It was one of the biggest hits on the Dreamcast, and possibly the most joy-filled games ever (it actually made us like Ricky Martin). It has Ulala. It has sombereros. It has a trailer featuring a monkey. By all accounts, we should love Samba de Amigo like our firstborn. Do the gaming press agree?
- IGN (75%) feels the game is more suited to a casual audience: "In the end, I think this is a really good game for casual gamers. I showed it to some non-gamer friends this weekend and they had a blast just playing on easy. I had to practically rip the remotes out of their hands to get them to stop. But here in the IGN office, fans of the original Samba pick up the remotes, crank up the difficulty, and find the controls to be almost unworkable. This monkey is still a charmer, but his Wii controls need refining."
- NGamer UK (6/10) is not so keen on the responsiveness of the controls: "That old Samba magic is still there, but the challenge is in beating the controls, not the game. This should have been way better, given the console's strengths." [Nov 2008, p.56]
- Eurogamer (6/10) also points out the below-par controls, but acknowledges that the game can still be fun: "Apart from the obvious fact that party games have moved on an awful lot since Samba De Amigo first appeared, there's no denying that the control system just doesn't quite translate as well as it might have - and that can only hurt its appeal in the long run. There's still a decent amount of daft fun to be had out of this joyous little game, but it's definitely best sampled in small doses."
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-17-2008 @ 9:09PM
Miike said...
Did they play with wii/nunchuck, or 2 remotes?
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9-18-2008 @ 6:23AM
Kogen said...
SEGA needs to realise that the Wii's motion controls /are not/ good for their games. All of SEGA's offerings on Wii so far (meaning the actual games that are not crap to begin with) suffer from the controls: Sonic, NiGHTS, and now this. Hopefully Wii Motion Plus fixes this in the future.
At least light gun games work, I guess.
I would also like to point out, from what I have read, that two Wiimotes works better and you need to calibrate the game first. Some reviewers do not do this... Kind of makes you wonder why they are even reviewing games if they are that clueless.
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9-25-2008 @ 11:28PM
FrankieViturello said...
Kogen,
The "calibration" option only appears (or, unlocks) once you've completed the easy and normal sections of career mode ... and unfortunately, even after repeated calibrations does NOT help the accuracy of either a combination of 2 Wiimotes or a Wiimote and nunchuck.
If you've noticed, multiple review outlets have faulted this game for its poor control functionality ... and I have to agree, I was a Dreamcast Samba master (perfects on every song on all difficulty settings) and while it's possible for the basic to advanced user to get perfect scores on the easy or medium settings of the Wii version of the game ... once you get to the hard or super-hard settings it becomes painfully obvious that the controls can't handle the speed that it expects you to perform "cross overs" and multi-shake combos.
The short-short is that the control is somewhere between masochistic and completely broken.
9-18-2008 @ 7:28AM
matmccoy said...
Bummer. I was really looking forward to this game.
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9-18-2008 @ 11:11AM
Mainman said...
This might be the first game with Ulala in it that I've refused to buy. It already seemed to be lacking some substance compared to modern music games, but control issues are the last straw.
If you mess up in a game, you should feel as if it's your own fault, and not the game's. If whole sections of the game become unplayable because of this, then by my eyes, it doesn't deserve more than 4/10.
I'd like to give it the benefit of the doubt and try a rental, but no shops around here rent Wii titles. Looks like this one's going to be passed by more than a few people.
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9-18-2008 @ 12:38PM
claris said...
Darn...I have this on pre-order as my husband's birthday present. I think we'll go ahead and keep it, though. Neither of us have played any earlier version of the game, so we'll probably be stuck on easy for a long time.
It baffles me that this kind of thing happens, though. What is going wrong with the testing side of the industry these days? Sigh.
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