Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz (PS Vita) | Pixel Pursuit

[Music] hello and welcome back to my super monkey ball review marathon where we're finally at the last game in the series left for me to review we've gone through 10 whole games so far and the last one for me to take a look at is actually the newest one released in the series which is super monkey ball banana splits for the playstation vita obviously banana blitz hd was released after banana splits but with this being a remaster of an already existing game it doesn't really count as a fully original release so for now banana splits is the most modern example that we have of a super monkey ball game so does it end the franchise with a bang or with a whimper let's take a look before we dive into the review properly i want to talk about the ways you can actually play this game for yourself with it being a vita game and never seeing a release outside of that console you'd think it would lock you into only being able to play it in a handheld format luckily for us though there's a device called the playstation tv which basically acts as a vita that you can plug into your tv instead of being a portable device the issue though is that the playstation tv is only compatible with specific vita games due to its lack of a camera and motion functionality which a lot of vita games require for aspects of the gameplay and wouldn't you know it super monkey ball banana splits happens to be one of those games that are completely incompatible meaning that you can't launch the game at all with a playstation tv there is a solution to this though because by hacking the playstation tv you can enable a whitelister application to allow you to launch and play any vita game which is great right well i wouldn't actually recommend doing this for this game specifically because not only is it quite difficult to do requiring you to download and install tons of different programs to alter system files which if done incorrectly could break your console but playing banana splits on the playstation tv isn't actually the optimal way to experience the game anyway certain minigames require you to turn the vita onto its side and play in portrait mode which as you can imagine is not exactly possible when you're using an actual tv to display the game there's also some other mini games and a level creator which require the use of the camera which again the playstation tv doesn't have making these elements of the game completely unoperational and plus on top of that i didn't want to attempt to use any of the online elements the game has due to me using a hacked console and not wanting to connect it to the internet in case of making sony angry so really if you desperately want to play this game for yourself i would recommend playing it on the actual vita the way it was intended to be played in the first place for me though i needed to play the game as much as possible using the playstation tv in order to record footage of it for this video so although i wouldn't recommend doing this for yourself i'm glad i was able to get it working otherwise i don't know how i would have made this review so let's start the actual review now by taking a look at the opening cutscene something which most of the newer games in the series haven't had the story presented here is that i i is playing a physical board game of super monkey ball where is moving a table around to roll a tiny balloon version of himself through some obstacles he looks like he's having a good time but then a magic floating clock appears and turns the real eye tiny traps him inside a ball and puts him into the very same table he was just using then mimi gong and baby appear and start playing the game seemingly unaware that the person they're rolling around is the real aye-aye or at least that's my reading of what's happening here if the game had presented this situation with a less bright and cartoony aesthetic it could have actually have been considered pretty scary the idea that ayai could potentially be killed by his unaware future wife who's just trying to play a board game is quite creepy plus they might never find out what actually happened to ai so to them he's just gone missing and nobody would ever find out what actually happened you know what maybe i'm just reading too much into this while the story here is quite abstract and minimal i at least like that we have some kind of story going on at all and it gives us some stakes to be thinking about as we play through the game it doesn't make any sense how we can play as mimi gong gun or baby considering they weren't shrunk and they weren't even present when ii was approached by the clock but hey it's super monkey ball we don't really need to over analyze plot holes so let's just move on to the actual gameplay after all that's what we're here for banana splits is about as straightforward of a monkey ball game as you can get you use the left analog stick to move the stage around which in turn rolls your chosen monkey around on an obstacle course in order to reach the end goal while under a time limit i mean it sounds just like every other super monkey ball game right but that's just the thing when was the last time we got a game in the series that was this pure of an experience 3d was probably the closest to this that we got but it was far too easy and therefore ended up being kind of forgettable all of the other games in the series that we've played recently have either included pointless gimmicks or had some kind of rubbish control scheme step and roll used the balance board banana blitz used motion controls added jump in and had boss battles adventure featured