Summary

• Super Monkey Banana Rumble offers some great platforming but lacks innovation.
• It does introduce a new spin dash mechanic, but this is rarely well-utilised.
• The character variety helps, but switching between them when you're stuck on a level is frustrating.

A brand new 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Monkey Ball game on the Switch is such an obvious move that I’m surprised it’s taken this long, outside the remake and remaster. Admittedly, so was a new Samba de Amigo game on Switch, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:that was incredibly disappointing.

At least this time, we’re not getting an inferior game to what came before - just another game. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Monkey Banana Rumble keeps the series going and has some fun with its unique platforming mechanics, but doesn’t bring much else☂ to the tab🧸le.

That might sound harsh for a decent platformer centred around adorable cartoon monkeys, but given that this is a game few people were rushing Sega to get out of the door, it’s hard not to expect more of a reason for its existence. This is a Switch exclusive at the very end of the console’s life, and rather than making the most of that, Banana Rumble treads familiar ground with some occ💙asionally great platforming that’ll keep you busy for a while, but it hardly pushes the series forward.

However, when I was busy with it, I had a good time with Banana Rumble. The gameplay is smooth and fast-paced, the level design is often creative and engaging, and the unique physics are always fighting against you as you desperately try to steer your way to the goal. That signature gameplay loop is enough to help 🅰the game stand out from the crowd. It’s a short burst of decent platforming stitched together with basic cutscenes - it certainly isn’t harming the brand.

From the first level, the gameplay never changes. You’re fighting to control a monkey in a ball across stages that can require speed, precision, puzzle solving, or towards the end of the game, all of the above. There is one major change this time around though, as Banana Rumble gives us a spin dash à la 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sonic the Hedgehog. Admittedly, I found little use for this on the majority of stages, so it’s hard to argue that the game makes the most of this. But when I did get the chance to use it to pull off a tricky shortcut or speedrun through an older level to beat my time, it felt perfect. For the most part though, slow and steady wins the race, which i♓s 💮frustrating when you know you have that speed-up ability in your back pocket.

What does introduce variety to the mix is the cas෴t of characters. They all have different stats - some are faster, some are heavier, others are better at braking, etc - and can massively change how you interact with some of the levels. To get the most out of these stats, I only wish the levels were more open-ended. Some are, but many clearly want you to play as a certain character (which is a frustration of its own when you have to go back to the level select to switch), with some later levels feeling completely inaccessible 𝄹if you unknowingly picked the worst monkey for the job.

More characters will be available as DLC, including Son🔯ic and friends, as well as Beat from Jet Set Radio.

At its worst, the levels are linear and feel like ramming a shape through the wrong hole until it somehow works. You can see what you’re supposed to be doing, and🥀 your choice is to either haul yourself back to the main menu and switch characters (when that character might end up being terrible for the rest of the stages in a world) or brute force your ﷽way through.

And yet, even at its mos🍷t frustrating, there is a kind of rough nostalgia to Banana Rumble that kept me going. But this was less like Sega nostalgia and more akin to how it felt to plꦰay a third-party Nintendo DS game back in the day. There’s something about a game going all-in on one mechanic, throwing a bunch of levels at you and stitching it together with short cutscenes which feels endearingly noughties, even if most platformers are bringing a bit more to the table now.

The multiplayer feels the same. Being able to battle or race other players is a neat addition, particularly as Banana Rumble supports local and online multiplayer, and there’s nothing wrong with the game modes on offer. It just doesn’t hold your attention as much as the siꦬnglಌe player does. These game modes would have gone hard on a school trip coach journey way back when, but now, I’m not finding a reason to go back and play them again - even if it was fun to watch my Switch try and handle 15 CPUs at once.

That brings me to another gripe - it’s immediately noticeable that the game is technically rough despite appearing well within the boundaries of the Switch’s capabilities. This is mostly fine when you’re only in levels for 60 seconds max, however, some pretty noticeable framerate dips in later levels are hard to justify when the game is so basic - again, because of how short the levels are. Admittedly, this was playing in handheld mode, but Banana Rumble suits it so well that you ꦕshould ⛎be able to play it this way with ease.

For the most part, you can, and that is Banana Rumble’s greatest strength. It takes away from the frustration of losing so many times in ๊a row when you can be back at the start in a second. It’s also easy to lose yourself in the repetition of it all and blast through entire worlds in a single sitting, as you’re taken to the next stage immediately with super fast loading times.

The Adventure mode is made up of ten worlds, each with ten levels. More are unlocked once you've blasted through the main story, which doesn't take long.

This is clearly what the game is going for - bite-sized fun - but it does feel like Banana Rumble missed a trick in🏅 keeping its levels so short. In the main story, every single stage is on a 60-second timer. There’s no chance for recovery if you muck up either, so you’ll be getting sent back to the start a lot, rather than trying to salvage a run. But with the new spin dash, I would have loved a more open-ended stage that didn’t have me trying to trapeze through death traps all the time.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble knows what it is, and it isn’t trying to revolutionise the series or mix it up dramatically. Tꦯhat just leaves us with a perfectly fine platform🌸er that passes the time, but nothing that will put the series on the map for fans of the genre.

But for what it actually is, Banana Rumble is an utterly adorable sequel full of charm, with some decent level design to be had. When it was at its best, it wa🏅s incredibly satisfying to pull off skips and blast through stages in mere seconds. Now that it’s over, I just can’t see myself picking it up again.