Games like
Guitar Freaks, Beatmania and even
Samba De Amigo succeeded because their direction was clear. Beatmania cast you in the role of a DJ and gave you music that you would expect to hear in a nightclub.
Guitar Freaks gave you music that you expect to hear at a rock concert while
Samba gave you music that would be in place at Carnival. Contrast this to
Amplitude, which throws a bunch of random tracks at you and expects you to adapt. Am I a DJ? Am I a rock star? Am I in a boyband? Chances are, you’ll change roles and tasks so often that you’ll lose track entirely.
While the game features Dolby Pro Logic II support I noticed some discrepancies in the quality of the audio. It seemed that some tracks were recorded at different volumes while others were recorded at different qualities. Sometimes one track would be entirely too loud while the next was mysteriously quiet. Some aspects of the songs, such as the vocals or the drums, would fade in and out for no reason while some songs just seemed to be poor in quality. Thankfully this doesn’t affect the majority of the tracks, but if you know a song like Blink 182’s “The Rock Show” from the inside-out you may sorely disappointed, especially when you hear Mark’s vocals fading in and out for no apparent reason.
This isn’t to say that all of the tracks are bad or of poor quality, because to be honest, the bulk of them are good. Most of them will have you thumping along in your seat while they're playing and in some cases, you might find yourself humming the tunes long after you're finished playing. For every bad track there are 4 good ones and only about 3 tracks, the Slipknot, Papa Roach and Pink, were unbearable for me. I did feel there was a bit of repetition in many of the trance-like tracks though and I had to suffer to get through them.
Gameplay remains virtually unchanged from
FreQuency. You still travel down that virtual highway and there are still three notes on the track. The way the tracks are unlocked has been changed a bit and it works well in some situations and poorly in others.
FreQuency was split up into various sections and unlocking a track in that game would unlock it until the next section came up.
Amplitude differs in that it unlocks the track for a few bars and comes back, regardless of the next section is coming up or not. This is nice because it keeps you busy with button presses instead of the dead action that populated some of
FreQuency as you waited to get into the next section. However, this is bad when it comes to stringing together combos.
You’ll have to be much faster this time around just to keep the combos going and chances are, if you mess up from the start your combo string will be ruined. You have to be very deliberate and careful in your planning. From the start you’ll probably want to start from the very left and move over to the right, all the time keeping the combo alive. Well if you happen to mess up along the way your whole rhythm is messed up and your chances of earning big points are significantly hindered.
It’s not to say that the game’s not fun because it’s still a blast to play. Anyone who enjoyed the previous entry in this series will find themselves loving every minute of
Amplitude. It’s because of the way the tracks are laid out. They’re challenging and at the same time, are very rewarding to the gamer. Completing a huge string of 10+ notes on a 120 BPM song is a real rush that makes the gamer feel like he accomplished something. In that respect the game is still as addicting and engaging as ever.
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