Super Monkey Ball 2 Review

Just a few words can rap Super Monkey Ball 2 up: the ultimate party game. Super Monkey Ball 2 is a flat out huge puzzle game with 150 new solo-player levels to adventure through, new characters and 12 multiplayer games, including monkey tennis, bowling, baseball, billiards, fight, racing, and more. The multi-player makes the game worth it alone, but there’s a darn good single-player here too, following the roots of the original.

Super Monkey Ball 2 has a wacky story that goes a little along the lines of this: Dr. Bad-Boon steals all of the village’s bananas to leave the entire monkey population to die of starvation. Four monkeys vow to bring back the bananas and save the day. Like in the original, the controls are simple, but it’s the challenging gameplay and courses that make you frustrated at times. For some games, controls are a huge issue, but all you do in this game is move with the joystick through any and all obstacles on each course.

Super Monkey Ball 2 boasts some of the best graphics that are seen on the GameCube. Greatly detailed backgrounds, characters, and courses make it not only cute, but enjoyable to look at. As you can imagine, the game is colorful and full of lively backgrounds. The sound is the only thing that really gets Super Monkey Ball 2 and hurts it pretty badly. This game would have been even better if it wasn’t for the, how do I put it…carnival music? I’ll give Amusement Vision this much: it’s unique. As a whole though, the music is quite annoying and repetitive.

There is no doubt about it, Super Monkey Ball 2 is made for multi-player action. The multi-player section of the game includes fun and largely varied games. In games like Fusion Frenzy for Xbox, you find yourself playing the exact game, with a different fore/background…or you find yourself catching glitter. In Super Monkey Ball 2, there are a wide range of games with many levels in each game. Another thing about Super Monkey Ball 2 is that each of the 12 multi-player games are fun, entertaining and can even be cool to watch your friends play.

Really, the only major complaint that I have is the sound, which really isn’t a huge complaint. Solo-player gets repetitive after a while, but it still has very fun, unique and challenging gameplay. Controls and multi-player action are both great, while the story is quite corny, but the entire game is cute at the same time. No, you shouldn’t buy a GameCube just for this game, but you should buy one for this game, Super Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness, F-Zero GX, Super Smash Bros. Melee, etc.