Reader Reviews

Star Review: Frequency (PS2)

by Stuart Chapman

If a game is measured by its defining moments, then Frequency is a revolution. I've introduced a lot of people to Frequency, and I've watched the humble beginnings a thousand times over. L1, R1, L1, R1. Keep the beat.

See, the beauty of Frequency is that it all starts so... easily. You travel down an octagonal tunnel, each side or 'track' comprising an element of the song, be it drums, bass, vocal and so on. Markers indicate the location of beats, and are mapped to L1, R1 or R2 depending upon their position within the track. Once a section of a song, say drums, has been completed, it is continued for you, and you are free to move on to the next element, say bass. Within a minute you'll have picked it up, and within a minute Frequency has caught you, and there's no going back.

Too many games require perseverance over improvement. This is not true of Frequency. I remember my first game, concentrating hard to maintain the simplest of beats. Frequency will ease you in, rest assured, but sooner or later, there'll be a moment of realisation. This magic moment comes when you become conscious of the fact that you're not actually thinking anymore. Your fingers are fast knocking out blistering combinations of beats, and you've barely broken into a sweat. The markers are coming thick and fast, you're flicking from track to track, your eyes scanning the dense mass of beats and interpreting them instantly, while your fingers exhibit feats of flexibility you would never have imagined possible back then. Back at L1, R1, L1, R1.

Therein lies the joy. There will be some days when you just can't do it, the beats are beyond you and it just seems impossible. But there will be others when you're there, and you're in 'the zone'. When everything just falls into place, the beat, the glorious tripped-out backgrounds, the pumping controller, and all of a sudden the music is an extension of you - and you just can't put a foot wrong.

For all this, when you reach the end, when 'normal' seems to be going in slow motion and you think nothing of warming up your fingers before tackling 'Komputer Kontroller', the game draws you back. Deep down, Frequency is an old-skool high score game, since moving on from track to track, say drums to bass, without losing the beat multiplies your score on the track you linked to. Do it again, and the multiplication increases. And so Frequency pushes you, harder and harder, higher and higher, for just a few more points.