Writing
Review: Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz - Published by N-Philes, Dec 10, 2006
I've spent more hours staring at Aiai's hindquarters in the first two Super Monkey Ball games than I care to admit. If Denny Crane ever needed a Monkey Ball specialist to testify, I would definitely be his first choice. When Sega announced Banana Blitz for the Wii, I couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities that the Wii Remote could add to one of the most entertaining franchises of the last generation. I knew that it would be the number one party game that would force everybody to go out in droves and buy a Wii. The tilt controls would render analog Monkey control obsolete. Banana Blitz would rinse the bad taste left in my mouth after swashing around the less-than-stellar Super Monkey Balls Adventure and Touch & Roll.
Sega, you've let me down.
Let me get graphics and sound out of the way. They're amazing. The team behind Banana Blitz dispensed of the clean and "realistic" style (really, what's realistic about a monkey inside a ball, navigating a labyrinth inside a whale's stomach?) from the first games and developed a more cartoon-like graphical presentation with rich, saturated colors. The backgrounds aren't as busy as before, but they've been blurred to bring more attention to the foreground, where there's much more going on. The courses are littered with decorative mushrooms, torches, trees, and enemies that try to knock you off. Each world has a style and color palette of its own, from the midnight pirate ship to the snowy plains. The blur effects are just gorgeous. The only disappointment from a graphical point of view is that the particle effects aren't as interesting or noticeable as they've been in past Monkey Ball outings.
I didn't think that Sega could top the music form Super Monkey Ball 2, but they did. The music is more diffused and helps to set the mood of the world. The desert theme has an Arabian flavor while the winter theme chimes with upbeat and airy techno beats with charming voice samples.
Banana Blitz has around 100 all-new levels, all of which feel very different from one-another. The addition of boss battles shakes up the formula a bit while keeping true to the spirit of Monkey Ball. There are two schools of monkey ballas: the ones who prefer the long skill-driven courses of the first GameCube game, and the ones who like the gimmick-oriented levels of the second game. Banana Blitz captures the spirit of both games very well, offering both long courses and courses where obstacles must be overcome. One thing you'll notice right away is that the courses are bigger, some so big that you're given two minutes to complete them. This is in part to accommodate the lack of spot-on precision that the analog stick offers. It isn't until very late in the game will the course narrow to a ball's width.
The game takes a little longer to ramp up the difficulty than previous iterations of the series, but that isn't to say that this game is easy. Playing through the game, I've killed more monkeys than PETA would care to learn about, but it wasn't until very late in the game that the courses became hair-pullingly difficult. The difficulty does mostly come from the level design, but the control does play into that difficulty perhaps more than in previous iterations.
Banana Blitz controls just about how you'd expect. When you tilt the controller forward to make Aiai, or any of the other five playable monkeys, roll forward. Tilt it left and the level will too, guiding the monkey left. There is, however, a catch: the controller is held pointer-style without any horizontal support. It's nearly impossible to keep your monkey perfectly still. As a result, the game feels awkward until you come to grips with one-handed monkey business. Even then, I'm pretty sure that using both hands would give the game a tighter feel.
Also, when you're playing, you never feel that the course tilts enough. Monkey Ball breaks free from the confines of an analog stick, yet there isn't any more slack with how far the floor will tilt, whether the controller is tilted 30º or 90º. Though admittedly, there's a great sense of satisfaction pulling the controller way back and seeing the monkey react accordingly.
Then there's jumping! One of the new mechanics to Monkey Ball this time around is the ability to jump. Many of the earlier courses are cleverly designed to encourage the braver players to cut corners and collect more bananas by jumping, while not always making it a necessity. Trust me when I say that there's no turning back as I wonder how the other games are even playable without such a feature.
The other new mechanic is that each monkey plays differently. For example, Gongon can break the bumpers that lay on the course, Yanyan is a high jumper, and Baby's smaller size makes him a prime candidate for narrow levels. Ultimately it doesn't matter which simian is chosen, but it's refreshing to have that choice impact the game.
So, what's disappointing about Banana Blitz? It's bare-boned. There's no meat to the game beyond the single player main game. Even in the main game, you can only play through one world at a time, by yourself. To unlock the hidden worlds, you have to accomplish the near-impossible task of playing through all eight available worlds without using continues. Any lives that you might earn beyond the three you're given aren't transferable from one world to the next, which means that you have to be an exceptional player to plough through the last worlds with a small handful of monkeys.
A practice mode is integrated into the main mode, making it really cumbersome to replay specific levels. There isn't even a "retry" button to speed up the whole practice process! There's no competition mode where you can play through the beginner, advanced, or expert levels with more lives. No competition mode also means that the levels are solely a single player affair, which in my opinion ruins half the fun of Monkey Ball. That half, of course, is multiplayer, whether it's playing cooperatively, competitively, or what have you.
Speaking of multiplayer, Super Monkey Ball 2 offered a dozen fleshed out side games that were all really fun, the rowing game notwithstanding. Here, Sega proudly shows that their newest game has 50 minigames, all of which are unlocked off the bat. This sounds like a selling point, but in practice, the minigames aren't fun. Less than 20 of the minigames are worth playing more than once. What kills the other 30-plus games is that the Wii's pointer functionality is both forced and poorly executed. There's a spear fishing game that could have been really fun, but it's crippled because the pointing in Banana Blitz isn't nearly as reliable as it is in the Wii menu, and when you lunge forward to catch the fish, you lose your aim and miss half the time. Don't even get me started on games like disc golf, where you tilt for direction and point for distance. It's so counterintuitive that you can finish a few courses in Wii Sports Golf in the time it takes to do one hole in Banana Blitz.
To make matters worse, the best games didn't make it over from Super Monkey Ball 2, and the ones that did aren't fun anymore. Monkey Fight, Shot, and Billiards are nowhere to be found, while Monkey Target was completely mangled. While Darts, Squash, and an Asteroid Crash are pretty fun, I would rather have a dozen polished side games than 50 poorly designed minigames.
Super Monkey Ball's first Wii incarnation falls short of being a top launch game that it could have been. Banana Blitz has some really clever courses set to beautiful backdrops and moody melodies. The boss battles are both fresh and creative. Beyond that, the presentation isn't as polished as we've come to expect from the Monkey Ball franchise: no "retry" if you want to start the level over, no "play again" to quickly replay the minigame you just played, and no ability to change monkeys to capitalize on their newly differentiated skills until you either clear a level or hit game over.
Slight Pulse - Aiai tilts and tumbles, and fumbles.
Banana Blitz should satisfy if you only have one Wii Remote and are looking for fun courses. Unfortunately Sega forgot the monkey's mantra, "Let us cooperate!" Those looking for multiplayer mayhem may have to look elsewhere, as the main courses don't offer anything beyond a single player mode, and only a handful of the minigames are fun enough to play a few times. Combined with hit-or-miss controls and a paltry presentation, this Monkey Ball may lead to disappointment on the lasting appeal front. Let's hope Sega has a polished sequel real soon to satisfy Banana Blitz's shortcomings – and my desire to stare at Aiai's hindquarters.