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These days, I often wonder what ever happened to video games that required
reflex, skill and a high demand of hand to eye coordination. Sure, it's great
to have offerings that place you in immersive worlds or have some fairly insightful
gameplay. But we usually do not see "twitch games" come around anymore. Occasionally,
we get tossed a bone or two, such as Um Jammer Lammy, Space Channel 5 or the occasional
light gun game. Amplitude, the sequel to 2001's FreQuency manages to bring back
gaming that is not only an assult on your senses, but also bring back gaming that
forces you to think on your toes. If you were to see Amplitude without playing it,
you would probably be intimidated by how the game flows. It's often fast-paced,
depending on the song you choose (speed is determined by BPM), and can often
look very complicated. But by going through an in-depth tutorial, Amplitude is
suprisingly easy to grasp, yet very hard to put down.
The design of Amplitude can best be described as a nusic themed animatic ride,
where to keep on moving from start to finish, you will need to blast open capsules
that release pieces of the music track. It's a game that has no real story, but that's
fine. I can think of it as a chance to play with music. There are a few modes to
Amplitude, which include the Solo player mode, Multiplayer mode, Remix mode and
the Online mode. Within these modes are practice stages, tutorials, main stages
and a chance to play your custom remixes or ones you can download online. I would
say that all play modes, be it Solo, Multiplayer or Online provide a wealth of
longevity. In the solo mode, you can choose from four difficulty levels, and they
do get harder as you move along. While there's only 25 songs in the whole game,
you will be playing some over again to best your score. And the score also determines
wether you can have access to a bonus song or not. The Multiplayer mode is a battle
to see who can score the most. I've never been able to go online (don't have a
modem), I assume the gameplay is similar to the multiplayer mode. You can also
download custom remixes.
The stages in Amplitude are basically songs that you play through. Your first
three stages consist of POD's "Boom" remixed by the Crystal Method, Garbage's
"Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)", and Quarashi's "Baseline. Once you get through the
first three, you unlock the boss song, and if you score high enough in that set,
you get a bonus song. There are 5 sets (arenas) of songs to go through, and they
only get tougher as you move along. Some of the later artists include Weezer, David
Bowie, Pink and Blink 182, which has one of the fastest and hardest songs in the
game. While I would say the difficulty ranges by the BPM of each song, I think that's
only a piece of the difficulty. Sure, Garbage's "Cherry Lips" may only be 116 BPM
(compared to Blink 182's much higer BPM), but in the later difficulties such as
brutal, there are a lot more capsules to blast and tougher patterns to play through.
This is why it's both addictive and frustrating. You'll come across complicated
patterns, but with enough practice, you can complete them without thinking about it.
It's kind of cool, really, having the feeling that you got through something complicated
without thinking about it too much.
The graphics of the game are pretty wild. As I said earlier, it feels like a
music-themed animatic. The action takes place "on-rails", but that really doesn't
matter since you need to take care of the capsules. The worlds here are much more open
and complex than FreQuency's. I haven't played the mentioned title, but I have seen
screenshots. Most stages in that game look like they take place in tunnels. While
Amplitude does have a few stages like that (the boss stages), the majority of the game
is a ride of color, flying shapes, high-rises and so much more. It's also kind of
distracting, too. You really want to focus on blasting on the capsules, but the
background tries to steal the show. The framerate stays constant (although how
could it not) and the lines are fairly smooth. Not a whole lot of graphical depth,
but it does very for each stage, and presents each stage with something special.
The sound is very good. Again, how could it not? But in a game that is entirely
music driven, sound quality matters. Each song is fairly sharp, with the only problem
being that when you are in the process of clearing a pattern, that paticular
piece of the music is louder. It's also kind of funny to hear some songs without
certain parts of the song (such as a missing guitar or vocal track), and the slow-mo
effect is pretty humorous. Not too much to gripe about here. You also have the option
to have the game in DPLII.
Final Thought
Amplitude is a fairly trippy game to look at (or play), but it's also one that
finally forces a little more thought, concentration and reaction on the player's
part. Harmonix has shown us that we've had it easy in games latley, and it's time
to have your ass handed to you. It's not often that a game such as this feels
this refreshing out of the ordinary gaming fare, and if you love music just a
little, you will enjoy Amplitude. Do not let the gamne intimidate you, it's easy
to get in to.
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