Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

Aug. 30, 2008

I'm beginning to run out of original categories, so here goes a random one. Super monkey ball, here we go.

Category

Arcade Monkey Roller

Pros

• Extremely simple controls and a quick time to start gives this game the "fastest to start" award of all the games I've played thus far.
• The monkeys are cute to the max.
• Game has a ton of potential for speed runs and fancy tricks, with a good utilities for replays
• Difficulty ramps up in a very fair manner - keeps it challenging.
• Lots of challenge for those who would seek it.
• Boss fights provided original and interesting gameplay, which I now find to be refreshing after weeks of bosses that are just stronger versions of normal enemies.

Cons

• The menu is driven not by point and clicking at what you want, but by shifting your controller left and right. This is awkward and I don't see what is so damn wrong about point and click interfaces.
• Credit sequence is unskippable the first time you watch it. Come on guys, don't be full of yourself... most people are going to want to skip the credits.
• The game has absolutely no way to quit out of an area mid-game... which sucks. You either have to beat it, purposely lose all of your lives, or reset the console. And even on the level select screen, there's no way to quit out! There's tons of unused buttons - couldn't they have mapped ONE of them onto a menu?
• Monkey ball holds onto the concept of lives when it is ultimately meaningless in this game. You can continue at any time, only at the risk of your high score - but players who were going for high scores are already competent enough not to lose tons of lives. It's weird that games still add this layer when it does nothing for the new players nor the die-hard fans.
• It feels like I'm fighting with the controls much of the time, but that might just be the beer.

Verdict

This game is essentially an old-fashioned arcade-style game. Simple mechanics with an ever-increasing difficulty. If you like the mechanic, then I'm sure it's a lot of fun - but it bothers me that all it feels like I'm doing is battling the controls to get my monkey to do what I want him to do. I couldn't get through the full hour.