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Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz

Sega's monkey balls land on PS Vita and there is both good and bad news here for simian lovers.

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Super Monkey Ball on Gamecube was an instant classic. Brilliant controls and level design paired with some classic mini-games (Monkey Target), made for one of the best launch titles on the console. Sega followed it up with a good sequel, but lately they have been struggling to recapture that initial magic, mainly a result of trying to attract a younger audience and making use of various new methods for controls. In a way, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz combines the two extremes, there are some challenging old school puzzle levels, but there are also tons of gimmicky uses of the PS Vita features thrown in there for good measure. Simply put, Banana Splitz is a mixed bag.

The good. The regular Monkey Ball levels are still good fun, and they're also very challenging as soon as you arrive at the advanced courses. Banana Splitz offers the typical 100 levels with 10 beginner levels (ridiculously easy), 30 normal levels (most players should get through them without problem), and the rest made up by advanced levels (after those there are some master challenges for those with some proper skill). While I have some issues with some of the moving elements that tend to pollute the clean skill based fun of Monkey Balls (of course, it's still to do with skills, but it's more timing based), there are some proper challenges in there that brought me back to the hay days of Monkey Balls ten years ago.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz

There is a great sense of speed here and there are shortcuts only the brave or foolish dare try. I don't reckon the level design is all the way up there with the original offering, but it's still a very entertaining game. Slightly more forgiving in some ways, but ultimately it's a great concept at its core.

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Then there is Monkey Target. The classic mini-game is back, and it's as much fun as it's always been. It's really not enhanced in any way and provides you with just three different levels, but it's still something that appeals to me and I can see the leaderboards being very competitive.

The bad. Monkey Target is just one of 8 mini-games. Some others are decent - like Battle Billiards (especially with friends), but others are just plain painful and some feel like knock offs of mini-games we got with Welcome Park (Number Ball and Pixie Hunt, I'm looking at you). Monkey Rodeo and Monkey Bowling are pretty horrendous, and while you can get some enjoyment out of the likes of Monkey Bingo and Love Maze, they are hardly the kind of quality entertainment PS Vita owners are looking for.

The ugly. The graphics here are pretty basic for a PS Vita offering. Making use of the modern day artstyle, there is something that reminds us of crude clay creations about the visuals. And while it works for the most part some of the stuff (like the water in Monkey Target) is just painful to behold.

Another ugly bit of game design are the touch screen menus. Instead of allowing me to skip over a replay or make choices with the buttons I'm forced to use the touchscreen for all menu choices. It's rather taxing in a game like Super Monkey Ball, where your average play runs somewhere around 10-30 seconds, and you constantly move in and out of menus. I find myself wiping the screen, and I honestly don't see how not allowing players the choice of just skipping past stuff with circle would do anything but enhance this experience.

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Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz

The inexplicable. But perhaps the worst insult in the package comes in the shape of the level editor. Now, I think most Monkey Ball fans would love a level editor, but not like this. Instead of potentially bringing an infinite amount of well made player created levels to the table, this randomly generated mess (somehow based on a photo you snap with the Vita camera) is simply an insult. You snap a picture and shake to set its difficulty - and voilá you're awarded with a level that is typically as crappy as can be. Not only that, but there is nothing there from your picture to at least make it feel like something you've created. It's just random, and Monkey Ball has very little to do with randomness.

Another inexplicable thing is that when you opt to use the gyro in order to guide your monkey ball through the puzzles (this gets to be quite a challenge with the later levels), the Vita doesn't register that you're playing so after a while the screen powers down and you then go into sleep mode unless you touch the screen. I'm not sure whether this is an oversight on the hardware side of things (something developers can't overrun) or if Sega simply didn't test this feature enough to realise it's an issue (of course, changing your power safe settings will alleviate this as you're play sessions are short).

Overall, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz offers some great Monkey Ball fun, the kind we experienced more than ten years ago, but the additions and gimmicks that comes along with it are simply not up to par and actually just brings down the overall grade of the game. I wish Sega could just focus on making a Monkey Ball game with brilliant puzzle levels, lots of Monkey Target courses, and a proper level editor. Now that would be awesome.

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06 Gamereactor UK
6 / 10
+
+ The core concept is still fun. + Plenty of monkeys to roll around with. + Monkey Target still rocks. + Some great levels to conquer.
-
- Lots of gimmicky mini-games. - Random level editor. - Bland visuals. - Touch screen only menus. - Vita goes into sleep mode when gyro is used.
overall score
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