Current Events > Playing Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania feels like a weird imitation ngl

(+) Yeah! (+)

You know the shapeshifter episode some tv shows have where someone tries to take the place of another character but theres subtle things that they do wrong that the other characters pick up? Thats what this game feels like. Its the familiar games you know and love just things feel off.

First off, I had to PURCHASE the original OST to use it in the game for some reason. The new remastered soundtrack is terrible from what I heard. Imagine having to pay for that though (at least its not unavailable at all, as was the case in Sonic Colors remaster though).

Theres a bunch of menu options that are downright worse than the originals. Story mode for example you have to play the levels in order. In 2 you could play all of the levels in the world in whatever order you want (which felt necessary because theres some really hard ones later in the game), I HATE that the player cursor in menus is red because Ive gotten confused and picked the wrong option before thinking I was picking the other one. The pop-up for assisted mode when Ive died a few times in a level is annoying for this very reason. I dont want the game to handhold me, especially since doing so locks you out of the expert stages (even if you quickly switch back to normal mode after clicking the button by mistakes).

Main game, in fact, cannot be played multiplayer which is really weird because you could in the originals. Theres also no online for the party games which feels like a massive miss. Online play, especially in the covid era, wouldve added so much. You also cant use the unlockable characters in this mode for some reason, so Im not really sure why they are selling some characters as DLC, as party games feel like they have more replay value than the main game.

The physics. I cant entirely fault them for this because they were forced to use a new engine for this game, but they definitely feel off. Ive died on levels I wouldnt have in the originals because I felt like the physics werent working the way the level was designed around. Also yeah, Monkey Target DOES have an invisible booster at the end of the ramp, as the reviews said.

Finally, the rolling sound. Its wrong. Its so noticeable that the old sound is gone, especially when youre going at a high speed. In fact when I was rolling fast I wasnt hearing anything.

Sorry if some of this comes off as nitpicking, but as someone who did put a lot of time into these games back in the day, its hard not to notice. Its still a good game though. Just feels off.

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Bump

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I never played the original so maybe I could play this one without the weird off feeling

All-in-all, it feels pretty close to the original for me. It keeps the high difficulty

Monkey Baseball feels a lot harder to play now though

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Itachi157 posted...

I never played the original so maybe I could play this one without the weird off feeling

Same, I played a bit of 2 but not enough to where Id notice a difference. Would you recommend it in this case TC or are the originals still better?