Going from playing Banana Mania, to playing Super Monkey Ball 2, to finally playing this game, has been a strange experience; each later game individually good and enjoyable on their own merits, only for their flaws to become more apparent when compared with what came before.
The issues with Banana Mania's physics have already been excellently laid out by Pangburn. They're the exact sort of things that I didn't really notice at the time, but that become very clear the moment you play the earlier games with the original physics engine; Banana Mania is weirdly frictionless in a way that leads to a lot of issues, and whilst as someone relatively new to the series I wrote off me getting stuck on some levels for as long as half an hour as me just being inexperienced and playing badly, the moment I returned to these older games it became so clear that it actually wasn't really my fault after all but rather that the newer physics engine sets you up to fail by just not being suited to some of these challenges.
Super Monkey Ball 2's physics engine is night-and-day better than Banana Mania's, and I enjoyed the game a lot, but again the moment you compare it to the first Super Monkey Ball game issues start to rear their head. SMB2 leans hard into gimmick levels in an attempt to make itself stand out, and whilst some of the gimmick levels rule a lot of them either lack the replay value (especially ones where the entire challenge is to figure out a specific timing or route) or are just explicitly not fun to try and master in the way that the more physics-focused levels are; Launchers is such a heinous example that I couldn't bring myself to try and complete that game's harder arcade modes. Some of these gimmick levels also push at what you're really capable of in-game with the game's fixed camera, which I assume is a part of why Banana Mania would go on to have camera control; I think both these outcomes are not really ideal.
And then you come to Super Monkey Ball and in contrast it's just this perfect little package. Every level has a fun little idea or challenge to it, the game is so focused on the physics and execution that replaying earlier levels is a joy as you see how far you've come, whilst learning the later levels is this constant process of having things click into place in your head. The gameplay loop is also just effortlessly effective; you play through an arcade mode level selection only to get stuck on a specific level and have your run end, so you go work over that stumbling block in practice mode learning its intricacies so that next time you'll get a little bit further in arcade mode, every time getting a bit more practice on the earlier levels you find harder too and seeing your performance constantly grow. Expert mode is kind of nonsense, but just as you start to hit your limit the game starts slowly feeding you more continues as if to say you can do this is you just stick with it.
I also love the aesthetics of this one. The giant bomb at the top of the screen would probably be considered 'objectively' bad, it takes up a lot of screen real estate and just obscures your vision, but damn if it doesn't just ooze personality.
The issues with Banana Mania's physics have already been excellently laid out by Pangburn. They're the exact sort of things that I didn't really notice at the time, but that become very clear the moment you play the earlier games with the original physics engine; Banana Mania is weirdly frictionless in a way that leads to a lot of issues, and whilst as someone relatively new to the series I wrote off me getting stuck on some levels for as long as half an hour as me just being inexperienced and playing badly, the moment I returned to these older games it became so clear that it actually wasn't really my fault after all but rather that the newer physics engine sets you up to fail by just not being suited to some of these challenges.
Super Monkey Ball 2's physics engine is night-and-day better than Banana Mania's, and I enjoyed the game a lot, but again the moment you compare it to the first Super Monkey Ball game issues start to rear their head. SMB2 leans hard into gimmick levels in an attempt to make itself stand out, and whilst some of the gimmick levels rule a lot of them either lack the replay value (especially ones where the entire challenge is to figure out a specific timing or route) or are just explicitly not fun to try and master in the way that the more physics-focused levels are; Launchers is such a heinous example that I couldn't bring myself to try and complete that game's harder arcade modes. Some of these gimmick levels also push at what you're really capable of in-game with the game's fixed camera, which I assume is a part of why Banana Mania would go on to have camera control; I think both these outcomes are not really ideal.
And then you come to Super Monkey Ball and in contrast it's just this perfect little package. Every level has a fun little idea or challenge to it, the game is so focused on the physics and execution that replaying earlier levels is a joy as you see how far you've come, whilst learning the later levels is this constant process of having things click into place in your head. The gameplay loop is also just effortlessly effective; you play through an arcade mode level selection only to get stuck on a specific level and have your run end, so you go work over that stumbling block in practice mode learning its intricacies so that next time you'll get a little bit further in arcade mode, every time getting a bit more practice on the earlier levels you find harder too and seeing your performance constantly grow. Expert mode is kind of nonsense, but just as you start to hit your limit the game starts slowly feeding you more continues as if to say you can do this is you just stick with it.
I also love the aesthetics of this one. The giant bomb at the top of the screen would probably be considered 'objectively' bad, it takes up a lot of screen real estate and just obscures your vision, but damn if it doesn't just ooze personality.
Reviewed on Jun 08, 2022
Archagent
1 year ago