this massive story mode where you explored and did missions touch and roll was controlled using the stylus and a touch screen junior lacked analog controls making it feel a bit clunky so really banana splits is the closest thing that we ever got to a proper true successor to the original two gamecube titles and all i can say is that it's about damn time it turns out that the much purer control scheme isn't the only way that banana splits takes inspiration from the original games though one thing is that banana splits ditches the world structure we've seen in every game since touch and roll and goes back to selecting one of three difficulties or four if you count the unlockable master difficulty and this is so much better in my opinion because it makes the game flow much smoother with far less interruptions from menus and makes it feel like more of an arcadey experience too because of the way you really feel like you have to conserve lives and continues over a long gauntlet of levels which in turn rewards replaying the game and improving because every time you do so you're gonna get further and further towards finishing the harder difficulties but perhaps the most important things that banana splits takes from the original two games is the superb level design and the focus on difficulty these are easily by a mile the best super monkey ball levels we've seen since one and two each one of them feels distinct and there's a really balanced sprinkling of gimmicks which are expanded on throughout the levels and never outstay their welcome some of these gimmicks are ones returning from the earlier games like bumpers or seesaws but the way these old mechanics are used in the new levels here is very creative like this level where you need to go through tunnels and half pipes where bumpers will be moving left and right in a pattern forcing you to time your movement to get past them without being pushed off of the stage or this level that feels like it's straight out of super monkey ball 2 where you go across a series of platforms that rock from side to side with your weight that you have to carefully balance your way across it's awesome stuff and there's so many levels that are memorable because of the way these gimmicks are used something i don't appreciate at all though is how the narrator says this when you fall off the stage [Music] what happened to them saying fall out that was a classic line and they changed it for no reason 0 out of 10 rubbish game we do also have some new things brought to the table on top of things returning from the originals though like how about the way that the background details seen in the levels are sometimes actually incorporated into the level design itself like this level where you need to balance across pterodactyls as makeshift platforms before rolling down a t-rex's head and up its tail to fly into the goal or this level where you need to use this statue's fist to punch you hard enough to get over a huge ramp or here with this windmill that you have to make your way up to to get onto one of its blades which transports you up to a new area it's really great stuff and no other game in the series has ever had you see all of these elements in previous levels but just as decorative pieces before actually giving them a function in the gameplay itself i thought that was really clever and it made each level's theme stand out in a way that isn't just visual because they also actually feature unique gameplay obstacles too speaking of the level themes these are really good too and the spin this game puts onto the visuals is that because you shrunk to a tiny size all of the environments are made of craft materials and look like toys so the dinosaurs in the prehistoric theme are all balloons the fires and the huts of the temple theme are all made of clay and look like they've been animated using stop motion we also have a medieval set of levels where everything looks like wooden blocks and it's just a fantastic idea which not only looks great but gives the game a distinct style that's different to the other entries in the series i also appreciate how each of the themes will feature different weather depending on the difficulty you play them on that was a really nice touch to give them even more variety something else that's also appreciated is how you can actually independently move the camera with the right analog stick which allows you to more accurately line yourself up on tight platforms as well as just get a better look of the levels the catch with this is that you can only do it when you're completely still but i thought this was a nice way of making the game feel a little bit more modern without adding in something which would outright ruin the game i think you also had this type of camera control in banana blitz and step and roll by using a nunchuck plugged into the wemo but i never actually tested this out because who plays those games with a nunchuck plugged in it has no function other than moving the camera so i think it's a bit pointless whereas here you don't need to plug in an unchuck because the right analog stick is literally right there it feels a lot more natural overall the main game here is straight up awesome and while the levels aren't quite as good as the ones from super monkey ball 1 or 2 they are the best we've seen since then and it finally feels like the series is back on track when i first started the game and i played the beginner stages i was a little bit worried that we were going to have a game which once again recycled all of the levels we had already seen in previous games because weirdly the beginner mode consists entirely of returning levels taken from