I’m a Dance Dance
Revolution dropout. I had decided that I was going to get in shape
via video games, and that I was going to play DDR every day for some
amount of time, both because it’s fun and it’s a good workout, but I
couldn’t even tell you where my dance pad is right now. I enjoy the
rhythm genre, and I don’t mind the exercise, but, living on a second
floor apartment, the floor vibrations were just too much, out of
consideration for our neighbors. (Maybe if I actually lost the
weight I had planned to lose with DDR in the first place, this
wouldn’t be as much of an issue, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Needless to say,
neighboring apartments aside, I have become a fan of the rhythm
genre in recent months. So when I heard about Amplitude, which is
basically a rhythm game without all the jumping around, I was
intrigued, despite the fact that I had never played its predecessor,
Frequency. Since I bought it, I’ve basically been glued to my
television until my hands get cramps, trying to clear just one more
song.
The general goal of
Amplitude, like Frequency before it, is to build songs, track by
track. The game board consists of a series of tracks laid out side
by side like lanes on a highway, each representing an instrument, so
you have tracks for guitar, vocals, drums, bass, etc. In order to
play music, you must press buttons in time with beats on those
tracks. If you press a certain sequence of buttons without missing a
beat (known in the game as a “phrase”), then that track is turned on
for a certain amount of time and you can move on to the next track.
It’s simple to a degree, but at the same time it’s not the kind of
game you can just jump into. There’s a learning curve involved both
in training your fingers to hit the right beats and in playing the
game the right way so that you can start turning on tracks and
making music. To that end, the game features an excellent
interactive tutorial that I highly recommend playing through at
least once before jumping into the action.
As with most rhythm
games, each song serves as essentially a new stage to beat, each
with its different intricacies. The variety of songs is actually
very well chosen, with something to appeal to everyone and very
little that is offensive even to my admittedly picky taste in music.
There are the requisite techno and synthpop songs, as well as some
hip-hop, hard rock, and even traditional pop represented in the mix.
I like a lot of the selections, particularly P.O.D.’s “Boom”, Blink
182’s “The Rock Show”, and David Bowie’s “Everyone Says Hi”. But
even artists that I don’t particularly care for, like Slipknot and
Pink, provide songs that are tolerable for gamers who aren’t fans of
their music. The only song that I find really grating is by an
artist called Mekon who I’ve never heard of before Amplitude, but 1
bad song out of 25 is an acceptable ratio as far as I’m concerned.
That said, unless you dislike all loud and fast-tempo music, there’s
something in Amplitude for you, and they do a good job of keeping
all the songs in each group well varied.
Also, despite the fact
that there are only 25 songs included in Amplitude, each of those
songs has four difficulty levels: Mellow, Normal, Insane, and
Brutal. Mellow can be blown through by an average player in an hour
or two, and Normal provides a decent level of difficulty to keep a
new player busy for a while. Insane and Brutal are obviously
intended for veteran Frequency players. Each level has more intense
and complicated sequences of patterns to clear, so a song that was a
breeze to clear on Normal could be considerably tougher on Insane.
There are also extra
modes to play around with if the main game gets either too
repetitive or too intense for you. There’s a Remix mode, which
allows you to lay your own patterns of beats based on those in one
of the songs to create your own versions of them, which you can then
save to the memory card and listen to or even play through in the
main game. This is really one of those modes that you’re either
going to love or ignore, though. To me, remixing songs was rather
tedious and not worth the effort, but I’m sure that there are people
who will think that mode is the best thing since the introduction of
the compact disc.
Multiplayer modes abound
as well, for added replay. Two players can compete along the same
song for score, or play in duel mode, which plays out much like the
basketball game HORSE. Also, unlike Frequency, Amplitude comes with
online capability right out of the box, so if solo play has gotten
too easy and you’ve beaten all your friends, there is a whole world
of players out there who can provide you with a challenge.
Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten a Network Adapter for my PS2 yet, so
I can’t comment on the online aspect of the game.
One thing that is more
important for online play but fun to do even if you’re stuck playing
in the real world like I am is to design your FreQ. Your FreQ is
your avatar in the game; as you travel from track to track, he plays
the instrument which corresponds to that track. There are a number
of prefab FreQs, and you can also customize them or build your own
from FreQ parts. You also unlock more FreQs and FreQ parts as you
clear songs, so the farther you’ve gotten in the game, the cooler
your FreQ will look. It’s a fun diversion to design a FreQ, despite
the fact that it really has on impact on the game proper.
Control is probably the
most important aspect of the game, and probably the biggest
contributor to the learning curve. The default and recommended
control scheme is to use L1, R1, and R2 to hit the left, middle, and
right beats, respectively. Alternatively, you can use square,
triangle and circle instead of or in conjunction with the shoulder
buttons, but it should be said that one thumb will likely not be
sufficient in later levels. (In fact, the game goes so far to tell
you so in the tutorial.) While using the shoulder buttons as the
primary interface may seem a bit awkward, and it likely will be at
first, with practice, the control scheme is extremely natural. I was
actually using circle instead of R2 for a while, which got me
through the early levels, but I found it to be a handicap later on.
When you’re doing things correctly with the shoulder buttons, it
almost (as silly as it may sound) feels like your fingers are
dancing on top of the controller. The first time I felt that, I knew
why the designers picked that control scheme. It does take some
getting used to, but it’s extremely natural once you do.
Graphically, Amplitude is
as trippy as some of the songs it features. The main board graphics
are quite slick, but functional. Each instrument’s track is colored
differently, and the green line that connects beats in a phrase
pulses when you hit each beat to let you know you’re doing things
right. The backgrounds are where things get iffy. Generally, the
backgrounds are spiraling collages of images, clips from videos,
flashing lights, and anything else the designers decided to throw
in. While most of the time you won’t even notice it when you’re
playing, sometimes, the flashes can be distracting from the actual
game, and I daresay that there could be more of a danger with this
game than most if you happen to be prone to seizures.
Overall, Amplitude is an
unusual game that happens to be a whole lot of fun. If you have no
sense of rhythm or poor reflexes, this game might be more trouble
than it’s worth. Otherwise, considering the extended replay value
that online play offers, it’s well worth the reasonable $40 price
tag. I mean, hey, if a game can make listening to Pink not only
tolerable, but even fun, then it’s got to be worth trying.
