As if there weren't enough games out to buy this week, Samba de Amigo also hits stores. You'll all recall that I loved this game pretty hardcore at E3, so some of the reviews have left me arching an eyebrow. Especially from the European outlets, Samba has gotten completely slammed for poor controls, something I'll discuss below.
Now, obviously, when I played Samba the controls were great provided the batteries in the Remotes were still fresh (and the game obviously chewed through them like mad at a show floor), but hey, I spent maybe twenty or thirty minutes with it. Maybe the reviewers are seeing something direly wrong with Samba I wasn't? We'll take a look at the scores and see if the haters have solid arguments that can account for Samba de Amigo's currently-disappointing 74% Metacritic average.
I still plan on buying Samba de Amigo, since I never found the game for the Dreamcast and I know my husband and sundry other casual gaming friends would get a real kick out of it. That said, I am left wondering if the game has what it takes to satisfy more hardcore rhythm game players than myself.
The high score comes, very unusually, from Nintendo Power. Usually one of the harsher North American review outlets, Nintendo Power awarded Samba de Amigo a rare 9 out of 10. Reviewer Steve Thomason is clearly familiar with the original version of the title, but still praises the Samba controls as accurate-- if requiring a slightly different technique than the original. I'm going to quote the passage of the 2/3 page review about controls, because this is really the critical factor in all of the reviews we're going to look at.
Of course, the big question on the minds of Samba devotees is how the controls stack up to the Dreamcast version and its beloed maracas peripheral. The answer: extremely well. You can use either a Wii Remote and Nunchuk or two Wii Remotes, and though the latter scheme definitely benefits from rumble and controller-emitted sound effects, both feel great. The way the game works does differ slightly from its predecessor - shake positions are now determined by where you pont the controllers rather tan how hith you hold them - so serious vets may need a few songs to get acclimated. After that, you'll be getting your Samba on and loving every minute of it.
GamePro was also unusually positive if in a more muted way than Nintendo Power, offering a 4 out of 5 score. Reviewer Ivy Yup has some issues with the control accuracy but also feels the way the game scores a player is forgiving enough for the issues not to really matter. Note that this reviewer didn't mention which control scheme she used, but did mention that both control schemes were available.
Aside from the slight inaccuracies with the controls, the game is forgiving yet challenging enough to keep the player interested. It definitely has its appeal as a party game for either novice or experienced players with its three difficulty levels in addition to a fourth unlockable Superhard Career Mode. By unlocking Superhard Mode, you'll see cameos from old Sega mascots including Sonic and Ulala. That is, if you can keep up with some of the ridiculously quick-spawning orbs that will sure to make any dedicated player feel cross-eyed.
The motion tracking doesn't always seem to catch the exact movement by the player, but this can sometimes work in the player's advantage by flailing your arms and twisting your wrists haphazardly in hopes of landing a matching ring. I'm not as ambidextrous as I'd like to be, but fortunately, the rings allow a good margin of error as the player only has to touch and not completely match the general position of the ring before shaking the Wii Remote(s). Another problem I encountered was the interface. The colorful background can sometimes cause visibility issues against the moving blue orbs, making them hard to see against the busy background. But aside from these issues, there is something really satisfying about beating a challenge, even if it is a barely passing grade.
Eurogamer (of course) is one of the two low scores, giving Samba de Amigo a 6 out of 10. Their accusation against the controls is precise and interesting: due to a difference in the way Gearbox decided to calculate positioning, even if you use the optimal two-Remote control style, you will have difficulty beating songs because of controls not picking up your movements correctly. Reviewer Kristan Reed also admitted the game wasn't really to taste, which probably affected the game's score.
Needless to say, the imprecise nature of the controls starts to weigh heavily once you're faced with more complex routines and manoeuvres. You'll go from being able to do each song with pretty much with your eyes shut to hitting a brick wall the minute you progress to Hard mode. The games almost works perfectly when asking the player to perform very deliberate actions, but demands an unreasonable level of precision later on - a level of precision that is currently beyond the Wiimote. While the expensive Dreamcast system employed was capable of triangulating the position of each maraca relative to the sensor bar, Gearbox's Wii system relies on static acceleration data. While this is a clever alternative on paper, it has limitations when you're being asked to move from high to low to medium positions in quick succession - while also shaking in time. It's a nice workaround up to a point, but it doesn't quite work in the white heat of maraca-shaking insanity.
Another 6 out of 10 score comes from NGamer UK, whose review contains an eyebrow-raising oversight. It appears that they decided that the Remote and Nunchuk control style was the default instead of the two Remote style, and as such, dock the game heavily because the Nunchuk - and in their review, only the Nunchuk - had difficulty correctly registering its height position during gameplay. NGamer admits that you can play the game with two Remotes, but for some stupid reason doesn't seem to want to.
But here's where we hit the new problem. Stop dancing. Bring up the house lights and cut the music - we have a terribly sad, party-spoiling announcement to make: the game's controls simply don't work well enough on Wii. There's a high, middle and low zone for each hand to shake in and, after many careful calibration attempts, we're still having difficulty hitting the middle zone with the nunchuk.
We've tried holding it differently or flicking it to the left (which helped a bit), but ultimately it's just not fun to play when you're shaking gleefully away and it's saying 'Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.'2 We know we're not bad because when it works right we're getting 98% scores. Using a remote in each hand is the best option, but it never feels right. Perhaps what frustrates us most is that early preview copies of the game worked really well, but something significant's been changed somewhere along the production line and now it doesn't.
Doesn't feel right? What the... look, when Sega was doing demos of the game at E3, they were doing it in two Remote style, and that is clearly how you're supposed to play the game. Nunchuk style is just a concession to players who might want to do multiplayer despite not having four Remotes in the house. Yes, the commercials show people playing in Nunchuk style, and all I can say is those commercials are wrong. You play Samba de Amigo Wii with two Remotes if you can, end of story.
Nintendo Power's experience with the new way that Samba Wii detects what height your Remote is at is exactly my experience of how the game detects where your Remote is. If you're having a harder time getting the game to detect your Remote angle at high difficulties, it's probably because you're angling it more sloppily in the heat of the moment (due to, perhaps, not knowing that angle is the key to detection, not height, or just getting in a rush to move). That would be part of what makes that difficulty Hard, now wouldn't it?
There are few games where I'll say "disregard the reviews" for whatever reason, but Samba is one where I'll have to do so. There are a lot of reviews for this game by people who don't seem to have figured out how the Wii Remote detection is supposed to work or even that you're supposed to play it with two Remotes. Rent the game for yourself and give it a try if you're worried about controls, and see how well you respond to them. If you don't like it, then absolutely don't buy; no sense in wasting your money. But this is a case where I honestly think difficulty with Samba's controls isn't a problem with the game recognizing correct input so much as a problem with figuring out how it works and how you're supposed to play it.
