Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz [Wii]

Once you've gotten tired of Wii Sports, or if it doesn't meet your Wii minigaming needs, there's always Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. The game takes a shotgun approach: just throw out lots of stuff and see what sticks. Most of it doesn't stick. But there are enough keepers in here that it's not a total loss.

As usual in the Super Monkey Ball games, the single player gets tedious fast. By tilting the Wiimote, you have to guide a rolling ball through a timed obstacle course. It's easy early on, often little more than a formality. A few quick tilts and you're done. But when it gets hard, it gets brutally hard. Also, there are new bosses you have to beat at the end of sections. Fortunately, unlike the previous Monkey Balls, you don't have to play the single player game to unlock the minigames.

There are 50 minigames. That's right, 50. Count 'em. Five-oh. Most of them you'll play once, groan, and never want to revisit. The most common problem is the ill-conceived control schemes. For instance, many of the games read the Wii's position on a flat horizontal plane. But there's no point of reference for the center, and the motion is far too sensitive, so you spend most of the game trying to get a fix on how your Wii's mid-air position corresponds to what's happening on screen. The result is that it's almost impossible to fine-tune what your doing. It's quite an accomplishment to make Whack-A-Mole an utterly joyless experience. Banana Blitz manages to do just that.

Many of the minigames have controls that are simply too sensitive. Banana Catch, Bug Balance, Keepy Up, Trombone, and the hovercraft games are exercises in precision wrist-exhausting floatiness. The Jigsaw minigame has nothing to do with knowing where a piece fits and everything to do with the precision struggle to line it up just right. The controls in some games are just absurd. Hammer Throw, which has you frantically whipping the controller in a circle, at least gets points for making you look more ridiculous than anything else on the Wii.

Several of the minigames have controls that are simply too obtuse. How does spin work in Monkey Bowling, and why doesn't it work as well as the Wii Sports version? What the heck is going on with your spear in Fish Catcher? Rock Paper Scissors has some poorly explained subgame with a hammer and a helmet. The sonar display in Treasure Submarine needs its own manual.

The directions for each minigame are split into panels, some with multiple displays. There's even information cycling across the bottom of the screen. You can't access the directions while you're in a minigame, and you can't even quit out of a minigame until it's over. The whole thing couldn't have been made more confusing if Sega had tried.

Among the biggest disappointments is Monkey Target, which has been dumbed down from the previous games. This has long been one of the highlights the series and it's sad to see it given such short shrift. It's especially sad considering the games that were fleshed out. Monkey Wars is a first person shooter and Monkey Golf is an ambitious 18-hole golf game. They're both terrible. Would it have been too much to develop a crowd favorite like Monkey Target?

Some of the minigames have a few options, but most of them could use more flexibility. Some are too long, or lack variety, or get repetitive too quickly. It's odd that only a couple of the minigames track your scores, letting you put your name on a high score list. Overall, there's no unity among them, and no way to set up tournaments beyond simply taking turns choosing which one to play next. A better party game would allow for randomness, or more dynamic scoring, or limiting the selection of games to a few favorites. But Banana Blitz just dumps it all in your lap and leaves you to your own devices.

The upside of Banana Blitz is that a few of the minigames are really good. Monkey Darts makes great use of the Wiimote. You simply thrust it as you'd throw a dart, releasing the A button to let it fly. The Wii tracks it from there. It works great. Disk Golf works similarly by using the Wii to mimic tossing a frisbee at a target. Racing Birds uses the Wiimote and nunchuk attachment to flap a bird's wings and steer him through hoops (it's strange that Racing Birds works so well, but other minigames attempting a similar interface are such failures). Asteroid Blast, Monkey Squash, and Monkey Race are all simple and effective examples of the better parts of Banana Blitz.

So it all comes down to what you're willing to pay for. If you don't mind wading through a lot of filler - a lot - to get to a few good minigames, Banana Blitz is a worthy addition to your Wii library. But it's disappointing that the few effective minigames are piled under a heap of mediocrity.