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Monday November 20, 2006 11:25 am
Wii: Super Monkey Ball Sucks, Excite Truck Is Boring
I suppose that with 50 mini games packed into Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, there were bound to be some good ones and some bad ones. So riddle me this ... how is it that Monkey Target, by far the most fun mini game in the previous titles, is so abysmally bad now? One frickin level, this wierd “Option Ball” thing, and what feels like a wind factor without any sort of on-screen wind indicator? How do you manage to take a great game and make it so terrible? By getting rid of the power-ups and other stuff that made the game so interesting.
Luckily, there are some bright spots. Monkey Wars is fun, even if my wife hated it. Two handed independent controls are just too much for her to get her head around. But by far, the most entertaining game was Monkey Darts. That’s right ... darts. You don’t have to, but we held the Wiimote like an actual dart, and you basically make a quick stabbing motion at the screen to fling the dart. The IR receiver in the Wiimote can sense depth from the screen (sensor bar, really) and you can actually see your dart hovering there in 3D space before you throw it. You can play Countdown, 301, or 501, and it’s an absolute blast. All you really need to complete the atmosphere is a chain-smoking retiree in the corner, 80’s hair rock, some beer, and a steak that’s nothing more than charred gristle. Or maybe that’s just the places I’ve played darts.
Monkey Bowling seemed fun at first, even if it wasn’t even up to the standards of the Wii Sports pack-in. That was until we found out that the game has a critical flaw. Instead of actually making a bowling motion (which will almost always result in a hard spin to the left), you just line up your monkey on the line just right of center, and then kind of flick your wrist. You’ll get a strike every time. It absolutely sucked all of the joy and challenge out of the game.
Other Super Monkey Ball annoyances include the weird sort of tournament structure of the minigames, where the person furthest behind in points gets to pick the next game. Then there’s the main game, where the controls are just plain non-intuitive. Where you might instinctually want to hold the controller horizontal (like the scheme in ExciteTruck), you hold it one handed and vertical, and it just doesn’t feel right. This makes the game harder than it needs to be, and my friend David at Nintendo World Report talks more about that. It’s just sad to see a game that was so great once reduced to this shameful, and arguably lacking in fun, ridiculous money grab of a launch title.
Oh, and speaking of ExciteTruck, where I had high hopes for the game, they were all dashed while I was line-sitting. GameCrazy had six Wii-osks set up to try ExciteTruck, and I found that you had to complete the Tutorial to unlock the main game. Lame, but OK, new system with a new control scheme, I can understand that. Until I found that you had to complete the tutorial, of which there are 16-20 different lessons. I got to lesson five or six, and I was already bored and handed the controller to someone that really didn’t seem all that interested in trying it. That doesn’t bode well, especially considering we were all waiting to buy our Wiis.
What kills me about all of this is that Wii Sports and The Legend of Zelda are just so good. I know the controller is new, and developers are still sort of experimenting with it (which is why they are basically monetizing their experiments by turning them into a collection of minigames), but what I don’t understand is how you can take a game that was fun and make it un-fun, and somehow manage to be oblivious to that fact. You’d have to think that as the testers started committing seppukku (ritual suicide), they might have sensed that something was wrong.
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Comments:
I bought both Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz and Zelda, and I would have to disagree that Monkey Ball is not fun. Some of the mini games aren’t a complete blast, but many of them are pretty fun. It’s not entirely fair to compare them to Zelda; it would be much more fair to compare them to other games’ minigames that also came out on launch day. I think the quantity is actually quite good, because Wii is a new thing and a lot of people want to know what you can do with it.
Also, the single player mode is a blast. The world tilts when you tilt your controller, which takes some getting used to but is a lot of fun when you get the hang of it. I know that it is much more natural than the control in previous games, even though I haven’t played them. You’re right that it would be much more natural to hold it with two hands horizontally, but I got used to it after a while and it feels natural now. Maybe I just suck, but I’ve been playing for hours and I haven’t even beaten the 3rd world yet (there are 10 worlds.) Assuming the worlds get harder and harder, I haven’t even completed 30% of the game. After you beat it, you can go back and try to race yourself for time. The game gets more and more fun as I get better at it, too, because I make less mistakes. The single player mode provides many hours of enjoyable play, not to mention the fact that the 50 minigames can be played single game.
In fact, I think Monkey Ball is more fun than Zelda. Not that Zelda isn’t fun..
I’m glad you told your readers that a game is boring based off of content you never even played.
You played the tutorial, tutorials are almost always boring. People deal with it, because they are wanting to play the game.
Savvy?
After you actually play the game, get into it, then tell your avid readers what they would really be getting. Not just supplying them that the game is boring since the tutorial is boring.
I would never get a game if I went off the knowledge you gave, because I never enjoy tutorials.
Except the Red Steel swordfight stuff, thats cool.
Look, I calls ‘em likes I sees ‘em. It is entirely valid to call a game boring based on a tutorial when they FORCE YOU TO PLAY THROUGH THE TUTORIAL IN ORDER TO PLAY THE MAIN GAME.
Savvy?
The game was so boring that hardly anyone else wanted to play it either. If you can’t be bothered to finish playing the tutorial and see the “real” game, then what’s the point?
FACT: The game would have been far, far better if the tutorial mode was optional. However, it’s not, and on that criteria it is entirely fair to judge the game.
I think Monkey Ball is a blast. There are some annoying glitches in some of the games, but hours of fun anyway.
Actually, you only have to play the first four tutorials. All of the others are optional. A window explains this after you finish the fourth tutorial.
Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz rules! OP, you are smokin crack to dis such a great party game. I’m sure you think Mario Party 4 on GC sucked too right?
In Excite truck you only have to beat the first basic tutorial to start playing the main races, get your facts straight pal. Also, there’s about 20 trucks and tons of unlockables, plus you’re not challenged with coming in first every time though it helps. You need to accumulate stars and you get stars by bashing other trucks, making successful tree runs(closely navigating through trees without hitting them), getting huge air and other good stuff.
You really should try playing the actual GAME before you knock it to all of your readers. I’ve had a Wii since opening day and Excite Truck is probably my Favorite game as well as the fav of at least 3 other people I know! C’mon man do some research before you post.
yeah…thte glitches suck..i’m playing number ball and i get to 99 and it freezes every time. ######. I thought it was my wii at first, then i did it again, and again, and again…and then I finally accepted the fact that the game had a glitch…i do agree that darts is the best game by far though. nothing even comes close.
fuck moneky ball
2/18/09 1:32 am
#### that ####### monkey ball
i cant pass anything and it ####### sucks balls stay away i want a refund!
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I also thought Monkey Ball was terrible.
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