935th played so far
Genre: Music
Platform: Playstation 2
Year of Release: 2001
Developer: Harmonix
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
I think I can safely say that I’ve explored Harmonix’ library in reverse – first the Rock Band franchise, then early Guitar Hero, recentlyย Amplitude and now it’s time for their very first game. I’ve seen how the different games influenced each other, with the Amplitude DNA clear in the instrument based series that came after. I understand that Amplitude also built on Frequency‘s mechanics and so I expect a game that’s a step down from that game – which makes me worry if it will stand on its own. We’ll see whether Frequency deserves its own spot.
Our Thoughts
I have to be honest – I ran into some technical difficulties while playing Frequency since the input lag felt pretty bad – worse than it was when I was playing Amplitude. I suspect there’s a display lag issue here, similar to how PaRappa the Rapper was unplayable on our modern TV because the timing assumed your TV didn’t need time to decode the signal. I could get bits right here and there, but even the tutorial was impossible to get through.
With that said, Frequency is similar enough to Amplitude that I got the idea behind the game. The presentation was a bit more primitive and I feel Amplitude‘s improvements make that the better game. Still, there’s a good list of songs – different from the previous ones – and as we’ve seen with all the Rock Band and Guitar Hero sequels, sometimes that’s seen to be enough.
Final Thoughts
I feel I couldn’t give Frequency a fair shot because of these technical difficulties, but at the same time there’s not much pointing towards this having that much to offer over Amplitude. That’s not to say this wouldn’t be fun to play as I enjoyed Amplitude and more of that is always good, but you don’t generally get these big innovations between music games.