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Amplitude 2015 [OT] Rock The Disco Tech

McFadge

Member
Any info of a release for the soundtrack? Though some of the original scores sounded messy to me at first, they've really grown on me.
 
How is the music in this game compared to the demo?

I don't want to spoil any of it for myself, however I really enjoyed the tracks in the demo. Some of them did sound 'messy' at first, but they grew on me, and through the demo I discovered the band 'freezepop' who produce some really amazing stuff. Surprised they don't have more of a following.

What do you guys think of the full games OST? without spoiling anything. As in, describe it rather than linking it to me.
 

t0rment

Member
How is the music in this game compared to the demo?

I don't want to spoil any of it for myself, however I really enjoyed the tracks in the demo. Some of them did sound 'messy' at first, but they grew on me, and through the demo I discovered the band 'freezepop' who produce some really amazing stuff. Surprised they don't have more of a following.

What do you guys think of the full games OST? without spoiling anything. As in, describe it rather than linking it to me.

if you liked the demo ones i'm pretty sure you'll like the rest. all the songs in the campaign have basically the same style.
 

B-Dex

Member
I spent 5 hours trying to 3 bar I C U. Never got it. I think it was I C U. I never wanna hear that song again TBH.
 
D

Deleted member 57681

Unconfirmed Member
Break for Me is such a cool song. I think it's my favourite in the game.
 
Ugh, I just played that campaign level with those horrible visual effects. It made me motion sick almost immediately. I've played video games for almost 30 years, and I've never become motion sick from anything except the Oculus Rift.

They'd better patch that shit out. I can't imagine it's well liked.
 
I am confused about this games design. Why is there an excessive amount of leniency on one side of the note, but not the other? If you press the button even a millisecond too early, you are punished and fail the bar, but you can be around half a second late, and apparently that's okay? What gives? I have never played games like this before, maybe it's common.

Ugh, I just played that campaign level with those horrible visual effects. It made me motion sick almost immediately. I've played video games for almost 30 years, and I've never become motion sick from anything except the Oculus Rift.

They'd better patch that shit out. I can't imagine it's well liked.

I think that disorientation is the point. It claims you abruptly induced synasthesia in the patient, so that's their representation of the disorientation that would be associated with those miss-matched sense-representations.

In the gameplay, it represents his visual and auditory senses as confused. The patient is hearing colours and shapes.

I think it's really interesting to see their interpretation of it in a game like this, though I'm currently studying for a Master's degree in Neuropsychology, so I guess I'm biased here, as not everyone finds that type of thing interesting.
 

5taquitos

Member
I think that disorientation is the point. It claims you abruptly induced synasthesia in the patient, so that's their representation of the disorientation that would be associated with those miss-matched sense-representations.

In the gameplay, it represents his visual and auditory senses as confused. The patient is hearing colours and shapes.

I think it's really interesting to see their interpretation of it in a game like this, though I'm currently studying for a Master's degree in Neuropsychology, so I guess I'm biased here, as not everyone finds that type of thing interesting.

I absolutely get what they were going for, but the effect is horrendous. When it's causing physical discomfort for a large segment of players, something is wrong with the effect.
 
I think I am going to take a break from the game, I have done every song on advanced and one on expert and most of my song scores are ranked between 3% and 20% and I got to around 984 ranking overall so I'm pretty happy.

I do really hope they decide dlc is worth it, having some different styles of music would be great, I do really like the base ones as they are all fun to play but I do miss the variety of the original.
 
I am confused about this games design. Why is there an excessive amount of leniency on one side of the note, but not the other? If you press the button even a millisecond too early, you are punished and fail the bar, but you can be around half a second late, and apparently that's okay? What gives? I have never played games like this before, maybe it's common.

Sounds like you need to adjust the audio/video lag in the settings.
 

Kumubou

Member
I am confused about this games design. Why is there an excessive amount of leniency on one side of the note, but not the other? If you press the button even a millisecond too early, you are punished and fail the bar, but you can be around half a second late, and apparently that's okay? What gives? I have never played games like this before, maybe it's common.
Every Harmonix music-rhythm game has been like this -- they all have really wide late timing windows. If I had to guess why, it's probably a combination of strict timing not being a point of emphasis in their games (as inputs have always been straight pass/fail) and to also compensate for people playing on laggy displays and not calibrating properly (as people playing on laggy setups will bias late).

It's also possible that your timing adjustment is just off and you may have pushed it too far late -- you probably should double check that.

