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To steer yourself around the course you tip the Wii controller in the manner of those marble maze games. Left and right steers the ball while forward speeds it up and tilting backwards sloes your monkey ball to a stop. Pressing the "A" key causes your monkey to jump. The whole control system is quite smooth and takes little effort to get used to. It does require some finesse to play well as the slightest movement can send your ball and hapless monkey careening off the course.

The courses start off easy, with the track fenced and easy to navigate, however they soon become quite challenging. There are gaps to jump, moving platforms, and various barriers and paddles waiting to knock you into the void. Throw in creatures that want to push or blow you off the edge and the occasional trap, and you have a very challenging game. Extra challenge lies in picking up as many bananas as you can along the way, while reaching the finish line before time runs out. There are bonus sections as well, to earn extra bananas. Get enough of these and you score an extra life. There are also some shortcuts on some of the courses that are extremely difficult to navigate, although these can score you whole bunches of bananas if you manage to pull 'em off. At the end of each set of courses you get confronted by a boss creature, and while these are challenging they are not that difficult to defeat once you figure out the required strategy.

You can choose different monkeys to pilot your ball, and this release introduces two new characters to play and new boss creatures to fight. The graphics are crisp and the sounds are what you would expect from a platform/puzzle game of this type. Overall, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz is a very well-constructed game in its own right. If that was all there was to the game it would rate pretty highly on its own, but there is more!

Over and above the puzzle/platform game is the game's party piece. Tired of playing with your monkey by yourself? You can invite your friends over have a bash at 50 mini-games - some involving monkeys while others just plain bizarre. They all have one thing in common though, they are all of short duration. They are designed so you can have a quick bash with your chosen monkeys to determine who is king of the jungle. You can chose a single game or a set number of games and the objective is to win as many as you can.

Games range from the simple space shooters, mole bashing and banana grabbing to the more challenging sheep herding, and goldfish catching. Some of these are really well done and leave you wishing they were bit longer. We particularly liked the space invaders-type one and found the Wii control system was well suited to this type of game. Unfortunately it lasts for only one round. Others though seem to be a bit more fiddly to control and don't really play as well as they should. You'll spend more time figuring out the controls than actually playing the game. Overall though there is a huge selection and it's great group entertainment suitable for young and old.

uper Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz is really two games in one. The puzzle/platform game and the party games. They all follow the same theme and are very solidly put together. Whether you like to play with your monkey alone or enjoy having friends over to have a monkey blitz party this game comes highly recommended.