First, the premise. You have a series of themed maps that involve three dimensions of track. As you twist and turn the Wii remote, the track moves to match. As you give a tilt to the board, the marble rolls down the tilt. This is of course the basics - but soon there are ramps, sliding doors, sliding platforms, rotating pieces and other tricky objects involved in your path.There are of course crystals to collect - what would a game be without collecting crystals! There is also a bonus green item on each level which is rather tricky to achieve, but unlocks new items. This gives you incentive to go back and re-play levels repeatedly.
Each level has its own theme. There are nature themes with leafy objects, a sugar-high theme with candies and cookies, an industrial theme with concrete, a cardboardy paper-Mario style theme, and so on. There are also background theme songs to unlock, and a variety of balls. Some make cute little noises, like the pink pig or the mrowling cat.
My first reaction was - do we really need another Super Monkey Ball game? Super Monkey Ball has a ton of great mini-games, great levels, and all around fun. Kororinpa is lacking a lot of that. All you have is mazes. The multi-player is just map racing.
It is challenging in a brain-train sort of way to figure out the solution to each puzzle, thinking in three dimensions. So from that point of view, I suppose you can consider this "Monkey Ball 1A" - not really better than Monkey Ball, but it gives you a new set of puzzles to figure out. Again, though, it lacks a lot of the features that Monkey Ball has, so I would start with the Monkey Ball series, and then move on to this one once you've figured all the Monkey Ball puzzles out.
The only real complaint I have about the core game is that the game treats the balls too delicately. There were many times where we were done with the first half of a map, and did a 'leap' to get to the second half. We landed nicely, plainly on the map, and it made us die. These are marbles! They're not eggs! If they land on a surface, they don't explode in a million pieces :)
I do have to give kudos here to the Wii remote. When I remember back to playing these types of games on a regular remote, it was always a little challenging to get the board tilt just right with the stick or buttons. With the Wii remote, it is very simple and obvious. You tilt the remote - the board tilts. No thought, no translation - it simply does what you do.
Recommended!
Buy Kororinpa Marble Mania from Amazon.com
