Monkey Barrels Review
This review was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.
Key Info
System: Switch
Developer: Good Feel
Publisher: Good Feel
Release Date: 7 November 2019
Price: $14.99 / £11.99
Successfully staying alive in Monkey Barrels feels like a real achievement at times.
Developer Good Feel will be familiar to Nintendo fans as the team behind Kirby’s Epic Yarn, and both of Yoshi’s recent Worlds: Crafted and Woolly. Having earned their spurs on Nintendo’s first-party IP, they’re now publishing their own title for the first time.
As it turns out, Monkey Barrels has no qualms with kicking your ass across its 22 stages. But, if you’re up for the challenge, it’s a fun and rewarding dual-stick shooter, tarnished only by some minor localisation issues and a love-it-or-loath-it art style.
And The ‘Eek’ Shall Inherit The Earth
The set-up for Monkey Barrels is equal parts ridiculous and hilarious. An army of home-appliance robots - led by electronics manufacturer Crabbenwold Electro CEO Echizen Kanida - has exterminated humanity. Now, the head-honcho rules the world, and identifies animals as the next potential addition to his army.
It just so happens that a quartet of monkeys chilling out in post-apocalyptic Japan come across his radar, one of them gets kidnapped, and the remaining ones set about tracking him down in a rescue mission.
If you’re wanting to create a game about leather-jacket wearing monkeys using all sorts of weaponry to blow up microwaves, that’s the way to do it.
That weaponry is the big hook of the game too. There are 98 different ones to try out, and you can equip two primary and two secondary weapons at any time. The left and right triggers operate your two primary ones (though only one at a time) whilst the L and R buttons fire off your secondaries.
It’s a great system, and adds some entertaining variety that you don’t always get in the genre. It’s a ton of fun experimenting with different types of weapons according to the level you’re on. You may opt for a rapid fire machine gun to take out enemies quickly, and a shotgun for any that get too close. Alternatively, a laser that bounces around the course and a sniper rifle to pick rogue fridges off from afar might be the way to go.
The sheer number of weapons available, all with different reload speeds, damage counts, ranges and so on, means you could play through the game several times over and have completely different experiences depending on which weapons you use. Given that gunplay is so enjoyable, the replayability is very welcome.
The motorbike sections are a real highlight.
Concrete Jungle
The variety of stages keep things interesting too. There’s shipyards and bullet trains, jungles and quarries, all spread across the game’s five areas. A handful of stages break things up by throwing you on a motorbike or giving you a tank to operate too. The former have a real arcade feel to them, and were big highlights. Unfortunately, the tank sections were slow and cumbersome (which makes sense I guess), and I found myself wanting to get past them as quickly as possible so I could return to hopping around in style.
Outside of these odd variances though, each stage operates in more or less the same way - there’s nothing really in the way of unique stage hazards. Still, the variety in presentation nevertheless keeps things interesting as you progress.
Not that progression is easy. Those pesky appliances will fire all manner of lasers, energy balls and rockets in your direction in a bid to turn your simian into a squashed banana. The more irritating ones will charge straight at you too.
You’ll likely die a lot, but once you get in the zone - leaping around with the B button, firing off your own shots with deadly accuracy - you’ll feel like the king of the concrete jungle.
Or the queen as it happens, as there’s two playable apes in the main campaign. Masaru is your default chimp, but you can also play as his gal-pal Hanako. They’re also accompanied by Shibayama-san, who mans the armory back at camp where you can redeem your collected scrap for shiny new weaponry. The characters all have unique and amusing personalities. Unfortunately though, some of the dialogue is lost when cutscenes move on before you’ve finished reading. It feels like an oversight of the localisation process, as I’m by no means a slow reader.
Boss names and stages are only represented in Kanji too, and while it contributes nicely to the setting and aesthetic, I was disappointed at being unable to learn a little more about this ridiculous world I’d come to enjoy inhabiting so much.
Those bosses can be a right nightmare to take down too. Each stage has a set-piece of some description at the end, but the finale of each area throws a formidable behemoth at you. Whilst I relished the challenge that these represented, I did find myself making use of the get-out-of-jail free card the game grants you. If you die a number of times, you have the option of continuing with some extra health. It’s a neat touch that will come in handy for younger or unskilled players (like me).
Multiplayer is fun, but the lack of a local option seems like a missed opportunity.
Go Bananas
After you’ve progressed a certain way through the game, you can also unlock an online multiplayer mode. This sees up to 6 monkeys duking it out to recover the most bananas in the allotted time. You can choose from each of the four monkeys that are the core of the main game (once you’ve unlocked them all), and can customise their look to suit. Your display name is also a combination of three random words you can choose from the menu. I ended up going for ‘De Phantom Banana’. Equally daft options are available and I couldn’t but smile at the extension of the daft lore and premise into this aspect of the game.
The weapons available to you in multiplayer are the same ones you’ve unlocked in the main game. So once you’ve seen the credits roll, it’s well worth going back to track down the various blueprints hidden in each level, scavenging more scrap, and pursuing better scores to give you an advantage online. Unfortunately there’s no local multiplayer, which is a shame because I can imagine it would be a riot with a few friends and a couple of pints of banana beer.
Verdict
Monkey Barrels is a great dual-stick shooter that does enough new and interesting things to make it stand out in the genre. The daft premise sets the tone for a fun time, even if making it through the game’s five areas is no laughing matter. Some minor localisation issues are a shame, and the 3D pixel art may divide opinion, but the massive amounts of replayability and tight core gameplay make this a stellar effort for Good Feel’s maiden solo outing.
Pros & Cons
+ Massive weapon variety
+ Tons of replayability
+ Hilariously daft lore
- Some localisation issues
- No local multiplayer