volcane
Member
I'm thinking of picking up both Spinout & Super Monkey Ball Adventures on the UK PSN as they are a good price this week.
General reviews don't seem very good for either game but the videos & screenshots look quite good to me.
Is there anyone who has played either game and can offer their opinion?
Many thanks!
I worked on Spinout. Not a bad little game. :)
Haven't played the PSP monkey ball but played a DS version was OK too.
How much are they on sale for?
volcane
Member
@igotmy9milli
I worked on Spinout. Not a bad little game. :)
Wow, it's a small world! :-D
What was it that you did on the game?
Super Monkey Ball Adventures is currently £7.99 and Spinout is presently on offer at £3.99. That is £12 for the pair - seems like a bargain to me!
They both seem my kind of thing (ball-based puzzle games). I loved games such as Fading Shadows and the two Mercury games.
I did a lot of testing and helped in setting some of the level times etc. For £4 you can't really go wrong, there is a hell of a lot of gameplay play in there.
Hopefully if you do buy it you'll agree! :S
Sorry to go off topic here, but volcane, if you can find it, I highly recommend Ballance, a PC game. It's my absolute favorite Marble Madness descendant (i.e., ball-navigation genre). The atmosphere is spectacularly done, and the keypad controls are perfectly tuned.
I am stuck in spinout.
ninigou
Member
Both games suck, both games have severe framerate issue
I'd go for <Spinout> if you desperately want a ball game
As for <Super Monkey Ball Adventures>, let me explain to you how it sucks: this is a mission (mini game) based game, every mission takes aound 2-3 minutes to finish.
But the problem is, you can't restart the mission when you make mistakes, which means you have to either wait for "time out" or "suicide".
and to make things worse, everytime when you fail the mission, you will have to restart from the last checkpoint, then walk aound to retake the mission.
volcane
Member
Thanks for the tips everyone!
I think both games look fun and are value for money, so I've bought both! I've only played for about 30 mins each so far, but here are my initial thoughts:
Spinout
Great graphics, audio and controls. Quite challenging to navigate the ball around the tracks. Nice use of physics and special effects. The game has a very Wipeout-meets-Mercury feel to it, which I love! :-)
Super Monkey Ball Adventures
Great graphics & controls. The story mode stuff is an interesting diversion but grows old quickly for someone my age (but I can see how it would appeal to younger players). The actual mini games are quite challenging. The ball's inertia and the 3D view can make it tricky sometimes to accurately position the ball, even though you do have some control over the camera and there is a small overhead view on screen at all times to help with this.
Summary
Both games are good buys if you like these sorts of things. Super Monkey Ball Adventures is kind of what I was expecting it to be to be. Spinout on the otherhand is much better than I was expecting and is defintely the better game out of the two. It is also better priced, which makes it great value. As igotmy9milli said above, there is a lot of gameplay in Spinout.
So once again, thanks everyone for your help & suggestions.
That's two more great games added to the "Volcane Game Library"! :-)
I was thinking about getting Spinout also (i've been after it for a while now, and the price is finally right), but was on the fence about buying it... but after what you've said about it volcane my mind is made up. ;)
Glad you are enjoying Spinout! I think it is good value for that price. :)
I just discovered that what you're all referring to as "Spinout" is the game released by Icon Games just a few weeks ago in the North American PS Store as "Vertigo" (it's $10 here). Anyone know when Spinout originally came out? I tried looking online and found a variety of sources claiming different dates, from 2007 through 2009 (though the initial press release announcement was 2005). If it really was 2007, then the delay between European release and North American release is almost as long as the gap between Sakura Wars V in Japan and North America.
Spinout came out over here originally in 2007, boxed only. Then it was put on the PSN store last year, and also sold as an essential both boxed and on PSN.
Nexus Prime
Member
@ volcane - Good reviews.
@ onmode-ky - Thanks for the info. Out of curiosity I was going to look up Spinout at the NA PSN store, but I guess I would have been wasting my time.
It reminds me of Marble Blast Ultra for the 360. I think I will get this sometime, but as of now I've got a full plate and an empty wallet. I'll probably wait for a price drop anyway.
A game I wouldn't mind seeing as a downloadable (it's already on UMD), that is somewhat similar to these games is GripShift. Just replace the marble with a car.
Seems Spinout/Vertigo took its sweet time crossing the Atlantic. :) Maybe it has a bad sense of direction because it, you know, suffers from vertigo. . . .
Several years ago, I considered getting one of the Marble Blast (PC) games. However, I tried a demo and discovered that I don't particularly like the "racer" variant of the Marble Madness descendant, or at least not when the courses contain elements like curves without walls. Fighting with the controls in those kinds of environments just led to frustration. Ballance appealed to me because it a) didn't have that kind of course design and b) was more puzzler than racer, though you still tried to complete each course as fast as you could. Switchball is a later game, similar in many respects to Ballance, but longer and with more advanced graphics/physics--but it's not as good, in my opinion. For one, the controls on the PS3 version (which is what I have) drove me nuts, but also, I didn't like the atmosphere set by the music; Ballance has great, otherworldly atmosphere. Fading Shadows does, too, as I recall.
volcane
Member
@Shazbots
Dude you should get "Me and my Katamari" for PSP
I've had a look at some reviews for that game but still don't quite understand what the game is about!
It seems like a funky Japanese humour-based game where you roll a big sticky ball around a 3D level picking up objects that you bump into. Is that essentially what happens?
It sounds fun - have you tried it?
Katamari is awesome! Gets my vote!
Katamari is - indeed - awesome.
You start of smaller than a marble and stick stuff to your ball until you get big enough to, eventually, pick up buildings, land masses, etc. It's the shizzle and totally unique both in gameplay, visuals and general madness.
Pick it up!
For anyone interested in marble-guiding games, Fading Shadows just got a re-rating from the ESRB, this time from Nordcurrent. I take this to mean that it's finally coming to the North American PS Store (the NA UMD release was by Agetec). No longer a European Store exclusive!
A word of warning, though: Fading Shadows does not play much like Marble Blast. A long time ago, I played a PC demo for a Marble Blast game and discovered I didn't like it. Marble Blast is a speed-oriented, racing-mindset game; Fading Shadows is a puzzle-solving, path-finding game. Quite different.
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