Great mix and selection of mini-games but hit-or-miss with control scheme.
Some of the mini-games in this game are pretty fun and control very well. Some great examples of this are Monkey Snowboarding, Red Light Green Light, Bubble Racing, etc. The controller works beautifully for these games and feels very natural. However, there are a large amount of games that do not control well with the new scheme. Whack-a-Monkey does not respond well at all. Frisbee golf is so hard to gauge a proper throw. The disc either flies way too far or not far enough. With the above exceptions and a handful of others, there are still more than enough party games to keep you occupied for a long time.
On to the single player mode. The single player levels are either ridiculously easy or ridiculously hard. You simply try to get from the starting line to the finish line, collecting as many bananas as you can along the way. As long as you don't fall off a cliff this is incredibly easy. The hard part is controlling your monkey in tight areas. It can be very frustrating to maneuver down narrow paths in this game, resulting in falling off a cliff many times. I like the rest of the control scheme but it needed to be tighter control for these instances.
Super Monkey Ball is a fun game if you're buying it to play with a friend most of the time. If you're buying it for the single-player, I would definitely rent it first as I think you'll be let down. I bought it for the multiplayer and somewhat like that aspect of it so the single-player mode doesn't really affect me much.