First Impressions:
Super Monkeyball: Banana Blitz is Sega's first move at bringing the Super Monkeyball franchise to the Wii. As in the previous Monkeyball titles, the goal in Banana Blitz is to navigate your glass-encased monkey down a series of mazes as quickly as possible. Like many launch games developed for the Wii, there is a heavy emphasis on exploring the potential of the Wii remote. Accordingly, multiplayer party games seem to take the front stage in this outing compared to the single-player game.
That is not to say Sega slacked on the single-player game. In fact, the single-player story mode in Banana Blitz is very well done and quite lengthy. While the story itself is pretty minimal, it essentially provides an excuse to guide a monkey through maps to defeat animals and collect their bananas. The storyline does not answer questions such as why the abominable snowman wants bananas or, for that matter, why there is snow in the jungle.
Graphics, Sound/Music:
The graphics are bright and colorful, consistent with the overall party atmosphere in Monkeyball. I would not say that Monkeyball is taxing on the Wii's abilities, but the game is more interested in exploring the possibilities of the Wii remote than its graphical capabilities. The monkeys and bosses are well animated, but the jungle landscape is fairly sparse. The music is a fitting Caribbean-style calypso for the jungle levels, but is ultimately forgettable.
Game Play:
The goal of the single-player game is to carefully navigate your monkey encased in a glass ball through a series of perilous 3D mazes. Despite it's shortcoming in the graphics, Monkeyball puts the remote to good use. During the single-player game, you manipulate the environment to control the speed of your monkey. You don't actually move the monkey itself. To go faster, you tilt the remote down; to slow down, tilt it back. You can also make your monkey jump over imposing objects. If this sounds simple, it is. The controls in the single-player game are very intuitive and Sega did a great job at making the Wii controller easy and fun to use.
In single-player, you'll find 100 levels comprised of 3D mazes that you must guide your monkey through. In the beginning, they start off very easy to help players adjust to the new Wii controls. The difficulty quickly ramps up in later worlds, so prepare to get frustrated!
Enjoyment:
I can't explain it, but there's something inherently fun about rolling a monkey around in a ball. The single-player levels have a wide variety of challenges that keeps it interesting with requisite jungle levels, ice levels, etc. When I had a few friends over, once we found a few multi-player games that we all enjoyed, we were set for the evening. I would definitely recommend finding some fun multiplayer games before they arrive, though.
Multiplayer:
Super Monkeyball manages to pack in 50 party games, all with clever ways to utilize the Wii remote. Because they are all hit-or-miss, you'll have to do some heavy sifting through all of them to find the decent ones. Two of my favorites were circuit racing, a Mario Kart-style racing game, and bird racing, where you use the nunchuck and remote to "flap" your bird's wings to fly through the course. A few were more difficult to grasp. After trying multiple times in vain to land my monkey on its mark in one of the parachute games (yes, there are several), I moved on.
Overall Impression:
Monkeyball is a worthy launch game for the Wii. With its infectious bright colors and cheerful music, it's easily approachable for gamers and non-gamers alike. The easy-to-use Wii controls make it a great party game, as well. Its wide range of multiplayer games will keep you and your friends busy for quite some time. To me, the multiplayer was the standout star of this game. With so much variety, I'm sure anyone will find an appealing game in its selection.
If you were a fan of previous Monkeyball games, you'll be right at home in Banana Blitz. The single-player game does a great job at letting all users learn the controls, but manages to pose quite a challenge later in the game. To add an extra layer of challenge, the levels are filled with shortcuts players can discover with some exploring, meaning that replayability is high.
Marketing Efforts Towards Women:
This game really is geared toward everyone. If you want to guide a female monkey around in a glass ball, that's definitely an option. I think that anyone will be able to pick up this game and have a blast.
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