Frequency

"Digital crack and your parents will love it since it's not violent."

•Buy or Not?•
Try out the multiplayer demo. I promise you'll be hooked.

•Review•
God knows the late boom for rhythm games (which I've heard are near dead in Japan) has created an oversaturation of the genre and an incredible amount of low-calibre games in a short period of time. Whether or not Frequency is another name on that ever-growing list or head and shoulders above the rest is honestly up to personal preference.

As we are all well aware, you need a sense of rhythm to really get into this game. Anyone who can't follow a beat -- especially if you're one of those morons who clap at the wrong time during a live performance -- needn't apply. Everyone else, read on.

Playing the game is very simple. You control a ''spaceship'' of sorts through a digital pipeline made up of several different sections: bass, synth, drums, axe and scratch. You start off at the beginning of one of the sections and complete a string of beats. These are displayed in the form of gems that fall under your spaceship and you must press the button corresponding to the gem's position as it falls under your spaceship. If you don't get it try out the demo and you'll see it's really quite simple. As you finish a string of beats you unlock more sections and continue in such a matter. All the while you really get the feeling that you're creating music. It's a good feeling. The scratch and axe tracks work differently however. They are only available as long as all other tracks have been completed and they allow you to freestyle on something like a simplified digital turntable. The game is incredibly easy to pick up and provides a reasonable gradual increase in difficulty as your playing skills progress.

After playing the multiplayer demo for a week I decided to buy the game. It only cost me fifteen dollars from my neighborhood video game dealer (Joko Video Games) though you may end up paying up to $20 dollars if you buy from Gamestop. The full version comes with twenty five songs and two bonus tracks, all of which are by indie DJs or the game developers themselves. Even so the trackstyles are very diverse and most of them are very, very well produced and sound great. Strangely enough, the tracks created by the game developers (all Stage 5 trakcs) were actually my favorites and were the most fun to play.

On top of the solid replay factor from the single player alone, you can also enter Remix Mode. Basically this allows you take apart a track and put it back together any way you want. That's right, you can actually remix any song you've unlocked and completely change what it sounds like. It's a great new idea that will probably go unappreciated by the majority of gamers out there but a spectacular innovation.

It didn't come with a multiplayer directly on the disc but by popping in the Frequency Multiplayer Demo and connecting to the FreqNet server you can select the ''Change Disc'' option to switch to the full version disc. It's a nuisance but since Frequency came out long before network adaptor was available it's a miracle Frequency is online-compatible now.
Gameplay on the internet remains largely intact with a few tweaks to make it much more competitive online. Needless to say this is what Frequency fans have been waiting for.

•Summary•
If anything, this game is at LEAST better than DDR as far as replayability goes. Though it's tracklist is definitely smaller and I can't promise you'll lose any weight playing it, Frequency is fun from the second you pick up the controller. Whether or not rhythm games are your thing, I'm pretty sure this one should be right up your alley.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/04