The game is alright but definetely not the best Wii game out there.
It’s a whole new monkey in a ball game! Yup you heard me right; it’s a monkey in a ball game! You play as one of six different monkeys. Who are on a guest to get back their golden bananas.
Being one of the launch titles this game had to deliver and deliver it well kinda did! Since the last Monkey Ball just plain old sucked as well there was a lot of pressure on this game. So let’s see how it held up to all that pressure in another alex51011 Review!
Monkey balls story was definitely not one of their main priorities. Frankly something has taken away your Golden Bananas! So you set out to get them back. But frankly you won’t see a hint of dialogue in the game. So you really have no clue why they’ve taken the bananas and why the bananas even matter.
So for all you know these monkeys really like their golden bananas. The story also randomly drops you into the weirdest of locations. You’ve got deserts and forests and the like with no explanation why you’re there in the first place! Frankly the story is plain old stupid and without any explanation as to why these bananas are important you simply presume that there needed for something or at least hope. But in Monkey Ball the story isn’t all that important and doesn’t play a huge part.
Now visually Monkey Ball is no masterpiece. The visuals are very simplistic but hold out for the type of game it is. There are quite a few things that look nice though. Like for instance the levels do look very nice; which stands out when looking at them in the pause menu. It shows that they tried to make the game look nice and crisp.
Some things that also look nice are when you get a banana or when you complete a level and go through the little circle it’ll shoot off a short of fireworks to celebrate you completing the level. Some of the bosses look cool albeit being purple and pink colors. But even though there are some alright looking visuals the game really suffers graphically since they seemed to have simplified its look quite a bit. But it’s not all bad. Now Monkey Ball is essential designed for fun gameplay which they deliver and fail at all in one. The main game was done very well and has a lot of gameplay to it. You have 8 some worlds with around 8 levels some bonus stages and a boss battle in each. Now the boss battles are surprisingly very well done; for a new feature in the series it was done very well.
Now the fundamentals of the gameplay are; tilt the world and roll your monkey to the finish, which I slightly touched on in the above paragraph. Now I’m going to be blunt; I dislike Monkey Ball but I have to say they did the gameplay very well; other then the weird A.I that just runs around and does absolutely nothing. One other thing that was annoying is the new addition of jumping, it just felt so incomplete and pretty hard to use effectively.
Of course were there’s a good part there’s a bad and this bad part makes you want to break your Wii-Remote. Now what could that be you ask? Well the mini-games of course. Monkey Balls min-games show off a whole new way to SUCK, almost every single one of the mini-games feel incomplete and just plain horrible. Although there are those few that are really good, but those are increasingly rare.
Truly Monkey Balls gameplay has its flaws but also has some nice upsides that will at least make you consider not breaking your Wii-Remote after playing those ‘flaws’.
Monkey Balls controls surprisingly well other then a few bumps and scraps here and there. But what does work really well is tilting the world. You can really tell that the Wii-Remote was the answer to the Monkey Ball games. By simply tilting the Wii-Remote the world itself tilts, which feels very good and intuitive.
One problem with the controls that I had was jumping; it’s not that it was hard it just didn’t fit in very well with the other controls and feels like they just wanted to add it since they found the formula old perhaps.
But overall the controls feel fine except when playing the mini-games so Monkey Ball definitely looses points in that category just because of the mini-games. Monkey Balls music is ok but you definitely won’t remember it after playing it as it’s quite forgetful. Plus it can be quite annoying from time to time. At least the music changes from world to world and sometimes it’ll change with each passing level.
The sounds are also alright but could have been better. You get quite a weird sound when you jump and the monkeys make odd ooting noises that scare me from time to time. The music and sound is terribly forgetful and so it’s just not that great.
In the end I don’t think I would recommend buying Monkey Ball unless you’re a true fan of the game and for those people who think you can be a casual gamer and beat this game then forget it! It’s quite a hard game. The game also has some pretty good Replay value having close to 100 levels and those *shudder* mini-games.
Story- 5/10
Weird and not explained
Visual-7/10
Very simple
Gameplay-8/10
Still some bumps and bruises that have to be worked out
Controls-8.5/10
Mini-games bring this score down.
Music-6.5/10
Very forgetful
Replay and Value-8.5/10
Some mini-games and lots of levels
Overall-7.3/10 (not an average)
What can I say, it wasn't that great
So I hope you enjoyed yet another one of alex51011’s Reviews! -alex51011