Shake it like a newborn baby. http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressionsArt.cfm?artid=16478 I played and really enjoyed the original Dreamcast versions of Samba de Amigo and its Japan-only sequel, Samba 2000. For those readers who never got a chance to play these games (which is probably most of you), here's a primer. Samba is sort of like Dance Dance Revolution for your arms instead of your feet. The screen has a ring of six points, each one corresponding to the high, medium, or low position of your left or right hand. Symbols appear in the center of the ring and fly outwards to one of the position indicators, and when they line up, you shake the controller at that position. Of course, all of this is synchronized with the beat of the music while crazy characters dance through psychedelic settings in the background.
It's pretty strange that the original Samba games are being mixed together and released for Wii eight years later, considering they were such niche games back in the day, but I suppose the market for music games is much bigger now. The Wii version appears to add little to the original formula besides a few more recent songs, but that shouldn’t be a problem since most people missed out on this gem the first time it came out. Sega has also confirmed that there will be packs of downloadable songs made available after the game's release, but they aren't talking about the DLC's price, schedule, selection, or SD accessibility just yet.
As you may have heard, the controls work very differently this time around. The original game used special maraca controllers whose elevation from the floor could be measured. After setting your own height, the game could easily tell whether you were shaking high, medium, or low. It's not technically possible to replicate those controls with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, so the new edition ignores elevation and just senses which way the controllers are tilted. What threw me off while playing the game at E3 was that the on-screen display hasn't changed at all, so there's a disconnect between the new controls and the old visual interface. It's even weirder when playing Hustle Mode, which debuted in Samba 2000. This mode includes poses between sets of beats. For example, the graphics may indicate that you should hold both controllers up and to the right of your head. Unfortunately, the controllers can't actually tell if you are striking that pose, and I found that the game sometimes wouldn't recognize when I was in the right position because the controllers weren't tilted properly.
The entire hands-on experience felt odd, and it's not like I'm a nit-picking Samba expert – it's been at least six years since I last played the original games. The problem is rather that the new Samba de Amigo for Wii just doesn't feel natural, and the way you are supposed to play the game is quite different from what you would expect from looking at it. I'm sure you could get used to it eventually, and there may even be some menu settings that let you adjust the controls for a more intuitive feel. But in its current state, I think the new Samba is going to confuse new casual players and frustrate the original game's fan base. Ideally, Sega should delay this game until the Wii MotionPlus is available to offer more accurate controls that really do feel like playing with the Dreamcast maracas. I don't think I could enjoy the game with the controls that were present in the E3 demo.
Topic: IMPRESSIONS: Samba De Amigo (Read 2210 times)
