Samba de Amigo Review

Written by: Steve Martin Posted: 22nd October 2008

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Grab your maracas it's Samba time on the Wii.

Samba de Amigo Details:

	Arcade
	Nintendo Wii
	Sega
	Sega

TBA

Out Now

N/A

Samba de Amigo is the re-release of the Dreamcast game of the same name released in 2000, whereas at that time it cost you £100 pounds for the game and the hardware needed! Now, it is being sold on the Wii with a much more reasonable price tag!

The premise of the game is very simple, the Wii remote and nunchuck become maracas in this game and you must shake them in time with the song. In a similar vein to the Rock Band/Guitar Hero and dancing mat games, it is all about your sense of rhythm and timing. On the screen there are 6 coloured circles in rows of two, the left hand circles are selected using the nunchuck in your left hand and the right hand circles are controlled using the remote in your right hand. The top two red ones are selected when you hold the remote or nunchuck vertically upwards, the middle yellow circles require you to hold the remote or nunchuck horizontally level and finally the bottom two yellow circles are selected by holding the remote or nunchuck vertically downwards. It’s a lot simpler than it sounds!

Small blue circles move out from the centre of your 6 circles towards the circles and you need to shake the correct hand which is held in the correct position when the small blue circle lands inside the circle. There are also red notes that are basically like a drum roll where you shake the remote and nunchuck as quickly as you can! It is quite simple to pick up when you actually play. The more notes you hit in a row the greater your score multiplier becomes, but as soon as you miss a note you lose your multiplier. Every correct note increases your gauge at the top of the screen, every time you fill the gauge you jump up in rank by one letter, all the way up to an A rank, missing notes consecutively makes your gauge decrease and if your gauge is completely empty you drop down a ranking letter down to E and then if you empty the gauge you fail the song, but on easy and normal difficulty its almost impossible to fail the song!

As well as shaking your maracas, there are also times when you need to pose in a specific position detailed by the on-screen prompts, as before you simply have to hold your remote and nunchuck in the correct position to score the points. A new feature in this Wii version of the game is the dance moves, this goes one step further than the posing mentioned above and you are required to perform the action that is shown on screen. This could have you waving the remote above your head or swinging it full circle. You may have already guessed but you will look extremely foolish playing this game, but that is half the fun, and makes it an ideal party game, thanks to the pick-up and play nature of the game.

The song selection is full of the stuff you’d expect to see, as there is definitely a Latino style in the game art, so the likes of Sway, Livin’ La Vida Loca, Mambo Number 5 and Hot, Hot, Hot, but there are also some cheesier choices such as Tubthumping and the Ketchup song! Most of the songs are recognisable when you hear them even if the name doesn’t ring any bells!

The single player mode contains a career mode where you start on easy difficulty and complete a set of 5 songs, to unlock the next set of 5 songs in that difficulty, once you have completed all the sets of songs in the easy difficulty the normal difficulty is unlocked and so on up to superhard difficulty! Completion of the career mode unlocks new songs to play and new sound effects for your maracas.

The easy and normal difficulties are quite straightforward, but the hard difficulty and above throws lots more notes for you to hit and will require a lot of practise to complete. For multiplayer purposes you’re never going to have it set higher than normal, because it is just too hard for beginners.

There are some mini-games to bulk out the single player mode, but none of these are as fun as the main game. They’re all pretty simple, one has you playing a whack-a-mole style game, another has you breaking rocks by rapid-shaking of the maracas, then there’s the Strike A Pose game and Dance Dance Amigo which I believe are self explanatory, and a Simon Says style game.

There are plenty of modes to choose from in multiplayer mode, a Battle mode where doing well increases your Bomb Counter, which when full will explode on the other player and decrease their life, and it’s the last one standing wins. There is the Classic mode which works in an arcade type fashion, where you do two songs back to back and if you don’t fail then a third song is played and the overall score of all the rounds is calculated to see who the winner is. The co-operative mode is called Love Love, where points are scored only when both players are synchronised and it actually gives you a rating on how compatible the two players are!

The controls overall work fine, but occasionally there are a few missed notes or poses, this is mainly due to the middle left circle, which is your nunchuck hand being level, and is probably due the tilt sensor in the nunchuck not being able to cope with the crucial role it plays in this game. It doesn’t happen that often but is slightly annoying when you lose your hard worked combo bonus. This can be overcome by using the two remotes control style, hence eliminating the nunchuck, but you’ll probably need that second remote for the second player, because it is essentially a multiplayer game.

There is also a training mode to help explain the basics of the game as well as some of the more advanced techniques needed in the harder difficulties. There is also an online leader board mode for you and your Wii friends if you both have the game and can connect to the internet. There is also a section for downloading new songs for the game by spending your Wii points, at the moment there is only one pack available but more will undoubtedly appear as time goes on.

Graphically Samba de Amigo looks pretty nice, it’s extremely bright and full of colour which suits the fun-loving nature of the game. Not that you have much of a chance to admire the scenery, you’ll be far too busy watching those all important 6 circles to notice the background! The song selection is suitably varied and the covers are pretty good, the games introduction track is also available to play in the game, and is very catchy and good fun. The music choices suit the game style in nature and the in game art.

The single player mode may be a bit limited, and the mini games aren’t going to keep you interested for very long, but this is an excellent multiplayer party game, and lets face it if you buy this game that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?! Overall, it’s a welcome return for a game that went relatively unnoticed on its first outing. The controls can be a little unfair at times, but the fun factor makes up for the occasional annoyance of losing your combo bonus. The song selection is brilliant and will have you bopping along as well as shaking your maracas, and its just good laugh out loud fun for everyone to enjoy!