What parents need to know
Samba De Amigo: Party Central is a dance game that invites players to wave the joycons of their Nintendo Switch like maracas. It is therefore necessary to shake the joycons in rhythm with the 40 songs chosen in order to make the best score.
There are 2 ways to play this game:
Shake: Where we perform the movements of the arms with the joycons in hand. Up, Down, Left or Right.
Buttons: Where the Up, Down, Left buttons are pressed to emulate the left maracas, and X, B, A to emulate the right maracas. An interesting option for people with disabilities.
It is the second game in the series. The first was released on Dreamcast and Wii. There is no need to have played the previous one to enjoy this one.
The game was provided by the publisher for review. It does not influence our opinion.
Details
Level of experience required
| Age | 3+ | 7+ | 12+ | 16+ | 18+ |
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| Beginners |  |
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| Intermediate | |
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| Experienced | |
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Evaluation
None.
None.
Read instructions and song names. A child could manage by memorizing menus.
Paint the town? No problem here.
You have to react quickly to move the joycons or press the buttons in rhythm with the music. A lot of reflexes and anticipation needed.
You have to buy the game with 40 songs, and then additional songs are available for purchase. Many new songs will be available for purchase as the months go by in order to keep the game active and give it a timeliness.
Local game modes
Rhythm Game
1 player. Main classic mode. Choose the song of your choice and play it.
Party for Two
2 players. 4 game modes to play 2.
- Classic rhythm game.
- Love Checker: A fun mode to test your love compatibility with your partner. You have to make the movements synchronously, and at the end the game gives us a note of compatibility.
- Show Down: Compete against your partner in a maracas contest to impress the audience.
- Mini Rhythm Games: Full of mini games to play 2.
StreamiGo
1 player. A mission mode to “stream” and get subscribers. We don’t really stream, it’s just a mission/challenge mode with special conditions.
Online Game Modes
World Party
A survival mode where you compete for the highest score against 19 other players online on 3 songs to be number 1. The first songs eliminate players as they go to leave only 8
Online Play
To compete against friends only.
Our opinion
It is an arcade game like its predecessor. The goal is to make the best scores on the available songs. For this, it is necessary to move the joycons when the spheres between the circles. The principle is as simple as that, and that’s fine.
The fun is to improve, to have a better performance, a better score. The more you play the game, the more you fill an experience bar that unlocks bonuses as you go. You also earn virtual currency that unlock costumes for your character Amigo, the little monkey. It’s not bad and it encourages perseverance.
There are a few issues with the visibility of the instructions on the screen:
- The backgrounds are so colorful and animated that they distract spheres that must be followed to move in time
- the spheres appear very quickly on the screen from the center, unlike a Dance Dance Revolution where you can see the next arrows arrive well in advance.
- The bonuses, mini-games that take place during a song are not always clear in their instructions, and most of the time we validate them without knowing what we have done.
- When we play with the buttons, the game continues to give us the instructions for the joycons/maracas, and we don’t always know what the equivalent is, especially when we are supposed to make a diagonal movement.
The motion detection is very lax, and a lot of press on the buttons is validated at any time. Fortunately, otherwise it would make the game very difficult.
Despite the flaws mentioned, I really like the simplicity of the game, no headache. This makes it possible to start and stop the game at any time without guilt, and to share it with anyone quickly.
Choose the song, move the joycons, voila.
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