I can say this from experience: adjusting setups to deal with tiny timing windows is not fun.
 

sn00zer

Member
Got daaaaaaaamn those bonus songs are fucking amazin


FUCK the amount of amazing DLC packs this game couldve had.....
 

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
How is the music in this game compared to the demo?

I don't want to spoil any of it for myself, however I really enjoyed the tracks in the demo. Some of them did sound 'messy' at first, but they grew on me, and through the demo I discovered the band 'freezepop' who produce some really amazing stuff. Surprised they don't have more of a following.

What do you guys think of the full games OST? without spoiling anything. As in, describe it rather than linking it to me.

As a fan of the original Frequency, I jumped right into this without even checking the tracklist, and don't regret it one bit. Not sure what the demo offers, but every time I go back to this game now I get a new favourite track and spend ages trying to perfect it.

Of course, there will always be a couple of tracks that don't gel with peoples' tastes, and I don't think I'd listen to a lot of the music outside the confines of the game, but it's being there in that moment and hitting those riffs that makes the majority of songs so enjoyable.

Also, glad you like Freezepop! They had a great track in Freq called Science Genius Girl. Check it out!

Man, watching that video reminds me how cool the "freestyle" bits in Freq were. I think the "Flow" powerup in Amp 2015 is too simplified. It feels good when you use it at the best parts of a song, but there's not enough freedom and it always feels a little too short. Wonder what the consensus is on this...

I absolutely get what they were going for, but the effect is horrendous. When it's causing physical discomfort for a large segment of players, something is wrong with the effect.

Shame to hear it's causing people physical discomfort =/
I had no idea what was going on when I first played that track, but I didn't much care for it. I like the idea of the "story" and how it's presented in general, but that bit felt a bit too much.
 
I think that disorientation is the point.

I won't dispute that. I'm just saying they failed at it. They're not causing disorientation alone, they're also causing motion sickness. If you've never experienced motion sickness, consider yourself lucky. I first got it in VR, and it made me physically ill for hours.

I stopped playing Amplitude yesterday after that specific level, or it would only have gotten worse. It was enough to make me feel dizzy and get cold sweats in real life for about two hours afterwards. Had I continued playing, I would have experienced nausea. I can pretty much guarantee you that this was not what Harmonix intended.
 
D

Deleted member 57681

Unconfirmed Member
Managed to full combo Unfinished Business on expert and nabbed my Golden Child trophy.
Got Golden Child with the first two campaign songs and Break For Me, all on X (can you even get Gold Bars below Expert?). Lights by Wolfgun is pretty easy as well.
 

bounchfx

Member
loved the original games, got this one and... while I like the graphics and production, holy shit the soundtrack starts off weak.

it's not that I think the songs are bad, it's just that they're near impossible to tell what you're doing/playing, it all sounds like a random mash of sounds. I remember in the originals it was clear what beat or melody you were making instantly. here (at least with the first 5 songs then it gets better) it sounds so ambiguous it's hard to actually follow to any rhythm. I tried showing my friend why I liked the game so much, and it was easier for me to play because I had experience and understood timing by visuals alone, but he was so frustrated because not only was there a lack of real beat to follow, but he couldn't even tell what instrument he was playing while correctly hitting notes.

I hope the songs start fitting the game better as we unlock more :(
 
loved the original games, got this one and... while I like the graphics and production, holy shit the soundtrack starts off weak.

it's not that I think the songs are bad, it's just that they're near impossible to tell what you're doing/playing, it all sounds like a random mash of sounds. I remember in the originals it was clear what beat or melody you were making instantly. here (at least with the first 5 songs then it gets better) it sounds so ambiguous it's hard to actually follow to any rhythm. I tried showing my friend why I liked the game so much, and it was easier for me to play because I had experience and understood timing by visuals alone, but he was so frustrated because not only was there a lack of real beat to follow, but he couldn't even tell what instrument he was playing while correctly hitting notes.

I hope the songs start fitting the game better as we unlock more :(

Nope. All tracks such balls. No DLC planned. Thanks for trying out a nostalgia tech demo.
 

BiggNife

Member
Any info of a release for the soundtrack? Though some of the original scores sounded messy to me at first, they've really grown on me.

There's no plans to release the soundtrack to non-kickstarter backers and Harmonix refuses to say why. I asked about it during the AMA they did recently and they completely ignored it, along with a bunch of other people who asked the same question. It's incredibly frustrating and nonsensical.
 

PedroRVD

Member
I just got Gold on Astrosight !!!

