Hamsterball (PS3)
Super Monkey Ball is a series of physics-focused platform games where the player needs to guide a monkey inside a ball through increasingly complex obstacle courses. Marble Madness is a classic arcade title where the player rolls a fairly fragile marble down towers full of challenging geometry to safely make it to the goal. The reason I bring up these two games focused on ball rolling is not because Hamsterball for PS3 feels like a blend of these two concepts, but instead because it deliberately does not combine its attempts to imitate their styles of play. Rather than trying to marry the concepts of these two inspirations, Hamsterball instead splits them into separate modes available in one single game about a hamster rolling its translucent ball around.
Of the game’s three single-player modes, Hustle is certainly the one favored more when it comes to content and it serves as the backbone for the multiplayer Race mode as well. In these stages, your goal is simply to get to the end of a large 3D obstacle course laid out before you, the only controls you need to worry about universally being your movement. Your hamster’s ball will be going down plenty of ramps, rolling around in humongous tubes, launching off of inclines, and be knocked around by moving environmental pieces, the player needing to manage their movement so they can get around dangers and maintain momentum without flying off the course. With physics being your main concern it can be a little discouraging to see the slip-ups in programming that might send your hamster up a wall in an odd way or abruptly gain or lose momentum, and the implementation of ideas like levels where your ball can roll up walls or travel upside-down can make it very hard to keep track of how your hamster will behave in relation to gravity for those stages. However, you can most often reliably navigate a level in Hustle mode without too much worry because it’s not too hard to just charge your way to the finish line.
Despite some visually obtuse level designs, especially as moving tracks, flashing lights, and sometimes nauseating gravity-defying segments start to get involved, the path to the goal is not too hard to just brute force your way to. Even though levels feature alternate paths those branches don’t often diverge in concept too much, one perhaps being a bit shorter or more dangerous but ultimately rather similar ways to reach the end. There is a timer you need to beat in most levels, although this timer is fairly generous even before it starts adding in extra time based on your performance in previous levels. Lap based levels at least seem to have a bit of a benefit to the path splits since they make going through the stage three times potentially more varied, but the game will repeat its regular stage design as well as you get deeper into Hustle mode with complete unaltered setpieces carried over despite a new concept like disappearing light bridges cropping up between them. Those light bridges also share an unfortunate visual similarity to bridges that are still present but just turn invisible to make things a little more confusing, but even if you’re confused as your hamster barrels through tunnels or other disorienting obstacles at blistering speeds, you’re not really put back too far if you do go off course or get killed by an enemy or spikes.
Revival is just part of the Hamsterball experience and Hustle holds nothing against you for plummeting off its course. You’ll be teleported back up, sometimes right on the edge so you’ll fall of again if you’re not ready to pull away from it, and it can often be better to activate the manual respawn option instead since that will usually put you in a safer spot. While obviously respawning will lead to a hitch in your progress because it takes time and reduces any speed gained through momentum, the quickness of returning to life means that charging in headfirst isn’t too bad a tactic. The time lost from missing a turn can be made up from the mad dash getting to that turn, and while there are moments the game throws in thin tracks you need to navigate carefully or something like a catapult you have to nestle yourself into just right, Hamsterball doesn’t incentivize cautious play very well.
Not every level design is a loser, many feeling rather mediocre though especially as they’re recycled for another round later into Hustle mode. There are collectibles like time bonuses and piggy banks that provide points if you care for setting high scores either by finishing quickly or getting the most possible points. However, even some of the better thought out levels do encounter a small annoyance in that the game doesn’t want you to take shortcuts of almost any size. If you try to roll off track to go to an area that’s even the slightest bit lower than where you’re meant to be at the moment, your hamster will be obliterated and sent back to where it rolled off from. Attempts to find interesting ways of traversing levels are curtailed by the game’s killer punishment for daring to go for what seems like an intended shortcut, but the game does have a few actual shortcuts by way of special paths for specific hamsters. Over the course of the game you unlock a Jumper hamster that can leap through the air, a Speedy hamster that has a regenerating speed boost, and a Spiked hamster that doesn’t have spikes on it at all but instead turns its ball into solid metal so it can somehow pass through the many metal fences that block off game-approved shortcuts. Jumper feels tailor made for finding special shortcuts around the level but unless you’re hopping across a small gap to a piece of track that is on the same exact level you won’t be allowed to make use of this special hamster power very much, ruining a chance for these levels to have more depth so that players would have a reason to pick the otherwise inferior Spiked hamster ball.
Despite reheating many level designs to fill out the numbers, Hustle has two practice stages, thirty-three normal stages, and two special post game levels, which makes it all the more tragic when the game’s superior mode Stunt has only eight and the first one of those is one that takes barely any time to complete as it acclimates you to the rule changes. Despite it’s name making it sound rather extreme, Stunt is actually closer to the careful movement of Marble Madness than Hustle’s Super Monkey Ball inspired obstacle courses. The much tighter and smaller stages of Stunt mode involve you rolling down or up a tower carefully but quickly, any fall of even a decent height enough to break your ball and force a respawn. This is actually a lot more worrisome in Stunt mode compared to Hustle since the game is surprisingly tight with its timers here. The final few levels of Stunt are practically impossible without a hearty time pool built up over the easier earlier courses, and while you can do level select to retry earlier levels for better time pools, you then need to play every level after if you want to get to the end with that extra cushion.
