Super Monkey Ball is one of the last remaining Sega franchises that has yet to become broken, but they did get eerily close to it on this one, so I'm going to be doing something a little different for this review. I'm going to review the game as two separate parts for a very good reason. Single Player and Multi-Player Mini-Games. Let's start with Single Player mode.

Say goodbye to the joystick, as you now control the monkeys with free hand movement. You hold the controller in your hand and tilt as though you're tilting the stage itself. When you really stop and think about it, it's as though the Wii Remote was specifically made for Super Monkey Ball. I really enjoy this style of control since it's a lot of fun. However, it's not nearly as precise as a joystick. Trying to hold your monkey perfectly still was much easier with a joystick - just don't touch it. With the Wii Remote you have to try to keep your hand balanced as much as possible - making this game a bit more difficult in some ways.

Thankfully, Sega has realized that it's impossible to try to be as precise as before, so they've designed the levels to accommodate that. The levels aren't nearly as ridiculous as in Super Monkey Ball 2, and thank God for that too. I believe they would become impossible with the Wii Remote. It's obvious Sega spent the time to make levels best suited for control with the Wii Remote because it doesn't feel like a bunch of levels they they copied and pasted over from games past.

You can control one of six monkeys: AiAi, MeeMee, Baby, GonGon, and the brand new YanYan and Doctor (pictured above). Your choice of monkey is especially important this time around because they each have their own slight differences in controlling them. For instance, GonGon is a heavy monkey, so he is in a bigger ball which tends to stay low to the ground and takes a lot of movement to change directions. Where as YanYan is a small character who's movements are very sensitive can jump incredibly high.

Did I say jump? That's right, you can now officially jump in Super Monkey Ball which is both good and bad. Good in the sense that it adds new types of level design that requires some pretty precise jumping abilities. It's also bad in the sense that there's a lot of level designs with stairs. Let me tell you, nothing is more frightening then trying to jump up stairs at a fast even pace. Also new to the series are boss battles at the end of each world. They are well created and entertaining (although at times difficult) to play, but all require you to jump and attack their weak spot.

Graphically, I personally think this game loks amazing. After playing a lot of Rayman, these graphics really stood out to me. There are a few worlds that don't quite do much for the eyes (especially you, swamp world) but most all have some really nice backgrounds and smooth cartoonish textures. When listening to the music, I heard a familiar style during the Sherbert World and checked the credits to see if my guess on who did the music was right. I was: it was Hideki Naganuma among others. I've been a fan of his work from Jet Grind Radio, Jet Set Radio Future, and Sonic Rush. Not much else of the music sounds like his work, but they all appear to be remixes of songs from the DS title Super Monkey Ball: Touch and Roll!

The single player game is really well made, and is clearly the highlight of the game. But like most all games for the Wii, the controls tend to either be loved or hated so I highly recommend you try it out for a while before making a purchase. If you hate the controls, you won't find Single Player mode fun, and then there won't be much else left for you to love since the Multi-Player Mini-Game mode is severely lacking...

There are now 50 monkey mini-games to play, and the large majority of them I deem as being "broken." They are mostly all great ideas put to use with poor control recognition. After trying to play mini-games such as Monkey Golf, and Monkey Boxing - I would tend to look at my remote and wonder why it isn't responding correctly. This immediately registers in my brain as, "Jeez, maybe the Wii Remote isn't very good at things like Golf and Boxing," but I immediately think back to how much fun Golf and Boxing is in Wii Sports. Why is it that boxing is so amazing to play in Wii Sports, and completely broken in Monkey Ball? Well - I think we all know who's fault that is.

So the 50 mini-games become more of work when you try to figure out which ones are good and which ones aren't. A lot of times it's simply personal preference. For instance, I enjoyed the idea behind Monkey Trombone - in which you move the remote towards and away from the screen to change the pitch of your instrument - so I had much more patience trying to figure out how to play it even though it had poor recognition of my movements. Other people would probably try to exit as soon as possible.