Last year, Guitar Hero and Rock Band developer Harmonix turned to Kickstarter to gauge interest in a new Amplitude game. An enjoyable demo of the game was available to play at this past weekend's PAX East event in Boston.
In case you're not familiar with how Amplitude plays, it follows the classic formula of rhythm games from the late '90s to early 2000s that had you press buttons in time with onscreen prompts. The multicolored prompts come at you down a series of tracks that you can freely move left and right between. The tracks resemble the fret of a guitar and represent a separate aspect of the song -- drums, guitar, synth, vocals, special effects, etc. Hit enough "notes" on the fret and you gain more and more points. Once you keep a combo going, the fret-rack disappears so you can concentrate on another one until it eventually reappears. You can go a whole song without hearing the drums or the vocals depending on how you play. It's a blast to try and hear as much of the song as you possibly can.
That's how Amplitude played back in the day, and that's how the modern remake plays now, but in high-def. The demo Harmonix brought to PAX East provided a blend of co-operative and competitive gameplay that set one team of two players competing against another pair to see who had better rhythm. Players tapped in rhythm and shifted between tracks to cover as much of a song as possible. "Quickplay" and single-player modes were also available to try, but technical difficulties made playing the multiplayer demo the superior choice.
Harmonix promises a full set list including a mix of original electronic music from its in-house bands, selections from Boston synthpop group Freezepop (who have been featured in nearly every Harmonix game) and selections from other game soundtracks like SuperGiant's Transistor. Fans who donated enough cash on Kickstarter will also have their music included.
You can expect to play the new HD update of the PS2 music classic on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 some time this summer.
The original Amplitude came out in 2003 for PlayStation 2. It was the sequel to 2001's FreQuency, the first title Harmonix made back when Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania and character-based games like Parappa the Rapper and Gitaroo Man epitomized the rhythm game genre. Harmonix went on to dominate the industry by introducing, then oversaturating the market with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, megapopular games controllable with plastic instruments.
Now it seems the MIT Media Lab-born music game company wants to get back to basics. Its successful Kickstarter, which gathered $844,127 from a $775,000 goal, proved that yes, there is an audience for Amplitude out there. Harmonix turned to the crowdfunding site because the original game, as well as its FreQ-ish predecessor, were commercial duds despite acclaim from critics and fans alike.
Photo Credit: Harmonix | YouTube
