Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Samba de Amigo: hey hey, we're not the Sonic Team

And boy, does it show. The Gearbox logo looks dire in the bouncy colourful lively startup sequence, all grey and boring. Where's the cheery voice? Where's the fun background music? Why didn't they just copy the front end from the Dreamcast game, which was perfect?

It's not all bad, though. It was at first; it was an uncontrollable mess, with needless "hustle" sections shoehorned into Tubthumping, destroying the amazing original. After a few songs, though, I started to work out how the game measured things, and by placing a finger along the side of the remote, and "shaking" by jerking the remote sideways towards the screen, I've found something that registers almost all the time, and also sort of feels like I'm playing on the Dreamcast again.

Sort of; almost. If it wasn't for the fact that the Wii version has many more songs, and more play modes, than the Dreamcast version, I'd not see this getting much play. As it is, after a bit of practice it works OK, and I can see myself playing it a bit, and it also coming out at parties. But it's a huge disappointment, to be fair. I can't imagine that many people at parties being willing to commit the time to understanding how to control the game; it should be intuitive and immediate, and it's not. A long way from it.

I hope this sells well, though, so that they can bring out Samba de Amigo v2009 using Wii MotionPlus and get it working properly.

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