I am so excited that I want to share this run with you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHHVyM8eJUA

It would have been a much better score but I got very nervous in the last section... I usually do it without any problems.

At first I thought the music in this game was bad... but it really grew on me, now I love it and I was willing to pay for it but sadly Harmonix doesn't want my money.
 
I just got Gold on Astrosight !!!

I am so excited that I want to share this run with you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHHVyM8eJUA

It would have been a much better score but I got very nervous in the last section... I usually do it without any problems.

At first I thought the music in this game was bad... but it really grew on me, now I love it and I was willing to pay for it but sadly Harmonix doesn't want my money.

0d701ed18ead05a1d989be84089311b2.jpg
 

antitrop

Member
I just got Gold on Astrosight !!!

I am so excited that I want to share this run with you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHHVyM8eJUA

It would have been a much better score but I got very nervous in the last section... I usually do it without any problems.

At first I thought the music in this game was bad... but it really grew on me, now I love it and I was willing to pay for it but sadly Harmonix doesn't want my money.

Do you intentionally have a massive delay in the calibration so you can hear the song before you have to hit the notes? I can see how that might make quick lane switches a bit easier to manage.
 

PedroRVD

Member
Do you intentionally have a massive delay in the calibration so you can hear the song before you have to hit the notes? I can see how that might make quick lane switches a bit easier to manage.

I didn't calibrate the game (that bar method of calibrating always looks like it is perfect for me :/ ) , but I watched the video again and just noticed that I have a delay lol. I can't unsee it now. Maybe it was more noticeable this time because I was playing with the gold headphones.

This has always happened to me in Rock Band too ... A big delay can be seen in my drum videos, I got used to it :(
 
Every Harmonix music-rhythm game has been like this -- they all have really wide late timing windows. If I had to guess why, it's probably a combination of strict timing not being a point of emphasis in their games (as inputs have always been straight pass/fail) and to also compensate for people playing on laggy displays and not calibrating properly (as people playing on laggy setups will bias late).

It's also possible that your timing adjustment is just off and you may have pushed it too far late -- you probably should double check that.

I can say this from experience: adjusting setups to deal with tiny timing windows is not fun.

Yeah adjusting the timing has done it. I didn't think that worked in the way that it did, I thought it just adjusted your sound-audio timing, but it also syncs those with your inputs. I understand its affect now.
 

Despera

Banned
Got Golden Child with the first two campaign songs and Break For Me, all on X (can you even get Gold Bars below Expert?). Lights by Wolfgun is pretty easy as well.
Another easy gold is "All The Time" on X. It's the first song in which I managed to break 3000 pts as well.
 

ookamunka

Neo Member
So using a PS2->PS4 convertor I hooked up my Beatmania UKOC and with some remapping, got a nice setup going. I dunno if I want to go back to a controller after spoiling myself playing this way.
 

Dominator

Member
I can pretty much do perfectly on Intermediate but Advanced gives me trouble. I finish the songs no problem but I'm breaking combos often.

Practice, practice and more practice I guess lol
 

B-Dex

Member
They way they make you pretty much ace 2 songs each region is total bs. It should be if you do good on each song. Like 2 bars each. As it is it just locks out a large chunk of the player base.
 
.

Also, glad you like Freezepop! They had a great track in Freq called Science Genius Girl. Check it out!


Yeah I'm really digging their band, and thanks for the recommendation, I've actually checked out that song already. I've been listening to everything they have on Spotify basically.

I like Summer Boy, Vacation, Lazy, Science Genius, Plastic Stars, Get Ready 2 Rokk, Doppleganger, Phantoms, Panthers, Stakeout especally. It's all great, fantastic stuff, really fascinating actually as I haven't heard anything like it before, perhaps that's because I don't listen to this kind of stuff ordinarily. The vocals and beats seem very unique though.

I've begun ordering their CDs on amazon and I've also looking to pick up both Amplitude (PS2) and Frequency (PS2). :)
 

KiraXD

Member
It did help me realizing that the game is literally nothing but HOs. The button down is all that matters. Pull-offs would be nice, but I realized that I was instinctively trying to press the button down AND release it (2 actions) as part of hitting a note, rather than just worrying about the 1 action of pressing down and then not worrying about releasing immediately.

