I've always been a little bit weary of the Samba de Amigo games. Something about flailing plastic maracas around coupled with my total lack of coordination seems... dangerous. I have no sense of timing or rhythm, my body moves with the grace and flow of a marionette. I'm lucky I don't have kids because there won't be video footage of me accidentally beaning them in the face with a joycon, but the potential for self-harm is still there... "1... 2... 3... jump!" and my hands go directly through the lights of my ceiling fan. Spending the night getting glass picked out of my knuckles in the urgent care. Terrible. Why would I sign on for that?

Well, the allure of a good deal, for one. Big thank you to Sega for sending Samba de Amigo: Party Central out to die so I could grab it for a cool 14$. Also, I do like to party (alcoholic) and I love to get down (on the ground because I drank too much), so I spent some time clearing furniture to make a good open space and moved my collection of priceless Victorian era porcelain dolls out of the way and finally played me a little Samba de Amigo.

Party Central is remarkably easy and probably the best time I've ever had with a rhythm game in terms of sheer personal performance. I was pulling A and S ranks with ease because it's just so lenient, almost comically so, and while the low skill ceiling might be a problem for some, waving my arms around like Kermit and still being told "aw, good job, buddy!" made me feel pretty great! The StreamiGo mode, which adds additional objectives like getting less than three boo's or clearing with a set score, adds a little extra challenge and replay value, and I do think the whole conceit of Amigo trying to build clout as a streamer is pretty funny. He's gonna have to switch to hot tub streams eventually, that's... that's where the money is. Subscribe to Amigo's OnlyFans...............

I did encounter a lot of issues with misread inputs and latency but honestly, that might just be my Joycons. I've long been suffering from drift despite barely using these things, the Joycons are hands-down the worst controllers Nintendo has put out, which is quite an accomplishment all things considered. Bad form factor and cheap parts... it would not surprise me if I simply have poor form, but I'd be even less shocked if this was a hardware issue. Still, Party Central is so forgiving that it never became more than a minor annoyance.

If you're as rhythmically impaired as I am, you might actually get something out of Party Central and considering how cheap it is (Sega had like, zero confidence in this, huh?) it's a pretty easy pick up. Just make sure you have your Joycon straps on or you'll fling one of them directly into your porcelain doll collection and straight through the window and directly into the face of the neighbor's kid and spend your whole morning writing this review on hold with the insurance company

i'm in a lot of fuckin trouble, man