not only the first and second games but also touch and roll step and roll and banana blitz this is kinda weird because the rest of the game has fully original levels so it makes me suspect that they intended on having a separate mode which was made entirely of levels taken from the previous games like a sort of legacy mode this would have been awesome if this had been implemented on top of the original levels and it would have given the game a lot more content as well it might seem like this game is perfect at this point but i want to take a step back from all of this praise and talk about some of the issues with the game because despite it being great it does have some flaws like one thing is that as far as i can remember this is the only game in the entire series that doesn't have a credits mini-game how weird is that it's just like they forgot to put one in there or something firstly seeing as we were just speaking about the amount of content in the game i might as well start there this game is fairly light on content featuring 100 levels across its four difficulties which really isn't very many a lot of people would probably point out here that the first game didn't have many more levels than that either but i just feel like we should sort of expect a bit more from a game made a lot more recently and i kind of want super monkey ball to take a look at the content that deluxe had and match that providing of course that the quality of the content matches the quantity i mean to be fair i do think both super monkey ball 1 and banana splits get away with not having many levels to a certain degree because there are other modes to play outside of the main game and despite not having a ton of levels they are very challenging so it's unlikely you'll finish them without practicing for a while which will add to the time you spend with the game but still more levels across more difficulties would have been nice the menus in the game are so annoying to navigate so often i found myself trying to select a game mode or a character and instead of doing what i want it would instead start scrolling to different options and it's rarely irritating it's a shame you have to control the menus with the touchscreen and you can't just use the normal buttons because that would have made it so much more efficient to navigate around plus i just generally think the menus are a bit boring and don't really fit the theming of the game either it has this white sci-fi aesthetic which i'm assuming is supposed to be like you're in a time machine but i think it would have been way better if the menus looked like toys or something because it just doesn't mesh very well with the bright and colourful graphics in the gameplay the music in the game is also very lacking in my opinion being nowhere near the quality of the original two games electronic vibes or even step and roll's impressive dynamically shifting soundtrack it does have an interesting element though because a lot of the tracks use samples from the original two games soundtracks and it's sort of loosely remixes them but it ends up just being nowhere near as good as the original tracks so i would rather of them just done their own thing completely take a listen [Music] one thing i did like though is how you can hear the original game's soundtrack in the background in the opening cut scene as iii is playing the game on the table i thought that was a nice touch unlockable content found in the game is handled in a really weird way too every mini game is unlocked from the start but you unlock more continues after finishing each of the difficulties with your unlocking infinite continues after finishing advanced i think you also unlock skins for each of the four main characters which is maybe achieved by completing the master difficulty but i actually haven't done this and there's very little information out there about this game i couldn't find any footage of anyone unlocking these skins or even using them so this could be completely made up for all i know still i hope this is true because getting balloon eye eye clay gone gone wooden block mimi and cardboard baby would be an awesome reward for finishing the game completely even if this is true when you do unlock these skins i wish the game had gone back to using play points to unlock stuff because i think that was a really great system from the original games which could have been expanded so much more and never really met its full potential you could have had an in-game store where you could get character skins colours or stickers for the ball mini games lives continues new difficulties and who knows what else but they never really went full out with this plus i've always thought it was a bit of a shame how playing the mini games doesn't actually unlock anything banana blitz for the wii unlocked a single skin for baby by playing all 50 mini games and there was skins and carts to unlock in 3ds mini games as well but the issue with that is that those skins were only unlocked within the single mini-game you were playing at the time and not across the whole game what i would have liked was to see stuff get unlocked across every mode by playing the minigames that would give them a lot more depth and make them more interesting to play i also find it so so strange how yet again we can't play as doctor yang yan jam or jet in the main game despite all of them being playable in the mini games like seriously why are these characters always relegated to the mini games i honestly really like jam in particular and i want to run around in a ball as him is that too much to ask another thing is that as much as i appreciate the fact that we have some