The Good things about Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
Super Monkey Ball for Nintendo Wii is a fun game! There’s 50 multiplayer games, and a lot of them are well thought out, and fun to play with other people. The single player game is classic Monkey Ball (with a new jump move), with about 100 levels. The levels themselves are detailed, with more scenery than previous games. The themes of each world seem more cohesive than in previous outings as well; jungle, snowy, desert, etc, as compared to washing machine, whale, and clock, in other Monkey Balls.
The multiplayer lets up to 4 people go head to head in fun, easy to pick up games that have extremely intuitive controls, like Disk Golf, Monkey Target, and an asteroid shooting game that makes excellent use of the Wii-remote. There’s no need to play hours and hours of single player to get to the good stuff either, all the games are ready to play out of the box! Neat!
CONCEPT: 3/5 – As good an idea to a popular franchise could be, I suppose. The multiplayer is inspired.
INNOVATION: 4/5 – Creative use of the Wii-remote increases the fun of gameplay dramatically.
SATISFACTION: 5/5 – Worth every penny.
EXECUTION: 3/5 – The front end is a little hard to navigate, butthe presentation is extremely cute with lots of bright colours, and catchy music.
FUN FACTOR: 5/5 – The most fun I’ve had with the Wii so far.
OVERALL: 8/10 – Go out and grab some Monkey Ball.
The Bad things about Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
From the get go, thing are confusing. To navigate the main menu, the user is required to twist the controller to scroll through a ring of options. Why not just point and click? Sometimes making things the same works well if the concept works before.
Some of the multiplayer games are impossible to play. The controls are not explained well enough, and strange pre-game screens seem to obfuscate the control AND the point of the game simultaneously. One particular example I find inexcusable; for games that use the remote as a pointer, the “How to Play!’ graphic shows someone sliding their controller around in a square with arrows radiating out of it to denote that you can move the remote in any direction. This is not actually how you play the game, the remote remains stationary, and you point it at the screen, turning it slightly to move the onscreen cursor.
There’s an issue of balance as well. Some of the games take place over multiple rounds. If you select bowling, be prepared to play a full 10 frames. Amongst 4 people, this can take up to an hour to complete. Yet other games, like Paper Sumo Fighter, are over within 5 seconds. Both are worth the same amount of points in a tournament, however. Huh? Numerous times the timed games seem twice as long as they should be. If the game stops being fun or becomes tiring after 30 seconds, it’s a minute long. If it’s fun for about 2 minutes, it lasts for 4. Other games require everyone to take turns (for no real reason, the screen could have been split) and takes a good amount of time transitioning between the players, eating up even more time.
Then there’s the fact that the menu system has no on screen instructions on how to go backwards through the menu to the title screen, and that I had to look up how to PAUSE in the INSTRUCTION MANUAL.
CONCEPT: 2/5 – A lot of poorly thought out features and time balancing issues make it a hard sell as a party game, unless you already know what all the games are.
INNOVATION: 2/5 – Inventing new ways to frustrate users, thanks SEGA! Good in smaller doses, clearly.
SATISFACTION: 2/5 – I’m heavily dissatisfied with the features mentioned above.
EXECUTION: 3/5 – They did a good job of making some features absolutely confusing.
FUN FACTOR: 1/5 – Being frustrated is never fun, neither is not being able to quit a game that’s not fun because you don’t know how.
OVERALL: 2/10 – Boo to these features!
Stalker
Stalker is a sort of sci-fi concept based on a Russian novel, Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It was made into a movie by Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. The entire concept is being made into a videogame, titled S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl. Whew.
I have the movie on my floor, and I’m reading the book in PFD form, which can be found over here. Don’t worry, it’s legal. I can’t find time to watch the movie though, it’s fairly long, as Russian movies tend to be. I expect it to move exquisitly slowly. I may have a heavy dinner and some wine, and sit down to watch it in my house coat and slippers in the dark when I have nothing to do the next day.
Anyway, the whole concept is this (and it varies with each telling), objects impact the earth or the Chernobyl nuclear station is rebuilt and detonates again. The objects or the explosion create a Zone. The Zone is an area where the natural laws of the world are not always in effect. They are extremely dangerous for completely unknown reasons. There are artifacts in the Zone from another world, all of extremely greate value to both science, and private collectors. This created a breed of people who call themselves Stalkers. They illegaly enter the Zone and steal any artifacts from the other side they can and sell them to the highest bidder. In the book, a team of three enters the Zone legally, searching for a “full empty” and the movie is even more abstract, The Writer and The Philosopher enter the Zone with a Stalker to find the Room, where wishes can be fulfilled, to find enlightenment and inspiration.
CONCEPT: 5/5 – One of the greatest works of Sci-fi ever, apparently. Still need to finish one of it’s forms though. The game’s been delayed since 2003.
INNOVATION: 4/5 – Prety high concept, especially back in the day (1972).
SATISFACTION: 4/5 – What I’ve read so far is really good.
EXECUTION: 4/5 – Well written, well directed, although the game remains to be seen.
FUN FACTOR: 3/5 – Fun for nerds, and maybe other people too!
OVERALL: 8/10 – A classic.
Verdict – Stalker! As fun as they can be, Monkeys inside Balls just don’t stand up next to masterworks of writing and cinema.
