I feel so bad for anyone who picked this up as there first game in the series, and thinks this is what Monkey Ball is. Through the first few worlds I was like, “oh this isn't THAT bad, it’s kinda just an easier version of the originals”. How wrong I was. As I kept going on, I hated and hated the game more and more. I despise this game. As a kid I played 2 a lot, it was a tough game but I managed fine and got decent at it. This is not a Monkey Ball game though. This is a 3d platformer, disguised as a Monkey Ball game. Monkey Ball games are Physics games, not 3D platformers. If I wanted to play a 3D platformer with god awful controls, a bad camera and slippery physics, I would have asked.The simple addition of a jump button changes everything, no longer are you trying to tilt the stage to gain momentum to pull off fun and addictive trick shots. Your slowly hopping around these boringly designed levels and fighting the controls not to fall off while platforming. I hate the final boss too, I spent like an hour trying to beat him legitimately and he would randomly just reach over unintentionally and knock me off the stage, even playing as the smallest character Baby. I had to resort to cheesing him by camping underneath him were he couldn't touch me and killing him from there. He’s ugly and stupid and I hate him so much. 1 and 2 were addictive, fun, creative arcade style physics games that were challenging, yet addictive because they were designed that way, to be quarter munchers. The player would get experimental and try different things to reach a goal, it such a great formula. This just makes me want to turn off my switch, because I wasn't having any fun during “challenging” stages. I hate this game so much. Besides all that, as far as the remaster goes, the new additions are nice, I guess. The song is catchy and the yellow and black visuals are sleek. Too bad its layered onto such an unfixable, deeply flawed game.

I think some of the levels in this can be best described as absolute fucking bullshit. But that's just a few. And I'm not overly impressed with the boss fights, either. If anyone ever finished this on the Wii, I salute you. I don't think I ever beat the 2nd boss.

But now we've got a HD version which doesn't use motion controls, making Banana Blitz so much better. The first few worlds are probably a bit too easy, boss stages aside, but I suppose that's to get to grips with the dog shit wiimote controls back in the day. Once you hit World 5, it's the taxing, occasionally infuriating monkey ball I know and love. There was probably one stand out stage from each world from that point, that had me turning the air blue, and spending a long time trying to beat it.

Sometimes this game feels more like luck than skill, and I almost gave up on world 7. But perseverance paid off and I eventually beat the main game. Overall I've really enjoyed it, and I'm this 🤏 close to picking up Banana Mania for more monkey ball madness. It's a lot of fun. I'm wondering if playing Super Mario Sunshine at the same time has helped with my patience.

Time to play the bonus world and then suck at the mini games. This was a fiver on the eshop BTW, and was absolutely worth it.

Introduced plenty of new concepts that could be interesting…but they end up turning the game into a really terribly-controlled platformer with incredibly shitty bosses. Some of the levels are still pretty good, mainly the ones that don’t utilize the jumping mechanic, so the game isn’t unbearably bad. I also appreciate the wider array of characters to play, as it gives you more incentive to try out slightly different playstyles, however, the overwhelming majority of your time spent here will just be filled with frustration due to the awful design choices made with this game.

One of the worst controlling things I have ever played in my ~20 years of gaming. For a game that calls for stupidly precise 'troll' movement a la those crummy flash games from the late 2000s like The Unfair Platformer - it's one thing to also build it around the Wii's motion controls and then expect any sort of reliability. But it's another thing entirely to have well over ten years to get the chance to transfer it over to strictly-controller-gameplay and STILL fuck it up. The jump maneuver - in theory - I'm not against at all, even as a die-hard Super Monkey Ball fan but here it only works when it wants to. It's also Dropped Input Heaven and features shit maneuvering that feels like trying to get a marble out of a glue trap. And what's with these minigames? Where's Monkey Race, Monkey Fight, or Monkey Golf? You could drop hours into those, man - these feel cheap and tire themselves out in one or two plays. Slingshot Ball and Space Monkey Attack are two of the worst things I've ever touched in a video game. It's a shame because the music is wonderful, and there is the occasional flash of SMB inspiration from time to time. Boss fights are not only an awful idea on their own in this but they're so broken and unfinished that they aren't even worth pondering any missed possibilities.

Okay, this game has a weird place in my heart. In 2019, my grandmother passed away. It was a low blow to my mother who was going to visit her mother back home for the first time in 10 years in two weeks. She had to reschedule her flight sooner so that she could be with her family. So for a month, it was just me and my dad all alone at home. Since my mom is a housewife, she usually attended to matters such as cooking. Such duties fell to me and my dad, however sometimes he'd just buy and leave me food. However, I wouldn't see him too often since he worked from afternoon (before I got home) to midnight. So, I spent most of my days in the house alone in a sort of depression. However, there was one day where a Youtuber uploaded a playthrough of this game. For some reason, his playthrough made my day for the first time after two weeks. It made me smile. It made me laugh. So this game reminds me of my grandmother. A strange thing to reminds me of her. But yeah. Not the best from the series. I'm just biased.

Thoughts on it are the same as Banana Blitz but I'll elaborate a little further here: extremely boring level design where you're usually just laid down on tracks, boss levels are horrible (not fun, not hard persay but time consuming and easy to randomly get thrown off the level and you have to restart the whole boss fight) and the control feels floaty and not good. I also found myself fighting the camera often. I hate the inclusion of the jump mechanic and the fact that levels are designed around it. Minigame selection is also not good. I didn't dabble in the "online" mode at all but I imagine it's nothing special. I guess this game is ever so slightly better than its Wii counterpart because you aren't forced into shitty motion controls.