semblance of a story here i do wish that we had a game with a proper story mode again like super monkey ball 2 had it was always really interesting playing through that mode and watching the cut scenes and learning about the characters personalities while they go on a zany adventure i feel like a story mode would be the perfect way to not only introduce us to a new villain or maybe even bring back dr badboon but it also could properly introduce us to dr yanyan jamun jet and we could unlock them as playable characters throughout the adventure as well maybe i'm asking for too much with all of this more nitpicky stuff considering that we're talking about a handheld entry in the series but really that is the biggest problem with the game the fact that it's on the playstation vita and nothing else because of that it probably wasn't given that longer the development time or the biggest budget either to implement some of the things that i'm talking about here but the bigger problem here is that because this game was released on the vita and that system didn't do that well commercially hardly anybody actually got the chance to play this game which brings me to my next point why on earth wasn't this game remastered instead of banana blitz banana splits would have required far less work to pour over with it already having hd graphics and already having analog controls on top of that it's a far superior game to banana blitz with far better level design and being much closer to the experience that the original games provided if this game would have been put onto the switch or ps4 a far bigger audience would be able to appreciate it but no they went ahead and remastered literally the worst possible game they could have chosen in the entire series absolutely ridiculous there could have even added multiplayer options for the main game which the vita version doesn't have due to it being a handheld title and that would have given it more content on top of the original version after playing this game and seeing firsthand how good it is it just astonishes me that sega are so stupid to have not remastered or ported this game to another console by now anyway let's finally talk about the other content featured in the game we actually have nine mini games to choose from which is a decent amount not being too many but not being too little either and you can actually have quite a bit of fun with some of them a lot of them aren't playable on the playstation tv but the ones that are a monkey target monkey bingo monkey rodeo and love maze monkey target is the classic mini game which you all know and love and while this isn't the best version ever it still is good and you can do it in multiplayer by passing the console around and taking it in turns it just lacks some of the options from the original game like some of the hazards and the variety in courses monkey bingo is like a real time game of connect 4 where you're placed on a grid with holes in it and the objective is to roll your monkey into as many holes as possible while also trying to connect a line of five squares on the grid in a row as other players cut you off and stop you there's also some items to find which affect the course in some different ways and it's a pretty great mode monkey rodeo is playable on the playstation tv but it's not ideal due to having to use the vita's rear touch pad to move around the way the playstation tv emulates this is by using a cursor on the screen to mimic where you would be tapping on that rear touch pad and while it does work it does somewhat ruin the fun that you'll have here the idea is great though having you bounce around to collect bananas and by holding the touchpad you'll charge up and dash forward being able to hit into other players sending the bananas flying out for either yourself or other players to steal the objective then is to simply have the most bananas at the end of the timer it's quite chaotic and it is pretty fun the best mini game which luckily is playable on the playstation tv though is love maze this mini game sort of resembles the main mode from super monkey ball but from a top-down perspective which is actually kinda similar to the dangerous root mini-game from banana blitz but here instead of controlling one monkey you control two by using both analog sticks the courses here aren't really focused on obstacles or platforming like the levels in the main game are but rather the focus here is on the levels being puzzles which is achieved by you only being able to be so far from the other monkey because if you move too far away you'll fail and be taken back to the last checkpoint the levels here are designed with a lot of moving parts which are there to separate your characters and even feature switches which affect the other monkey's root and there's some really clever things to find here but the reason that this mini game stands out for me personally is that you can actually kinda play this game in co-op the way that i did this is if there's two people playing the game one of you holds one side of the controller or the vita if you're playing it on the actual hardware and the other person holds the other side and then you each control one of the two monkeys if you do end up playing this mode in this way this is basically the closest we've ever come to have in a proper co-op mode in a super monkey ball game and it works as a good proof of concept for what i think a true co-op mode could be like it could be handled exactly like this with each player on their own course but interconnecting with each other and having elements that affect each other's side of the track basically picture love maze but in the main game