A sequel to the original Amplitude (which was called Amplitude) that was marketed as a remake to the original Amplitude.

From a core gameplay perspective, it's pretty great. It makes a lot of small improvements that not only help you improve your rhythmic button-tapping skills, but opens more opportunities for the game designers to be creative with the stage maps themselves, this is easily one of the most tightly-designed rhythm games in Harmonix's portfolio.

The presentation itself is noticeably more cold, and darker in tone. No kooky cartoon characters to customize, and nearly all the music stages are original compositions, as Harmonix likely couldn't license music out for this smaller-scale project. Therefore, gone are those stretched out, billboard-like profiles for each song and their respective artist. There's even a bit of a story behind the main campaign, although most of it are just a handful of voice lines as the stage begins.

To be frank, much of what I'm describing I think just comes down to a money issue. Harmonix didn't have Sony's publishing power this time. No doubt that was how they were able to get so many hit songs for the original game, and why this new title has literally none.

Regardless, the raw gameplay elevates the quality to a huge level, and I thought it was great! Especially impressive that there's very little input lag on a modern console, even with large HDTVs! Good stuff, too bad Harmonix is a shell of its former self lol

Reviewed on Mar 26, 2024


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