playhooky's Full Review: Super Monkey Ballâ„¢: Banana Blitz for Nintendo Wi...
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz - say that ten times. I believe the long name is a result of this title being around for a long time on previous game platforms. Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz and maybe a future version will be Intergalatic Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitzkreig or something.Basically the game is a fun action arcade type game.
The Game
In the main SMBBB game you are a monkey inside one of those clear spheres you might put your hampster in. You use the Wiimote to control the speed, direction of the balland jumping as you try to get through mazes before the time runs out. I can imagine this type of game driving a player mad using a classic type game controller but with the Wiimote it really seems natural. Tilt forward to pick up speed, tilt to the side to change direction. It takes a steady hand to control the ball and the expert in our house, my nine year old, holds the controller close to his body so it doesn't shake.
SMBBB follows the lock game scheme that can be downright maddening if you get stuck on a particularly hard level. Of course they all seem really hard the first time you try it but after falling off the cliff ten times or so you start to figure it out and most players in our testing group got through the first set of levels.
Blaring Sound
For some reason this game seems to have the volume cranked up to 11. Everytime we put it in the Wii we have to turn down the volume by at least half. Plus the sound track is extremely repetitive. I'd like to see the developer put in some kind of sound setup so you could choose to turn down the background music.
The Value
The real value in this title is the 50 included mini games. These are a great reason to purchase this inexpensive title and can be a lot of fun when you have some friends over. They range from some repeats like golf and boxing but also include some fun racing games like snowboarding and car racing including mystery boxes of weapons. Some games are great when you get the hang of the controls like Darts for example. It is neat holding the controler like a dart. In other games like Wac A Mole the controls don't seem to work at all. Often the game loses the remotes or doesn't seem to register their input.Sega seems to have shoveled some of the mini-games out the door just to get the total mini-game number up or perhaps they use it to break in new software developers.In any case the mini games would have been stronger with few games that worked well.
One nice feature for party play is that when you choose say 4 players the game lets you play three mini-games and it keeps a running score.
Rating the Game
Looking at all of the high ratings on this game I'm kind of perplexed. Either people bought this game early on when their were few games for the Wii or they paid very little for it and got a lot of bang for the buck.
I did the latter. I purchased it at the time I got the Wii for my family with the express purpose of getting a lot of mini games to try out the Wii controller. For less than $20 bucks the game is a good deal with 50 mini games even though a number of them don't seem to work very well. But compared to a title like Wii Sports or Lego Star Wars it doesn't measure up so I have to give it an average rating. The blaring, repetitive sound track alone makes me take off a star on this score.
Overall
Overall I think this game is worth the price of admission. If your looking to add some more games to your Wii collection this gives you a ton of games of all kinds. But in general kids seem to like this game more than adults. So I wouldn't recommend it to an adult only household.
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