Squirrel Sphere Reviews

I have mixed feelings on this one. I think lack of midair control is typically expected from the genre so that isn't necessarily an issue on its own, but many levels feature long jumps or chains of bounces on e.g. balloons or jump pads where once you start the sequence you have- as far as I know- literally no control until the final landing, and this makes the acceptable range for angle of entry quite narrow in many cases. On the other hand, when you're bouncing over normal terrain you can spin the ball for a burst of adjustment when you land, and it's easy to overshoot that adjustment, especially when falling onto a sharp angle doesn't send you careening as fast or far as you might expect. The ball also accelerates very quickly while grounded, which makes some obstacles requiring fine control perhaps harder than they should be. Even late-game it's hard to shake the feeling that too many levels involve some degree of holding forward on straightaways, or some minor variation thereof. Other levels just feel too long, where one mistake on a late high-precision obstacle means having to replay earlier sections. The game also has the obnoxious habit of placing optional collectibles such that you have to drop down to grab them and thus subsequently repeat an earlier section. This could have been alleviated through things like checkpoints, one-way teleporters, or other stage elements to launch you back whence you came. The bosses are janky and tedious. Either you're waiting too long to even have an opportunity to attack, or you're praying that upon striking a boss's weak point you don't awkwardly rebound to your doom... or both. Stage type variety can be nice in theory but the execution in this case falls flat. The tails of cannons' guide lines lag behind the heads, which makes timing high-precision shots unnecessarily frustrating. There are also cases where you can fall perfectly in between two balloons, which just feels bad. The inclusion of instant-death traps (e.g. spikes) in some levels seems odd. It's not something I ever felt Super Monkey Ball wrongfully omitted. I do appreciate the manual camera control, though there doesn't seem to be any automatic camera to fall back on when not making use of it. Squirrel Sphere certainly isn't the worst in the genre, but it's also far from the best in my opinion.