Amplitude
PaRappa who?
Tags: Amplitude Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Aug 10th, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Amplitude (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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A while back, a little-known developer called Harmonix made a little-known music-rhythm game called Frequency. It was original, it had a bitchin’ soundtrack, and it was good. Very Good. Met with massive critical acclaim, many fans of the genre overlooked the game, possibly because there’s something about the genre that makes Japanese weirdness a required trait, and Frequency’s sleek, stylish look didn’t fit into that category. Well, Harmonix came back with a sleek, stylish sequel that sports many improvements over the original. This title has a ton of well-known bands, it has backgrounds that incorporate video segments, and it has a plethora of online features the likes of which is virtually unprecedented in console games. This game is Amplitude.
In Amplitude, like most music-rhythm games, you play through a song attempting to time buttons to the notes of a song. Amplitude’s game mechanics start out even more simple than most games like this. You play along a track, the drum track for example. You time your presses of three buttons to meet up with left, right, and center markers on the track, building the track as you go along. Successful completion of a few bars of a track clears the track and it starts playing automatically, allowing you to move to another one.
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Repeating this pattern, moving from track to track, you’re essentially creating songs peice by peice, choosing to make this next verse focus on the vocals, with only precussion playing in the background, or maybe you want to build up to have the full song playing. In easier difficulties, players continue playing so long as they can consistently keep clearing tracks, and can gain higher scores by completing tracks quickly in succession without missing a beat. In higher difficulties, continuing long combos is essentially required, as the game demands you constantly making high scores or you lose.
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To help you out, players can pick up various power-ups that are littered across the tracks. Some act as score multipliers, some automatically clear a track for you, and others do various things like slow down the song for a short bit. One bonus acually allows you to sail easy for a couple bars on an axe or scratch freestyle track, which doesn’t critique your performance, instead allowing you to create your own style while still collecting points for a short period.
This in and of itself really helps to set this game apart from the gamut of other music-rhythm games, as working on each individual component of a song actually gives you the sensation that you are creating the song, not just keeping up with button presses so it doesn’t stop playing. To this end, in addition to the regular game mode, there’s also a remix mode that allows you to create your own customized versions of the songs included, and play on those as well.
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The game’s music is varied in styles, including some rock, rap, house, hip-hop, techno, trance, and even a little funk and synth-pop. In addition, the game has a number of high-profile musicians like David Bowie, Blink 182, Pink, and Garbage, as well as a number of more obscure artists, including the return of cult favorite Freezepop, a group that seems to have become a staple for Harmonix’s titles (Not that I’m complainng). With all the variety in genre, high-profile names and choice song selections, this game could very well have the best licensed soundtrack in the history of videogames.
The game also has a number of graphical improvements over the original too. While still touting a virtual-reality electronic look that’s still not necessarily technically impressive, everything still has its own style and it works for the game, much in the same way it worked for Frequency. Now, however, the environments are more detailed, and occasionally feature video clips that play in the background. In addition, Amplitude’s environments resonate with the music playing, making it react to the gameplay. This means that every time you hit a note, the screen reacts, and keeping the song in motion makes the level keep moving as well, which helps to enhance the effect that succeeding in playing through songs is having an impact on the level.
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As if this wasn’t enough, Amplitude has a decent number of multiplayer features, including a ton of online play modes. Players can go online to compete, work together to create the best-sounding version of a song, or share custom-created tracks (Submitted to and hand-picked by Harmonix). While the game is playable in multiplayer in person, the camera is a bit prohibitive and makes the game difficult to play, making this mode one of the few things that Amplitude doesn’t do quite as well as Frequency did.
However, the plethora of online options makes up for this, and it’s hard to complain about one thing the game does wrong when everything else is so right. Amplitude, much like Frequency, is one of the best music-rhythm games in the history of the genre, and shouldn’t be missed. Even more than this, it’s an admirable sequel that improves in some way on almost everything its predecessor did. In short, Amplitude is everything you could want out of a music-rythm game, except the Japanesey weirdness.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Fantastic music + Incredibly fun gameplay + A ton of gameplay and online options |
9.4 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Offline multiplayer a bit too awkward - No Japanesey weirdness... wait, is that a bad thing? |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you like music-rhythm games at all, you must own this game. | |
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Tags: Amplitude
Posted by Jake McNeill on Aug 10th, 2003 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