In the sweeping sections the reason this matters is you effectively change L, C, R from 6 actions to 4 actions. If you think about each note as 2 actions (button down/up) then a sweep looks like this:

L - 2 actions (down/up)
C - 2 actions (down/up)
R - 2 actions (down/up)
[6 actions total]

However if you change it to being all hammer-ons then you can change the button release to being all at the same time, effectively as 1 action:

L - 1 action (down)
C - 1 action (down)
R - 1 action (down)
1 action (up on all buttons)
[4 actions total]

It has the added bonus that since it is not trying to mimic a guitar that there is no concept of higher notes cancelling out lower notes, so you can apply this in any direction and in any combination of non-repeating notes. Hopefully that wasn't too confusing, notating this sort of stuff is hard so I'll elaborate if that was all moon speak.

god i know what youre saying ... but god fucking dammit... astrosight on expert is killling me, i finally bought the game last night and im doing amazing after such a long time with frequency and amplitude 1.0... i jumped in to 2.0 with almost all 2 and 3 bar expert (i start on expert, the other difficulties are too easy.)

my brain cant handle sweeping sections that fast...

i always double press the wrong finger or do LCLC instead of LCRCL (it doesnt help that some of those sections go LCRCLCRCLCLCLCRCL--

Went from 60% to 84% (FUCK!) I will say this... Harmonix dropped the ball in being able to give us practice mode... just give us access to the track and let us pick which spot we want to do... let us loop that spot... with no energy requirement. (think this is something that can be added in as patch or DLC? think they WOULD add it in?)

I also miss being able to remix tracks (unless thats an unlockable mode?) being able to lay down gems and save it for friends to play... man put that back in!)
 

Despera

Banned
god i know what youre saying ... but god fucking dammit... astrosight on expert is killling me, i finally bought the game last night and im doing amazing after such a long time with frequency and amplitude 1.0... i jumped in to 2.0 with almost all 2 and 3 bar expert (i start on expert, the other difficulties are too easy.)

my brain cant handle sweeping sections that fast...

i always double press the wrong finger or do LCLC instead of LCRCL (it doesnt help that some of those sections go LCRCLCRCLCLCLCRCL--

Went from 60% to 84% (FUCK!) I will say this... Harmonix dropped the ball in being able to give us practice mode... just give us access to the track and let us pick which spot we want to do... let us loop that spot... with no energy requirement. (think this is something that can be added in as patch or DLC? think they WOULD add it in?)

I also miss being able to remix tracks (unless thats an unlockable mode?) being able to lay down gems and save it for friends to play... man put that back in!)
Unfortunately there's no remix mode or online multiplayer functionality. I think the best we can hope for is more songs to play with in the form of DLC.
 

KiraXD

Member
Unfortunately there's no remix mode or online multiplayer functionality. I think the best we can hope for is more songs to play with in the form of DLC.

yeah... im actually really disappointed in this game. Once my nostalgia wears off... its super bare bones.

Dont get me wrong... i LOVE it, I destroyed Frequency and Amplitude on PS2 both those games came out when i was into Raving lol!
I also really love the music (some tracks more than others, but those are growing on me as well), though i do wish there was licensed tracks, Excision, Datsik, Krewella, Pegboard Nerds etc, would fit in perfectly here or even bring back more old freq/amp tracks.

But aside from that heres what i would change:

Practice Mode:
Select any unlocked track, select "whole song" or specific "sections," add loop option, no energy depletion.

Online MP:
PS2 version had this... PLAYSTATION 2!! Theres NO REASON this shouldnt have online MP.

Remix Mode:
Again, PS2 had this, Select an unlocked track, and lay down your own gems, save and share with your friends or the online community.

Creation Mode:
Really open it up to us. give us all the tools to make our own music. synths, piano, bass, drums, etc. then we just drop gems and bam! custom music tracks!)

Yeah i understand this wasnt a fully supported AAA game, and was made with a few people on the side thanks to Kickstarter...

What im hoping for is that this basically opened up the door for a Full on release from harmonix. If this is basically Amplitude 2.0 give us a AAA Frequency 2.0

(also fuck astrosight! i finally passed it in campaign on expert by cheesing it, basically skipped the sweeping sections and waited for pickups one bar, but... fuck it for now)

I absolutely get what they were going for, but the effect is horrendous. When it's causing physical discomfort for a large segment of players, something is wrong with the effect.

i fucking loved it... it threw me off so hard the first time, but stuff like that doesnt bother me. you get a feel for the music underneath and its easy to get through
 

Kumubou

Member
They way they make you pretty much ace 2 songs each region is total bs. It should be if you do good on each song. Like 2 bars each. As it is it just locks out a large chunk of the player base.
These games have always done this though: Frequency and Amplitude (PS2) had a very similar structure where you had three songs, a "boss" song and then a bonus song where you had to meet a score requirement to unlock that song. Heck, it was possible to miss over half of Frequency's songlist if you were playing on Easy.

