the dodgy camera angles make it frustrating as well.

Due to the graphical limitations of the DS, the actual monkey and ball are not in 3D like the levels, but instead a small 2D sprite that is hardly animated. The result? It constantly looks as if, when moving the platforms to roll your ball, the ball animation does not accurately respond quickly enough and doesn't match up with what's happening with the platform right away. The whole process is not only clumsy in the way it plays, but also in the way it looks.

The classic monkey ball mini-games, such as Monkey Bowling, Monkey Mini-Golf, Monkey Hockey, Monkey Racing and more return, but unfortunately almost all suffer from the same problems as the main mode (especially the race mode, which doesn't support D-Pad control). The only one I really had a bit of fun with was Monkey Hockey, which replicates classic games of table air hockey, complete with the ability to draw and use your own object to hit the puck with. The other modes are simple amusement for a few minutes at best and I can't even imagine anyone wanting to bother with the race mode when Mario Kart DS is available.

Graphically, Touch & Roll is very hit and miss. The levels and backgrounds all look surprisingly good, with no signs of the primitive capabilities of the DS, but the actual monkey doesn't look very good at all, even for a 2D character. I'm a huge fan of 2D art and sprites, and Monkey Ball's simply are not appealing; even during the menu, the coloring and drawing is very bland and uninviting. The animations for the monkey on the lower screen are amusing, but you'll hardly find the time to even bother looking at it when you're trying to play the game on the top screen. Monkey Ball's sound on the other hand is hard to critique. It's very repetitive, but then again so is the entire game, so you can't expect a lot out of it. The monkeys make cute noises, the ball has various sounds for higher speeds and the music changes from zone to zone in fancy ways that should get you bouncing. Overall there's nothing to really put down about the sound but little to praise either.

Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Roll will probably be a good bit of fun for the kiddies if they can deal with the controls and the tormenting camera, but for the older audience I highly do not recommend this game. If you really like the idea of it, perhaps you should roll onto Pac N' Roll for your DS instead; Monkey Ball has very few redeeming features, and even fewer features that actually work as they should do, providing an incredibly frustrating and unsatisfying experience.

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).