Stunt is a legitimate challenge with some stages that actually ask for a fair bit of skill from the player compared to Hustle’s more kid-friendly designs that funnel you towards the goal. However, Stunt does indulge some of the less thought out concepts like rolling up walls that make judging the area’s physics harder, and judging what the game considers a safe drop can be muddled a bit by having moments where a tube or other launcher throws you into the air. A few moments feel outright made to mess you up too like a portion where you need to drop into a curved ramp from an awkward angle, and since you’re mostly rolling downhill you might either have little time to react to a hazard that appears suddenly onscreen or might not even know whether it’s something helpful or not until it has shattered you. Replaying levels is part of this design and it is easy enough to accept that fact and try for better times since there are so few stages, but its little successes aren’t really enough to counterbalance a game that mostly leans into Hustle mode and its issues.
Stunt mode does try to find a bit of extra longevity by having its levels crop up in Trial mode where you can play them individually and shoot for your best times, but that doesn’t really add anything save an easier way to retry a stage outside of the full run context. Other than that, Hamsterball’s final unique mode is one restricted to multiplayer. Sumo mode can be played with human players or AI controlled hamsters, with the arenas for this mode are unlocked by finding hidden locks in Stunt mode’s levels. However, that reward is hardly worth it since this is definitely Hamsterball’s worst mode of them all. Placed in arenas that are usually ring shaped or very slight alterations to that design, the goal is to knock the other hamsters out of the arena or have them get killed by an arena hazard like the maces of Tower Arena. The problem is, Sumo is a point focused mode, and every player who isn’t the hamster that was just knocked out gets a point. The hamster with the most points at the end is the winner with infinite respawns available until a winner is decided, but ties are extremely common and what’s worse, a player can easily win just by avoiding conflict and waiting for other hamsters to eliminate each other. The point distribution outright discourages interaction, but even if you did go on the attack, all you can do is bonk into each other, the impact not really moving hamsters around too much and making it hard to eliminate an opponent who is even a little bit aware they shouldn’t be near the edges. Needless to say, if you do want to play Hamsterball with a friend, you’d be better off mindlessly charging through the Hustle mode tracks in Race mode instead.
THE VERDICT: Hamsterball’s Stunt mode has potential with its focus on challenging tower descents where setting a good time is key to having enough time to completing later levels, so even despite its small flaws with shifting physics and sections designed to blindside you, you can have a bit of fun with it. However, Stunt is practically a side mode to the much meatier Hustle mode which has unexciting track design that discourages shortcut taking and reuses track portions frequently. Coupled with the spottier physics and the respawns being too forgiving, Hamsterball’s worse mode drags it down to a game that isn’t worth playing compared to the games that clearly inspired it. Add in the awful idea that is Sumo mode with its ridiculous point allocation system and Hamsterball ends up feeling like a game where little thought was put into how to make its ideas work and what can even prove entertaining in a video game setting.
And so, I give Hamsterball for PlayStation 3…
A BAD rating. Carve Stunt mode out to make its own title, add to its course count, and maybe pull back the camera a little bit more and you’ll have a game that approaches a GOOD rating, but this small segment of a much larger game can’t redeem the experience in its currently miniscule state. Stunt mode did at least understand that timers should feel like a challenge if they’re going to be present, its punishment for even very small drops means you won’t be tempted to take tantalizing shortcuts, and the gimmicks are much more reined in than the ones featured in the bloated Hustle mode. Hustle reusing huge chunks of its stages is already an issue in a game where it can feel like you’re just going down the prescribed path, and not allowing you to get creative with the Jumper hamster or just rolling onto another bit of track really lessens any interest in replaying levels as you’ll inevitably be doing the same course unless you want to have the Spiked ball take its special lanes. Physics woes aren’t so present that it will feel like the game is broken but it can still be nauseating to have your ball move in impossible ways, and having variable physics in some levels just makes getting a feel for your hamster’s motion a bit more difficult. A bit of real difficulty would be nice to have in Hustle though as coming back to life without any big setback feels like it allows for incredibly sloppy play. Rather than packing in 30+ levels that aren’t even totally unique, Hamsterball probably would have benefited from tightening its main mode so it can achieve the kind of successes Stunt mode does with its more focused and challenging towers. Sumo mode, on the other hand, needs so much reworking to be enjoyable that it is best not to dwell on the obvious individual issues and instead just recommend a complete overhaul.
With its cute hamster characters and colorful visuals, Hamsterball probably wanted to appeal to younger players, and that might be why Hustle is so easy. Conversely, Stunt is so challenging it feels like the kids who buy into the adorable hamsters would find it frustrating. It’s hard to find a type of player who would enjoy both sides of the experience equally, even if that person was a fan of the two games that it drew many of its ideas from. A Super Monkey Ball fan would likely find Hustle too dull and easy by comparison, but a Marble Madness fan might at least enjoy the little time they get with the tinier Stunt mode. No matter how you line up your interests though, it always feels like Hamsterball could have done much more to tighten up the general experience.