Samba de Amigo

Samba de Amigo is a rhythm game and is very much like Donkey Konga in it's presentation. Nintendo probably took a lot of inspiration from this game since Samba De Amigo made its début on the Dreamcast. The original had a maraca peripheral but with the Wii version, you use your remote and Nunchuk to simulate the maracas.

Shake the controllers pointing up for the high notes, horizontally for the medium notes, and pointing down for the lower notes. Additionally there are dance moves where you move between 2 or more points, and pose moves where you strike a pose for a couple of seconds. The notation features small circles that start in the middle and propagate out to the circle targets arranged in a hexagon. It seems strange when you are used to Guitar Hero notation which the notes scroll towards you. Samba de Amigo's notation seems tricky to read when the notes come fast and travel in different directions. However, even if you do add extra shakes; the system doesn't penalise you for it.

The penalty system it does have is ridiculously harsh. Missing a note seems to take around half of your score bar away meaning you could have the song perfected, miss a couple of notes and end up with a B rating. How can 97% on a song equate to a B grade? It is particularly infuriating when you are on a C near the end of a song and miss a note, because you will drop to a D with not enough notes remaining to take your score back up. To progress through the songs, you need to score a C or above.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that sometimes the controller feels unresponsive. Its not so bad on the slower songs, but when you have to transfer between raised and lowered remote quite quickly, it can happen fairly often. The controls really aren't as bad as other reviews make out though, but the game does expect you to play in a certain way for it to register. A good example is if you want to shake both your maracas to one side. If you are shaking to the left, you must twist your right hand slightly for it to register.

Career mode is split into Easy, Normal, Hard, and Super Hard but the song difficulty really varies; there are some difficult songs near the end of Hard mode, and some really easy songs in Super Hard mode.

The track selection is great with lots of summery, Latino tracks plus some modern pop songs. Even if you don't recognise a lot of the tracks by names, you will recognise them when hearing them. Overall, Samba de Amigo is a fairly good game and provides plenty of fun as long as you get the posture correct and can maintain it when the notes come fast in all directions. At times it can be frustrating and gets tiring over longer periods, but is great in small bursts.