I'm not sure how I would square that up from a designer's standpoint. I can understand players wanting to access all of the content, but there's also something to be said about setting an expectation that the content that you do already have should be mastered to some extent.
 

cj_iwakura

Member
How are the new Symbion tracks, by the way? As good as FreQ Out or Ibiza Dreams? Not a big fan of Synthesized, but Out The Box was great.
 

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
Yeah I'm really digging their band, and thanks for the recommendation, I've actually checked out that song already. I've been listening to everything they have on Spotify basically.

I like Summer Boy, Vacation, Lazy, Science Genius, Plastic Stars, Get Ready 2 Rokk, Doppleganger, Phantoms, Panthers, Stakeout especally. It's all great, fantastic stuff, really fascinating actually as I haven't heard anything like it before, perhaps that's because I don't listen to this kind of stuff ordinarily. The vocals and beats seem very unique though.

I've begun ordering their CDs on amazon and I've also looking to pick up both Amplitude (PS2) and Frequency (PS2). :)

Bravo!

Tried several unlocked bonus tracks in succession last night. Love that they got a bunch of (indie) game composers to provide tracks for them.
 

FyreWulff

Member
So, I was finally able to get this due to a kind friend. took me about four songs to get up to the Expert level.

That R2 for the right gem is tough but I think I got used to it now. Also had to drop habits from Blitz (ie, trying to play two tracks at once) so that I stopped breaking combo all the time :lol

my first impressions of the campaign album were 'huh?' at first but it's definitely grown on me over the past few days.

Online MP:
PS2 version had this... PLAYSTATION 2!! Theres NO REASON this shouldnt have online MP.

lol, on PS2 games were thirsty for online, now most games have online and it's super expensive to implement.
 
Insomniac Games, I love you guys and the games you make, but this song...

This song is so bad.

I really enjoyed it. I mean, it's not a great song but it doesn't sound bad, and I found it funny. It's nice that they showed their sense of humour. I really like the videos they did with that character and Sunset Overdrive TV.
 
I finally got around to playing this yesterday, and ended up playing through its 'campaign' on Beginner and Intermediate (I started on easy, played a few songs then switched).

It's pretty good, but I'm not hooked like I was with Frequency and Amplitude. I'm one of the weirdos (or minority, it seems) who prefers Frequency over Amplitude though. Amplitude had the better soundtrack, but Frequency was a wow moment and I got into it more.

I preferred the more basic gameplay I guess.

This new version is fun and pretty well made, but it doesn't have the same type of hook for me. I'm not sure if it's because I play so many games or my depression factors in and I don't return as much as I used to.

The soundtrack was a worry, and actually ended up being pretty good. But the story stuff was kind of unnecessary.

There seems to be some songs I may just not unlock, because they require so much time.
 
I keep coming back to this game. I think it's because I keep going for the "Clear the full campaign without failing, restarting, or quitting" trophy on Super. I can pretty consistently get to the last song now, but keep failing that (which is weird because I've never had problems with it before).

Overall I think it's the weakest entry in the series, mainly because the soundtrack isn't nearly as varied as the previous games were. With that said, the soundtrack is still pretty good.

Hopefully this isn't a one off and they can press on and evolve with the series, preferably with FreQ mode the default.

Still wish they gave us the full leaderboard. I have the sneaking suspicion that the rankings are just estimates though.
 
I keep coming back to this game. I think it's because I keep going for the "Clear the full campaign without failing, restarting, or quitting" trophy on Super. I can pretty consistently get to the last song now, but keep failing that (which is weird because I've never had problems with it before).

Overall I think it's the weakest entry in the series, mainly because the soundtrack isn't nearly as varied as the previous games were. With that said, the soundtrack is still pretty good.

Hopefully this isn't a one off and they can press on and evolve with the series, preferably with FreQ mode the default.

Still wish they gave us the full leaderboard. I have the sneaking suspicion that the rankings are just estimates though.

I think it's something I'll go back to, but I don't know if that will end up being a lot because I don't usually have time to replay games. Not that I'm happy about that.

It'll be something to play while other games are installing or downloading, or if I'm in the mood.
 

Rated-G

Member
No idea. I asked about a month ago on the Kickstarter, because we were supposed to lock in our addresses for physical rewards like 6 months ago, but I had to move this week and was trying to find out if there was anything I could do. Still haven't gotten a response...
 
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