Super Monkey Ball 3D

Genre: 3D Platformer / Arcade

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless), Download Play Supported

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Review:

Super Monkey Ball 3D is an Arcade-style 3D Platformer released in 2011 alongside the Nintendo 3DS at launch. As one would expect, this game follows in the tradition of the series, which has players rolling around a ball with a monkey in it, collecting bananas and trying to reach an exit on an obstacle course-style stage.

The presentation here is fairly unimpressive. I can say at the very least the framerate and resolution are both smooth, but there’s nothing especially interesting going on with the stages or character models, and the use of blurry images for the backgrounds makes this even more underwhelming. At the very least I can commend the game on being an excellent use of stereoscopic 3D, which adds to the sense of speed and movement in the game. These mediocre visuals are backed by a cheerful but forgettable soundtrack

The gameplay here is split into three game modes, Monkey Ball, Monkey Race, and Monkey Fight.

The first of these modes is the gameplay most associated with the series, the aforementioned rolling of a monkey-filled ball through various obstacle course style levels. Players are given the option to control the game using either the circle pad or via gyroscopic motion control. The former is quite good (though it suffers from some camera issues, a common problem in the series). On the other hand, the gyroscopic motion controls are far too imprecise to be useful, and players will want to turn off the stereoscopic 3D if they’re using these controls.

The problem with the Monkey Ball mode is that while the core gameplay here is arguably as good as it ever was in the series, the level design is bland and unimaginative, with short levels, and far too many levels that simply have you navigating a flat path, often with rails on the side to keep you from falling… which seems like it’s missing the whole point of the series. It’s not terrible, but compared to the revered first two games in the franchise, the level design here is depressingly bland for a Monkey Ball game.

Of course, one of the other celebrated elements of the Monkey Ball games are its bonus minigames, but here Super Monkey Ball 3D disappoints as well. Do not get this game expecting Monkey Race and Monkey Fight to be handheld versions of the minigames bearing those names that you may have seen in console releases – Monkey Race is a mediocre Kart Racing game (as in, using actual vehicles), and Monkey Fight is an absolutely terrible Super Smash Bros.-style blend of Platformer and Fighting Game. I applaud this game for supporting download play for multiplayer game sessions, but none of what’s included here is anything you’ll want to play with others for very long.

It’s a real shame that Super Monkey Ball 3D gets the core gameplay of Super Monkey Ball right, but fails at everything else. Boring level design, an unimpressive presentation, and terrible minigames make this a joyless entry in the franchise, and while you can still get some fun out of the core game here, this feels like a sad echo of the great console games it’s based on.

tl;dr – Super Monkey Ball 3D is an Arcade-style 3D Platformer that has players rolling balls through obstacle course-style mazes, and while it gets the core gameplay of the series right, it’s lacking pretty much everywhere else, with a lackluster presentation, boring level designs, and terrible minigames. If you absolutely need Monkey Ball on your Nintendo 3DS, this gets the job done, but it pales in comparison to the console games.

Grade: C

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