Full video review: https://youtu.be/p2cc5xDT5v0
I love Monkey Ball. I played it a lot as a kid back on the GameCube – so let’s just say I was a bit excited for this remake.
Gameplay:
There’s… not much to say here if you’re already familiar with Monkey Ball. You tilt the stage to move your monkey ball around and get it into the goal. A simple setup, but one brought to its absolute limit with the game’s over-the-top level design. Giant speed tunnels, crazy moving platforms, plenty of verticality – the levels are all over the place and it never gets repetitive, even if there’s the occasional stinker or two thrown in there. The original games were some of the best 3D platformers I ever played and it was a lot of fun giving them another shot in Banana Mania.
Difficulty & Accessibility:
Stages I remember being super difficult long ago are still just as difficult here, but the remake also makes a number of changes to increase accessibility without compromising too much of the challenge. The outdated life system, for example, has been removed and they even added the option to outright skip stages. There’s also a new “helper mode” which doubles the stage time, gives you arrows pointing out the proper path, and allows you to slow time. Of course, you can just ignore these additions and play it like a traditional Monkey Ball game as I did, but props to the devs for the options.
Content:
This is by far the most content-packed Monkey Ball title and includes not only the stages from 1, 2, and Deluxe, but numerous other game modes. There’s Reverse mode, Dark Banana mode, Golden Banana mode, and of course, Classic mode. All of these were fun to play – Dark Banana mode being a personal favorite – and they add quite a bit of extra stuff to do on top of the already massive collection of base stuff.
Story mode, challenge modes, practice modes, ranking challenge – it’s honestly a bit overwhelming and, although the story mode took me just five hours to clear, that is a mere fraction of the time I can see people spending on some of these other modes. Whether that be clearing the mountain of in-game missions or trying to duke it out on the online leaderboards – it’s just a beefy game.
And that’s before you even get into the party games. There are 12 of these minigames, including classics like Monkey Race, Monkey Bowling, and – my personal favorite – Monkey Target. A handful of these even have leaderboard support and I’m already interested in seeing how competitive the Monkey Target board will be in the next week or so.
Physics:
The change that is likely to be most controversial comes in the form of the game’s physics. As this is a remake – not a remaster – it was built in a new engine and yes, the physics are not a 1:1 identical match to the original games. I was never a hardcore, speedrunning type Monkey Ball fan, so I honestly didn’t notice the slight changes to the physics, but it’s still something to note for those going in expecting the same shortcuts and such to work – they might require some small adjustments. Then again, this also opens the door to entirely new shortcuts and skips, so that’s something to look forward to as well.
Complaints:
My complaints are more minor – like the lack of online play in party games, the bland music outside of a couple standout tracks, the tacked-on story cutscenes that don’t really add anything, and a couple of the minigames that are not nearly as fun as others. And of course, just as with the originals, you do get the occasional boring or just outright frustrating stage.
PC Port:
On my 1070 Ti, I maxed out the settings and played at 1440p 60+ fps without any hiccups. No crashes, no freezing, no major fps drops – it was smooth sailing and the only issue I had was with the game’s VSync option. When toggled off, it capped my fps to 60, under half of my actual refresh rate. I ended up having to keep it enabled to maintain 144 fps, but even then, the gameplay is seemingly still locked to 60 while the UI and menu elements are not. I’m not 100% sure if this is the case, but there might be some frame doubling going on here.
Controls, on the other hand, are fine. The game plays flawlessly on controller, but the keyboard and mouse support isn’t even that bad. Full rebinding is available for both options and you’re even able to set up custom controls for individual minigames if you really want to go all-out. I found the default layout to be intuitive enough, but it was nice to have the option.
Overall:
Banana Mania may just be the best platformer of the year. It takes all that I love about the original games and slaps them into a brand new shiny package, with hundreds of levels to complete, a ton of new game modes and quality of life features, and a solid PC port tying it together. It may have some faults – the tacked-on story stuff, the lack of online multiplayer, and the occasional bad level or two – but it’s the best that Monkey Ball has been in literally over a decade and is well worth a play for both fans and newcomers alike.
