Super Monkey Ball is a very dear series to me, I've played a lot of SMB 1 & 2 as a child back in the GameCube days, and for some reason I never got to play Banana Blitz on the Wii, and I am hyped for Banana Mania, saw this on sale and decided to give it a try, and well this game is just... frustrating. As the first game in the series to add the jump ability, I don't think this helps at all in the design of the stages, and it's weird cause I tought the game is good up until world 4, then the rest is just hell, the bosses are not fun either. But one thing I liked is that you can strategize because characters have different stats, the stage has thin platforms? Choose Baby and you'll have an easier time, GonGon bigger size and weight helps not falling for certain platforms and so on. I also didn't like finding out they replaced the soundtrack with a new one in this HD version, even if the new one isn't exactly bad I'd like the original experience. The game has character skins that you unlock just by playing normally and I appreciated this very much, but in conclusion, most of the stages are not fun and the designed with just thin platforms for you to fall off and the physics are very bumpy, making it extremely frustrating. If you want to play a Monkey Ball game, just wait for Banana Mania and I'm sure you'll have a better time;

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.

Oh boy, there's a lot of monkey business going on here, and in the worst way possible. This is by far one of the least enjoyable experiences I have ever had playing a video game, and frankly I think has destroyed any interest in the entire Monkey Ball franchise for me. The game is fucking awful, one of the worst designed things I have ever had to deal with, and this comes from someone who's played awful I Wanna be the Guy Fangames purposely made to piss off the player. I didn't even know I could get as angry as I did when playing this, and now while writing this I have a pretty strong headache.

The problem with this game, is that it starts pretty enjoyable, but then at some point immediately stops being so. It has a chill friendly vibe for the first five worlds, but then at Cobalt Caverns it becomes completely unenjoyable and irredeemable trash. This is a AAA game and I have to deal with bad cycles in the platforming as if it was made by a complete amateur. Difficulty is increased without rarely any sort of innovation, it instead just spams narrow rails to go on for the majority of the level, or some other aspect that is both long and tedious. Even by the last world, it still utilizes the bounce rods to be only annoying to the player with them in the middle of the way to go. Interesting design is ruined by the necessity of difficulty, such as spinning hamster wheels that on their own would be fun, but instead there's a chain of them you need to jump between. It frankly feels like half of the game was abandoned by the actual developers, and instead a group of company interns decided to take over the project and ruin it without any sense of thoughtfulness just so the final worlds feel difficult.

Certain design choices also feel rather unusual for a game like this, and become especially annoying after a while. The lack of a dedicated camera control system is obsessively obnoxious, while you can move your perspective by moving the monkey itself, it's completely unreasonable for the game to lack actual camera controls. Also, before every single attempt you have to wait for a camera pan over the stage, whilst this might be desired for your first viewing, it simply becomes pretty annoying when you just want to restart as quick as possible.

Minigames are the other side of the game, and while some of them are pretty interesting, there's a lot of failed execution in them as well. Games such as the sliding or ice ring include some of the most awkward controls possible, with others like skydiving or the ball throw having their own strange nuances that make them unenjoyable. Even the space shooter game, which could be really fun, is partially ruined by the fact your ship moves with some weird momentum left and right. One aspect about the Decathlon mode that I found rather annoying is that for one achievement you actually have to finish it 36 times, meaning 360 minigames, what a drag.

Overall, this game was probably one of the worst things I've ever played, and frankly I'm pretty disappointed. I truly have no idea if I'll ever play another monkey ball game again because of this, it has truly ruined any hope for the series that I had.