Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll

System: Wii
Developer: SEGA
Publisher: SEGA
Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1-4

You'd be forgiven for not knowing a new mainline Super Monkey Ball game had just launched; SEGA's enthusiasm towards the title flatlined right after its initial announcement. Surely the warning signs were all there, considering Super Monkey Ball Adventure and even that N-Gage game got more attention from the publisher. Oh well!

Sadly, Step & Roll just feels completely uninspired. If a 'making of' video existed on the disc, it'd just be the development team yawning in unison. All the new ideas introduced in Banana Blitz (jumping, boss fights, something else to pad out this parentheses) have been thrown out the window, so it seems like they wanted this one to play a bit closer to its GameCube roots. Problem is, the level design doesn't even come close. It's a super effective attack on the franchise.

Balance Board support is the big new feature, which sounds pretty fun, but it isn't. See, that's the exciting twist! You'll get by fine in the first half of the game with a Balance Board, but the later stages demand a level of precision it just can't possibly provide. Constantly fighting to find the dead zone is about as fun as Bubble O' Bill's bubble gum nose falling off and landing in a mysterious substance on the footpath.


Thankfully the Wii Remote can be used instead. It's handled the same way as Banana Blitz - by holding it vertically - and feels a lot smoother this time around. The main game has 70 levels across seven worlds; that's all up. There aren't any additional stages to unlock, so it's pretty short for a Super Monkey Ball game. This isn't helped by the fact that the first three worlds are pretty much throwaways. They've obviously been designed with the Balance Board user in mind, featuring generous platforms, barriers to prevent falling off, linear progression from point A to point B, no shortcut opportunities and... ugh. An opening world for beginners is perfectly fine, but 30 stages? That's almost half the game gone.

Things really pick up from world four onwards; the game goes from buying you a beer to punching you in the bladder. Only a small handful of levels actually stand out, though. Creativity is at an all-time low for the series. Most of the difficulty stems from Step & Roll's bizarre focus on having you dodge hundreds of stone heads that litter the landscape. It's as if they gave up trying to think of crazy layouts and just spammed the obstacle button.

For some reason a second player can join in and use their Wii Remote to take aim and blow them up for the first player. That's probably the most depressing co-op ever. The sheer amount of obstacles drop if you play through the whole game just with the Balance Board, but then you're stuck with sloppy controls. The game just can't strike a happy medium.


Step & Roll has 20 mini-games, and most of them are actually quite enjoyable! You know, unlike Banana Blitz which had a disturbing obsession with trying to cram as many awful mini-games on the disc as possible. Maybe there was a competition going on at SEGA during its development to see who could make the worst one. Fan-favourite 'Monkey Target' is back, although it's much more limited in its scope. 'Monkey Pinball' is an amusing new addition where four players slap their balls into each others' holes. Shiiiiieeeeeettt, ol' Clay Davis ain't gonna have none of that sentence. It's like pinball mixed with the classic Warlords arcade game.

The game has a fantastic soundtrack; more and more layers are added to each song as you progress through a world, and it's just so satisfying to hear the music in full swing as you reach the final stage. Then it tops off with a hilariously cheesy vocal mix of the track during the end credits (yeah, there's a different end credits roll for every world you beat). Step & Roll actually might be worth playing if only for the 'Chimpan Sea' music, bloody hell it's incredible. Almost like a lost track from NiGHTS into Dreams.

It also looks much nicer than Banana Blitz, but honestly that doesn't mean a whole lot when the gameplay itself is basically a massive shoulder shrugging effort. The type that would pop them out of their sockets or something. I don't know.


Score: 5/10 - "Avoid"
Ultimately, Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll is a pretty disappointing game. As shown by its lacklustre level design, the passion just isn't there anymore. The much-touted Balance Board controls are also quite awkward. There are better ball-rolling alternatives for the Balance Board, such as Marbles! Balance Challenge or Vertigo.

Review by Lance McGill (Infernal Monkey)