At this point in their career, rhythm games have now become synonymous with Harmonix Music Systems. Their first major entry in the music genre was Frequency, a game published by Sony in 2001 for the PlayStation 2. It featured a weird electronic-based soundtrack that was put together and destroyed by players as they attempted to rhythmically hit note streaks with their FreQ – a virtual avatar. Then a sequel came in 2003, entitled Amplitude, which had more popular artists but still carried a grungy, electronic feel to it that reflected the era it existed in. Enter 2016 and Amplitude is back with just as much style as it had before, with some minor and major changes to the game’s structure.
The first thing to say is that Amplitude boasts a soundtrack that very much reflects the kind of music popular right now. You’re not going to get popular artists like Skrillex or Ellie Goulding, but what you do get is a wide array of eclectic styles of electronic-infused music. From Harmonix regulars like Freezepop to composers like Jim Guthrie and Danny Baranowsky to even artists like Single White Infidel and Inter:sect. There is plenty of off-beat music to enjoy, with a selection of 30 songs that reflect a lot of what is popular in electronic music today. Most of these songs are gated behind the need to play a set number of songs before unlocking them, each one rising in difficulty with the more songs it requires to have been played to unlock. Fortunately, Amplitude will give you all the songs just for playing the game a little while, as opposed to requiring you to be good at the game.
The core gameplay of Amplitude hasn’t changed since the days of Frequency. You still blast notes off a track highway with L1, R1, and R2 (control scheme can be altered), slowly putting together a song by completing notestreaks over various components of a song. Each track represents an instrument, and completing a track temporarily allows it to play autonomously as the player attempts to continue their streak and assemble the rest of the song. The pro-tip is that drums are almost always the hardest as they have the most notes, so if you feel confident and want a higher score then go for those, but if you’re hesitant in your abilities try to avoid moving to the drum track until necessary.
Amplitude has always had a very simple design to it, but the way that note streaks operate and how power-ups are utilized has made the risk/reward aspect of the series extremely satisfying. There is only that brief moment between finishing a track and starting a new one to continue your combo, that leaves a chance for strategy. But it exists and it is an incredible high when you move left instead of right to get more points and actually succeed. What makes this easier is the new implementation of “track seeking”. Previously, you would have to move track-by-track to get to the next track with actual notes on it. This meant that you could lose your streak if you weren’t fast enough to get there. Now with track seeking moving in the direction of a track that is ready to be blasted means you move immediately there, as opposed to going track-by-track. It is the most welcome addition to the game.
There are also power-ups, as always, that can be used with some strategy. The Cleanse power-up is the equivalent of the previous “Autoblaster”, destroying a track to raise your streak, but removing the opportunity to get points from that track. The Sedate power-up slows down the tracks so that you can more safely hit certain notes. Usually I saved this for notes that were too close together for a long duration. Multiply does just as its name suggests, allowing for scores to rack up quicker. Meanwhile, the final power-up in the single player mode is Flow, which is equivalent to the freestyle solos of Rock Band where players can have a little freedom to mess with the track. Both Cleanse and Flow can also be deployed after messing up a note pattern, but before the track ends, in order to save a streak multiplier. This comes in handy with songs that have specific parts which are daunting but not frequent. My concern that still stands after beating songs multiple times is that sometimes I wish the game would not automatically pick-up power-ups, or at least make it extremely obvious that I’ve done so. Sometimes you can pick up power-ups if the track continues beyond the sequence you need to complete, but you won’t see those power-ups because you’re preparing to switch lanes and continue your streak. This was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, but I did deploy Sedate on multiple occasions when I thought I had Cleanse.
Saving a streak multiplier comes in handy during later stages of the Campaign, as well. For once, Amplitude attempts something more ambitious then just giving a list of tracks to go through and unlocking a bonus song to complete by hitting a certain score. No, instead, Amplitude is constructed as a concept album about a girl who is comatose and being slowly awakened by an experiment done by doctors. It isn’t as straight-forward as that though. Each song in the 15-song concept album begins with a sentence or some piece of the story, but taking place from the perspective of the one in the coma. It’s such an interesting campaign because it actually creates a sense of empathy with the character that is comatose, because she is clearly still capable of having thoughts. “I wish I could see what you see” states a doctor, though what we see as the player is just the gameplay of Amplitude. However, it also tells the story through its lyrics and visualizations, taking advantage of the concept album conceit.
There is an implication that the reason the patient is slowly being awoken from her coma is because of the completion of songs that slowly lead to the revival of parts of the brain. Obviously, this is where the reality of the situation diverges from the gameplay, but there is definitely the possibility that the patient believes she is waking up because of her actions. It’s such a subtle way to tell a story, but it works well in the context of the game. Music therapy is certainly a thing, and it has been proven that even in a vegetative state patients can still think. Having the final song of each section of the brain (there are three that need to be awoken, four songs in each part with a bonus song that needs to be unlocked to get the actual ending) require players to have a certain streak multiplier before hitting a checkpoint is explained away as the checkpoints being memory barriers. Presumably, not having the sufficient multiplier before going through a checkpoint would affect memory loss. The game leaves the story open to either ending where it does or possibly continuing, in which the memory loss stuff could potentially surface if Harmonix has such ambitious goals.
The campaign is short, but there are four difficulties to go through, with a fifth one– called Super difficulty –being unlocked by players who can master Expert difficulty’s campaign. Unlike Rock Band, where songs are sometimes a drag to play on lower difficulties, I found Amplitude to always be rewarding to play no matter the difficulty because of its structure of note streaks and streak multipliers. Then there’s the leaderboard competition that is always exciting, and having online leaderboards for Amplitude is such an obvious feature that incites competition.
Multiplayer does not stop at leaderboards though, as there is also team play and versus, which allows for four players to play at once locally. There is no online play, which is perhaps the biggest problem with this release of Amplitude. It’s such a shame because we are now in a generation where poor internet connections exist, but rarely surface in my experience, which means Amplitude‘s chaotic multiplayer could have worked if some effort was put into it. I’m sure the idea was tossed around, but playing it safe with local multiplayer limits the audience for the game. That being said, Power-ups like Eject and Disrupt are added to the fray of versus and team play, meaning that there are even more ways to really mess with an opponent. Eject is used most effectively when either A) a large note streak is coming up on an opponents track, so you boot them from it at the last second, hurting their streak and giving you the advantage over them, or B) ejecting a player before he finishes his track, thus sabotaging him. Disrupt is pretty effective as distorting the opponent’s track for a short time, but is used best when there are lots of notes on a track to miss.
The truth is, as someone who has played a lot of Frequency and Amplitude back on PS2, Amplitude is the exact game I was looking for. It lacks some features that would have made it a pretty perfect game, but Amplitude is not hurt that much by its exclusions. It is a tight package with 30 well-curated songs – 15 of which are not included in the campaign. That does not mean the game is lean though, as it offers so much replay value by merely having leaderboards. The risk/reward systems of the game benefit players that can think on their feet as well as skillfully maneuver the note patterns of tracks. What is most palpable is the ability to sit back and think about Amplitude‘s story without feeling like it was a tacky addition. It has feeling to it and creates an empathetic narrative through its gameplay and subtle clues as to what is happening. This is the music game that Harmonix fans will enjoy and will play well to those who want a competitive, arcade title.