Super Monkey Ball 2

When first beginning Super Monkey Ball, it's clear as day that you are a monkey in a ball attempting to navigate difficult mazes. On closer examination, the monkey is simply trying to remain upright in their ball as an unseen force manipulates the maze around them.

It took me about ten years to realize this is my favourite game, one of quiet perfection and constant joy, but here we are.

You roll around a monkey in a ball through a series of stages and each time aim for the goal, a task made challenging (sometimes extremely) by obstacles, moving parts, narrow bridges, slopes, and the like.

This isn't necessarily a genius concept, so let's compare it to the first game, which is much less fun. Both games have a similar-to-identical concept, physics engine, and difficulty curve, but the main difference is in level design. (And music; perhaps SMB1's saving grace is its atmospheric, nonmelodic, chilled house beats.) SMB1, being the arcade port it is, has levels designed for quick hits of highly difficult—and thus highly addictive—and highly frustrating—gameplay; for instance, Expert 21, a level where you traverse along a bridge as two walls sway back and forth in an attempt to knock you off, requires forward movement while quickly moving side-to-side between two very small zones of safety, lest you fall off the bridge or be knocked off by the walls. Some levels have satisfying shortcuts, but the majority of them are somewhat linear, forcing intense precision. During the meaner levels (Expert 27 comes to mind), the game is punishing.

SMB2 brings a different philosophy to the series, analyzing the rolling platformer genre and emphasizing its strengths. The levels are faster—and with the addition of the long rectangular starting platform, which is flanked by halfpipe-esque walls that can be ground against to boost speed, you're given plenty of time to accelerate before the level proper even starts. There are more slopes and moving parts, promoting an out-of-control vibe. The levels are typically large-scale, clever, and ambitious. (While there are at least a dozen maze-type levels in this game, the design is usually very dynamic and sometimes even abstract, such that they're never tiring.) Most importantly, the design tends to be non-linear, which vastly improves this game's replayability in comparison to the first. SMB1 encourages you to beat your highscore by learning how to move faster while retaining the same precision, leading to small improvements in performance. On the other hand, SMB2 encourages you to throw yourself into the level, to experiment and see what sticks. "Planets," a sadistically tough, 40-second-ish Master-level stage that requires you to carefully sprint and plunge onto a series of increasingly small platforms, can be beaten in under ten seconds. My favourite shortcut is for "Double Spiral;" instead of slowly walking across one of two interlocked, rotating, horizontal spiral-shaped platforms, you simply zoom toward the structure, slam against one spiral, and let the centrifugal force of the resulting collisions guide you within and around each helix while you carefully avoid flying out of control, resulting in a time save of about 15 seconds (and a cool-lookin upside-down goal). (I realize I sound like an over-enthusiastic child when I describe these levels, but that's the level of excitement this game inspires in me.) These shortcuts are usually much harder than the "obvious" route, which gives the game an extended difficulty curve even after you unlock every stage, as well as an incentive to keep playing; each skip of ten, fifteen, even thirty seconds is incredibly satisfying. Honestly, this game gets more fun the more you play it, the more comfortable you become with your skill and the more you feel like trying unconventional approaches to each level.

For an ostensibly simple game, its depth is genius.

It's not a 5.0 though, because I've never cared much for the minigames, and because the level "Domes" exists.