Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz (Wii)

The Super Monkey Ball series concept is simple and very much like that old wooden labyrinth game you can spend hours tilting. In SUPER MONKEY BALL BANANA BLITZ, each level consists of a series of ramps, platforms, and obstacles with a goal at the end. Placed in your path and outside of it are bananas. Your monkey is inside of a plastic ball (like those hamster balls sold at the pet stores), and you control the monkey ball's path by tilting the map.

In this version for the Wii, the controller responds to your movements as you play. To tilt the map, players tilt the controller to make the monkey ball roll toward the goal. Then there are the Mini games and party games packed in with the main single-player puzzles. Banana Blitz takes full advantage of this game console system specially built for creative and fun party gaming.

Instead of offering a few refined and polished games, Sega packed in 50. Just about every kind of play is covered: asteroid shooting (aim the remote at the screen and fire), racing, boxing, tennis, hovercraft bumper cars, bowling, and much more. A few highlights include a nifty version of darts and a cool first-person shooter (using nonviolent, Nerf-like balls) called Monkey Wars.

The problem with most of these Mini games is that they require so much precision in your hand movements that they lose their element of fun. Quantity never beats quality and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz suffers greatly with this hit-and-miss galleria of oddball gaming. Kids who are willing to spend the time with each Mini game and figure it out may find the experience rewarding. But a handful of polished games that were easier to play would make for a better experience.