with the normal rolling gameplay and where each player has their own controller and this would be the co-op mode i've always wanted to see since playing the very first game we're frustratingly close to seeing that co-op mode be a reality here i know we've been talking about this game for ages now and you might think that we're done considering that the rest of the content is locked out due to us playing it on a playstation tv but what if i told you that i actually got a playstation vita in order to play this game to its fullest well i've actually wanted a vita for quite a while but i figured this review was a good excuse to finally go out and buy one so here we are able to access the features that we were locked out of at the start of the review so the first thing that caught my attention is that now i'm using my own vita signed into my own profile i can actually earn trophies and this seems to have replaced the collectible system found in step and roll in 3d in those games you could complete a list of optional objectives to basically fill in a checklist to achieve 100 completion the issue with this was that doing these objectives didn't actually reward you with anything so with banana splits using trophies as a replacement for this i guess it's maybe slightly better you still don't unlock anything in the game itself by getting them but hey at the very least i suppose it's something extra to aim for the first major thing we now have access to though is that we can now use motion controls to play the main game but really who wants to do this when you can just use the analog stick it's not that it doesn't work using motion controls or anything but for me the analog stick is by far the superior method of control here using motion is good for a novelty but that's really all it is then there's the online functions the game has which are now available to us which consist of not only online leaderboards which can be filtered by all time scores regional high scores and monthly and weekly high scores but also you can do online play with other people all around the world too oh boy i can't wait to play super monkey ball with everyone else around the world [Music] oh well never mind i guess so it turns out that despite the game having an online mode i couldn't even test it to see what it consists of because there's literally no other players online i'm assuming that it would just be the mini games anyway and not like a multiplayer version of the main game or anything but still it would have been nice to have given it a go again this is another reason that the game should be ported to other systems because then people might actually be playing it leaving that aside though one of the main things we can do now is look at all of the mini games we missed out on when we were playing the game on the playstation tv so we have monkey bowling which is pretty much exactly the same as it was back in the first game apart from this time we hold the vita on its side and use the touchscreen to aim and roll the ball it's a nice novelty but it's nothing all too deep battle billiards is an interesting one again asking you to turn the vita onto its side and use the touchscreen to control it basically what this is is monkey billiards from the first game but instead of being actual billiards it's a four player versus game where the objective is to hold the flag for the longest time while also rolling into other players and knocking them into holes the thing that makes this so interesting though is that you have three balls you can choose to control but there's one which contains your chosen monkey which will give you more points if you get the flag as then the other two balls are basically there to defend yourself with and block people from hitting into your main ball and therefore stealing your flag it's a very interesting concept but if i had to criticize it i would say that the touch controls kinda make it a bit too finicky and if it would have controlled exactly like monkey billiards from the first game it probably would have been better number ball and pixie hun are the worst minigames in the entire thing number ball feels like a brain training mini game where you have to touch numbered balls in ascending order but they rotate and move around the screen making it difficult to keep track of then pixie hunt is this weird ar game where you have to take pictures of things in real life that are a certain color and depending on how closely the thing matches the required colour you'll get a number of pixes to appear on the screen that you have to tap to get points it feels extremely out of place if i'm being honest because it doesn't really require any form of skill like the other mini games and it's way more gimmicky and tech demoy than anything else featured here overall the mini game selection here is okay but pretty lacking monkey target is good but not as good as in the original games monkey bingo can be fun too and love maze is actually really great but all of the others are either pretty forgettable or outright bad the mini game selection here is probably the first element of the game that i would say is a bit rubbish but hey maybe we'll make up for it with the last thing we have to take a look at super monkey ball banana splits is particularly interesting because it features a level editor this sounds awesome think of the amount of content you could create and download people would be able to make some amazing levels and the game would effectively become infinitely replayable well yeah that would be true if the game had a proper actual level editor but instead what it actually has is this weird mode where you can take a picture