Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll for Wii Reviews by Gamers

This one was rented to play with my fiance. She thought it looked fun and is all about things that use the balance board. Though I don't think she realized that Monkey Ball is fun but can be fiendishly difficult since she had never played it before.

The first thing she mentioned was that it reminded her of Marble Madness on the NES. Great game, but really frustrating.

The controls are typical of the Wii if you just use the wiimote. So I'll spare you that.

When you switch to the balance board things change. Obstacles are removed since control is not as precise with the balance board. What I will say is you have got to have some seriously good balance with that thing to do some of the levels. It starts to become so frustrating to even bother with.

Move forward to speed up, lean back to slow down / turn around and left and right are pretty self explanatory. The trick is implementing this smoothly in one of the levels. It works great in level 1. You have bumpers and rails all over the place. But once they remove the rails and the levels get tricky the downfall of the balance board's controls shows up. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the balance board. ( I think it works great with stuff like EA Active and Shaun White Snowboarding. ) Monkey ball just requires controls that are to precise to create on the Wii's balance board. The game is still fun, but for a casual gamer this might not be something for you.

My fiance said it all when after using the balance board, completing world 1 then getting stuck at the start of the second level of world 2. ( they took the rails away and it pretty much became impossible) "This game is to hard send it back to gamefly".

So there you go. Fun game as long as you don't use the balance board. Stick to Shaun White Snowboarding for that. ( that game pretty much has the best use of it that I have ever seen )
If you've played Monkey Ball you know what to expect.

Verdict: Rent