Top 50 Video Games: Number 25

Stats of Import

Platform: Playstation 2
Absurdly Specific Genre: A series of tubes - with music!
Difficulty: I recall it having a hefty difficulty spike on Expert (which was required to complete the game), so I'll give it a 7
Beaten: Yes

Linds and I had been going out about two months when she informed me that there was a game that I simply had to play. We rented it, brought it home, and placed it in the PS2. I picked the first course, and up came... a sort of octagonal tube littered with little blue gems. If I had known better, I might have been skeptical, but by that time, I was already completely entranced.

Pictured: Riveting gameplay... no... seriously. I'm not making that up.

Over the next few months, I (obviously) purchased the game, and it shortly thereafter became an obsession. The quirk behind Frequency was twofold. First of all, in order to complete a full stage, you had to attain a certain number of points on the 4 songs of that stage. This meant that you had to become intimately familiar with the songs themselves and really lose yourself in the rhythm (thankfully, the game had a great soundtrack, so that wasn't difficult at all). Secondly, in order to progress properly in the game to the later stages, you had to amp up the difficulty. There was no way to beat the game on 'easy', nor was there any way to beat the game on 'normal'. If you wanted to play the later songs (which where some of the most enjoyable in the game), the game was damn well going to make you earn it.

The appeal to Frequency is difficult to sum up. Even rabid fans have trouble pinning down exactly why this game is as good as it is. It's got addicting gameplay, catchy music, tense action, and great replay.

I guess I just stated as good a case for it as I could for any game.

Other Notable Games in the Series: Frequency proved just enough of a cult hit to spawn a sequel, Amplitude. Though it pandered massively (trading fun and interesting songs by unknown electronica artists for names like Blink-182 and Slipknot), it wasn't nearly as good as the original, and it sold horribly. Luckily, Harmonix struck it big with one of their next games, which didn't deviate from the formula set forth by Frequency as much as one might think. I guess plastic guitars just make it feel more like music than the PS2 controller.