of something and the game automatically creates an abstract level layout based on your picture but first you have to shake the vita up and down like a nut job to actually get the level to be created because gimmicks and when i said it creates an abstract level i really mean it because sometimes the level doesn't reflect what you took a picture of at all it's an interesting concept i'll give it that but is it too much to ask for to get an actual level creator one that actually gives you a degree of control over what the level looks like and doesn't require the use of gimmicks like taking a picture and then shaking the vita all over the place to get it working i appreciate that this level editor is here but really it's pretty rubbish i can only hope that the next game in the series takes inspiration from this and gives us a proper level editor i'm putting super monkey ball banana splits in fourth place in my series ranking it's easily the best game the series has seen since the original two games and by extension deluxe as well and it's a shame that the franchise went into hibernation for so long after this game came out seriously between this game and banana blitz hd which was the next proper release not including mobile games there were seven years seven entire years of not getting a new game after banana splits makes no sense and i hope we don't see a gap in releases that long ever again banana splits does an amazing job of staying true to the core gameplay of the original games while also not being afraid to experiment and add in new things with side content such as its new minigames and the level editor and it's great seeing some modern touches like online leaderboards as well as elements of online gameplay too even though the online gameplay is rendered useless through nobody playing it anymore even though there are a lot of gimmicky elements found here with using the vita's camera motion and touchscreen capabilities i feel like because none of these elements are forced into the main game and are actually used in a fun way in the mini-games at least for the most part using these gimmicks actually works to the game's advantage i suppose in a way it's similar to the 3d and motion controls found in super monkey ball 3d in the way that it's very tech demoy but it doesn't detract from the experience and is mostly all optional side stuff the bottom line is that this is just a great super monkey ball game and while it doesn't reinvent the wheel or give us a significant amount of new content or change the formula much maybe that's for the best especially when we're looking at a handheld entry in the series that probably wasn't given a massive budget it's such a shame that this was only ever released on the vita because let's face it nobody has a vita and it basically renders this game completely unplayable for most people i wouldn't care if it was just a standard or below par entry but this is the best one since the originals i wouldn't say it's a reason to actually get a vita on its own though because despite it being a good game it is a little bit lacking in content i feel like the super monkey ball game should have been aspiring to match the content seen in deluxe but none of them ever really did that which has kinda resulted in a whole pile of the games feeling a little bit underwhelming in that area the side content in banana splits also is a little bit disappointing with the mini games being underwhelming the level editor being completely reliant on the photo function and not giving you any customization options and the online now being totally worthless because nobody's playing it but really the main game is the big attraction here and that's the best it's been for a long long time so if you're one of the very few people on the planet to actually already have avita by all means get this game because it's really good and that's super monkey ball banana splits the last game in the series left for me to review done i've now reviewed every single main series entry in the whole franchise and even counting the more obscure stuff i'm only really missing the n-gage version but i'm in no rush to get that because i wouldn't be able to play it anyway i suppose there are also the arcade versions but i doubt i'll ever be rich enough to be able to afford those until a new game in the series is released though which has been rumored to be in development for quite a while now that's it for super monkey ball i really hope you've enjoyed the marathon because it's been an absolute blast making it and going into detail on some of the main series games as well as a lot of the more obscure ones too and i'm so happy that i've now played them all i know it's taken me quite a while to get through them all but if you did enjoy the marathon give it a like subscribe to see more stuff like this coming soon and leave a comment down below letting me know what your favorite game in the series is and if you like the look of banana splits too and until next time [Music] bye you

Channel: Pixel Pursuit

Views: 1,688

Rating: 4.9444447 out of 5

Keywords: super monkey ball banana splitz review, super monkey ball banana splitz, review, super monkey ball, super monkey ball review, super monkey ball series, series, marathon, pixel pursuit, banana splitz, banana splitz review, super monkey ball vita, vita, playstation vita, ps vita, psvita, super monkey ball banana splitz vita, super monkey ball banana splitz ps vita, super monkey ball banana splitz playstation vita, banana splits, super monkey ball banana splits, sega, lets play, gameplay

Id: eMH720dg6fE

Length: 36min 57sec (2217 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020