Here's how this was supposed to work: Samba de Amigo , a terrific maraca shaking, Latin music-themed rhythm game that was effectively condemned to obscurity because it had been developed solely for the doomed Dreamcast, would finally step into the limelight with a remake for Nintendo's phenomenally popular Wii system. The icing on top was that players would be able to use the Wii's own motion sensitive controllers, eliminating the need to pony up for pricey maraca peripherals.
Alas, it doesn't seem to be panning out this way. Of course, we won't know until the sales numbers roll in and gamers start lighting up forums with their thoughts, but I spent about three hours with the new Samba de Amigo on Tuesday night and came away without much in the way of warm fuzzies-a feeling shared by many other critics.
The fun of the original Dreamcast game came in how players could ham it up with their toy maracas, which they were able to shake all over the place without worrying too much about whether their movements would be accurately recognized.
Swapping the maracas for a pair of Wii remotes, it turns out, eliminates much of this freedom.
Samba uses onscreen cues to direct players in shaking their maracas above their heads, at their wastes, and down by their knees. The problem is that there is precious little room for error in how the remotes have to be positioned for each shake. High shakes demand the remote to be pointed straight at the ceiling, medium shakes require it to be parallel with the ground, and low shakes will only register if the remote is pointed directly at the floor. Anything less than surgical precision will result in a missed beat-and much consternation.
In the end, the only way I could hit most cues was to stand perfectly still with my legs together. I'd leave my arms pointing straight down for low shakes, bend them to 90 degrees to hit waist level beats, and then continue bending my elbow up to 180 degrees for the high shakes.
I felt like a robot. Most of the joy of the Afro-Cuban music pumping from my television-which all but demands some serious body busting-was sucked away.
To be fair, we do get to do break out a little in Hustle mode, which features minimal maraca shaking and has us instead waving our arms all over the place (the remotes do a much better job of picking up these larger movements). Plus, if you play on easy mode you only need worry about waist level and high shakes (and far less of them), which gives the player's body a little more of a chance to bop to the rhythm.
Still, it's just not as much fun as the original.
Should Samba see a sequel, let's hope Sega incorporates Nintendo's upcoming MotionPlus technology, a plastic box that snaps onto the bottom of the Wii remote to enhance the controller's motion sensitivity, allowing for almost perfect one-to-one movement. Perhaps then Samba de Amigo will finally be all it can be.