I love Monkey Ball. I played it a lot as a kid back on the GameCube – so let’s just say I was a bit excited for this remake.
Gameplay:
There’s… not much to say here if you’re already familiar with Monkey Ball. You tilt the stage to move your monkey ball around and get it into the goal. A simple setup, but one brought to its absolute limit with the game’s over-the-top level design. Giant speed tunnels, crazy moving platforms, plenty of verticality – the levels are all over the place and it never gets repetitive, even if there’s the occasional stinker or two thrown in there. The original games were some of the best 3D platformers I ever played and it was a lot of fun giving them another shot in Banana Mania.
Difficulty & Accessibility:
Stages I remember being super difficult long ago are still just as difficult here, but the remake also makes a number of changes to increase accessibility without compromising too much of the challenge. The outdated life system, for example, has been removed and they even added the option to outright skip stages. There’s also a new “helper mode” which doubles the stage time, gives you arrows pointing out the proper path, and allows you to slow time. Of course, you can just ignore these additions and play it like a traditional Monkey Ball game as I did, but props to the devs for the options.
Content:
This is by far the most content-packed Monkey Ball title and includes not only the stages from 1, 2, and Deluxe, but numerous other game modes. There’s Reverse mode, Dark Banana mode, Golden Banana mode, and of course, Classic mode. All of these were fun to play – Dark Banana mode being a personal favorite – and they add quite a bit of extra stuff to do on top of the already massive collection of base stuff.
Story mode, challenge modes, practice modes, ranking challenge – it’s honestly a bit overwhelming and, although the story mode took me just five hours to clear, that is a mere fraction of the time I can see people spending on some of these other modes. Whether that be clearing the mountain of in-game missions or trying to duke it out on the online leaderboards – it’s just a beefy game.
And that’s before you even get into the party games. There are 12 of these minigames, including classics like Monkey Race, Monkey Bowling, and – my personal favorite – Monkey Target. A handful of these even have leaderboard support and I’m already interested in seeing how competitive the Monkey Target board will be in the next week or so.
Physics:
The change that is likely to be most controversial comes in the form of the game’s physics. As this is a remake – not a remaster – it was built in a new engine and yes, the physics are not a 1:1 identical match to the original games. I was never a hardcore, speedrunning type Monkey Ball fan, so I honestly didn’t notice the slight changes to the physics, but it’s still something to note for those going in expecting the same shortcuts and such to work – they might require some small adjustments. Then again, this also opens the door to entirely new shortcuts and skips, so that’s something to look forward to as well.
Complaints:
My complaints are more minor – like the lack of online play in party games, the bland music outside of a couple standout tracks, the tacked-on story cutscenes that don’t really add anything, and a couple of the minigames that are not nearly as fun as others. And of course, just as with the originals, you do get the occasional boring or just outright frustrating stage.
PC Port:
On my 1070 Ti, I maxed out the settings and played at 1440p 60+ fps without any hiccups. No crashes, no freezing, no major fps drops – it was smooth sailing and the only issue I had was with the game’s VSync option. When toggled off, it capped my fps to 60, under half of my actual refresh rate. I ended up having to keep it enabled to maintain 144 fps, but even then, the gameplay is seemingly still locked to 60 while the UI and menu elements are not. I’m not 100% sure if this is the case, but there might be some frame doubling going on here.
Controls, on the other hand, are fine. The game plays flawlessly on controller, but the keyboard and mouse support isn’t even that bad. Full rebinding is available for both options and you’re even able to set up custom controls for individual minigames if you really want to go all-out. I found the default layout to be intuitive enough, but it was nice to have the option.
Overall:
Banana Mania may just be the best platformer of the year. It takes all that I love about the original games and slaps them into a brand new shiny package, with hundreds of levels to complete, a ton of new game modes and quality of life features, and a solid PC port tying it together. It may have some faults – the tacked-on story stuff, the lack of online multiplayer, and the occasional bad level or two – but it’s the best that Monkey Ball has been in literally over a decade and is well worth a play for both fans and newcomers alike.