My time with the Monkey Ball series is minimal. Part of the reason is that I haven’t realized how many of these games have graced mobile. I’ve been out of the Monkey Ball loop with the series’ releases. The other reason is that I just stink at the games, and I am easily frustrated with rolling off the edges repeatedly. Pretty much the same reason I politely pass on FromSoftware games. Minus the rolling Monkey, but certainly plus the frustration.
BUT! Much like FromSoftware games, who have won me over with Elden Rings, SEGA might have won me over with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble. This is the latest game in the series, and they have taken the Monkey Ball concept a bit further than expected. The insane mazes for your favorite monkey friend to navigate in their ball are still very much intact. And, yes, they are still very frustrating, but creative and fun, nonetheless.
The other part of the game helps to make the entire experience worthwhile and is probably the biggest reason I’m intrigued with it right now. That ‘other part’ is the online component. Running like some weird Fall Guys experience, you compete with friends and randoms around the world and traverse through a bevy of mazes and game styles. The result of this part of the game is a different experience than the usual MB shenanigans, and a fun one, though there are moments it stumbles.
So, get in that ball, make sure you’re stocked up on bananas, and let’s get rolling with this review.
Usual roll
If you’re going into Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble expecting a different single-player experience, then you’re probably going to walk away thinking it was good. It’s not great, but it’s good. The gameplay is similar to past Monkey Ball games, as you’re going to navigate mazes that are filled to the brim with insane obstacles, and you’re going to constantly squint to see what’s heading your direction and how you should prepare to navigate your character. You’re going to fall off the edge. You’re going to get frustrated. But you’re also going to go back for more repeatedly. This is the formula of a typical Monkey Ball game, and it continues its tradition with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble.
The biggest challenge you’ll face with this game in single-player mode is trying to complete every maze and walk away feeling like a champion. Much like the previous games, that champion feeling isn’t an easy thing to achieve, especially with the creativity that comes with most of the mazes.
This is the first Monkey Ball game that I didn’t want to throw the controller through a window and curse. The single-player game is manageable with its difficulty, and getting back to a failed level is quick and simple. It doesn’t give you enough time to feel like you’re a failure, rather it just pushes you back into the level and yells, “Try again!” before you even realize how bad you are at it. I can dig that sort of pleasant push in a normally frustrating environment. In addition to that walk-away feeling, the game never made me feel like I couldn’t get past a maze, which is probably the first time in a long time a Monkey Ball game has treated me like that.
Now, I say everything above, and I realize that it could be that I’m older and more patient than I used to be. I’m a seasoned gamer who has realized that I don’t have to necessarily be aces at a game to enjoy it. Maybe that was FromSoftware shaping me into accepting fate and knowing that I will have to repeatedly keep trying my failures until they become my successes. Or maybe I’m just old and I laugh at failure now more than I cry at it. Whatever the case might be, I enjoyed my single-player time with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble, as it was fun, fast, and challenging all at the same time. It’s what you would expect from the series and the latest game doesn’t disappoint.
That online balling
The online component of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble is probably what hooked me the most in this release. I didn’t know what to expect from it, as I simply imagined that I would be rolling against others through various mazes. I was half right.
The online component for Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble puts you against and with other players online. The against part does feature insane maze races that allow you to go head-to-head with other players. I found this part to be challenging but I was happy that the collision was off, as I’m positive that could have made things far worse with my online experience. Regardless, the racing against others garnished a weird Mario Kart type of feeling of competitive entertainment, where you try to one-up everyone while trying to destroy them by getting special power-ups during the race that you can use (like a rocket or something to speed the ball up). It’s a simple structure and formula but it’s oddly satisfying in a Monkey Ball format.
While everyone-for-themselves would have been a fine online component, and it could have been the only one, Sega took it one step further and gave it some Fall Guys flavor. The other games are team versus team, which brings a different type of competitiveness to the series and allows for people to help each other out. For example, I played a gate-scoring game, where you had a series of gates with point values on a downhill slope that you traversed to get the maximum number of points. The simple gates were worth 10 points, while the more complicated and harder gates to go through were valued even higher (20, 50, etc.). Every color-coded gate (your team has a particular color you must stick with) that you went through gives you points and then quickly puts you back on the top of the hill to get more points. The team with the most points, and accuracy at the end, wins the match. It’s such an intense and competitive way to get people to enjoy the MB series. It was an alternate competitive Monkey Ball game, but a welcome one nonetheless.
I can see why people picked this game up for the online component. It’s engaging, and fun, and the variety of gameplay modes helps to keep the online gameplay as fresh as possible. It feels different than the single-player mode, and certainly less taxing with the pressure to succeed. It’s also somewhat fun to share your failures with others. I can’t tell you how many times my guy rolled off the maze when I was racing other folks. I wasn’t the only one taking the constant dive.
The depth of each mode is what you make of it. This means that if you’re a perfectionist who enjoys the single-player gameplay of balling through complicated mazes, then you’re going to be in heaven. There is a lot to the single-player game and plenty of wonderful unlockables to get from that experience. Plus, you get to compete with timing. Everyone loves timing for whatever reason.
Complementing that is the online play, which is a pick-up-and-put-down type of game, just like Fall Guys. It’s fresh when you want to play it, but not so addictive that you can’t put it down and return to it later. The combination of both makes for a solid game.
Bump in the balling
The only hiccup in this giddy-up, outside of cursing at maze games with rolling monkeys, is the load time for online play. I reviewed this on the Nintendo Switch and waited about a minute and a half for an online match to begin. It didn’t keep rolling once a match ended, rather it put you back in a waiting area for you to roll around in, which broke some momentum to keep the game going. If Sega can somehow improve the server load times, even getting it close to Fall Guys, and other online party games of this type, then the online experience improves immensely.
As it stands, it’s just a burst of fun that has a dragging load time to it.
Switch-a-roo
I’ll be upfront and honest — my hands and brain expected the worst with this review on the Nintendo Switch. Those Joy-cons are probably the most uncomfortable controls made since the Atari Jaguar existed. The thumbsticks irate my thumbs, and stiffen my hands to the point of cramps, and most of the time when I play the system it just feels a bit loose in controls. It’s cheaply made and feels like it.
I know you’re waiting for criticism with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble but I have none. This game felt good on the Switch. The controls were 1:1 with movement, including accelerating and braking. Nothing felt delayed or off, nor did the experience feel uncomfortable, which was oddly surprising. The game felt good on the Nintendo Switch. It’s odd to type that, but it’s the truth.
Anyway, bravo to the Switch for pleasing my hands for once courtesy of Sega.
On that odd note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble from Sega is a good game that brings more of the same Monkey Ball fun with its single-player experience, but switches it up in a fun way with its online gameplay modes. It’s a solid party game that needs more baking on the server side but delivers when it counts.
