It's admirable to try new things; thinking outside the box leads to innovation and is the driving force behind the progression of civilisation. The only problem lies in all those concepts that are, quite simply, lame. For every Velcro, Biro or silicon chip, there are hundreds of Sinclair C5s, Snack-a-jacks and Amplitudes that unfortunately, despite looking good on a drawing board, don't deliver. Harmonixs' follow up to the similarly disappointing Frequency is a prime example of those ideas that are destined to fall by the wayside even though the effort put into them is undeniably visible.

Maybe I'm getting it all wrong and Amplitude is the perfect fusion of music and videogames, but for my money it falls between the two. The basis for my seemingly dismissive view of this title is that it's played on a PS2 as opposed to a stereo and as such is a videogame, not a CD. Having said that, it has its merits and is not wholly without virtue, being both unique and at times quite fun.

Being approximately two parts compilation CD to one part shoot-em-up, bound together with a splash of Wipeout, Amplitude is all about releasing sounds from little capsules using lasers shot from a futuristic rockety type thing. Each of the areas you're sent to feature five tracks from a wide variety of artists from Run DMC to David Bowie and it's your job to zap all the beats from each song. The songs are broken down into lanes, with each lane representing a part of the tune such as synth, drums, vocal and bass. Jumping from lane to lane, blasting music pods and activating the different sections of the track as you build up and maintain the tune forms the meat of the gameplay and a number of power ups can be collected to boost your score and make it easier to complete the challenge. The whole game is heavily reliant on super quick fingers and the ability to deal with huge amounts of brain melting visuals.

Sounds quite funky, right? Well it is in a way, if nothing else but for the quality of the music and its appropriateness to the type of game, but it all boils down to timed button presses and very little else. I tried it on my dance mat, just to see if that made the experience any more interesting, but the effect is still the same, a rather dull premise for an excellently presented title. It's comparable to playing one of Konami's dancing titles without the mat, which should give you an idea of the level of complexity involved. Not that it's easy, in fact some of the levels are downright impossible, but timing your thumbs to the beat doesn't challenge you at all on a cerebral level.

A number of options are available, including multiplayer, which is the highlight of the game and allows you to tackle the same track together or separately and online play is actually less fun, because you don't get to insult your best friends while blasting the beats. Creating remixes isn't much fun though, simply involving holding down a button to add scratches or guitar work and is an utterly pointless addition.

As I mentioned, Amplitude is appealing on the presentation front, as the tunes are perfectly suited to gaming. Every track is of a high quality, energetic and fits with the animated visuals to give a wonderful liveliness to the whole package. The voice acting also adds to the feel, being incredibly hip and providing good continuity throughout.

Futuristic cityscapes whiz past while you're liberating the sounds but you rarely have time to admire the scenery, as the speed of the game prohibits anything but total concentration on the beats. Lyrics and pictures of the singer or group you're bopping along to flash up in the background every now and again and the power up effects jazz it up even more, so there's always plenty happening on the screen.

It all comes down to what type of person you are when deciding whether or not to give Amplitude a go. It's definitely not my cup of tea but I imagine it has an appeal for a small number of music aficionados that enjoy simplistic videogames. It deserves praise for the quality of the production and the superb variety of tracks, but then it's almost impossible to recommend anything other than a rental to the regular gamer. By all means hire a copy out for the weekend, but I'm pretty certain that you'll exhaust all the fun in a matter of days, regardless of how banging the tunes are.

Reviewed by Tom LeClerc for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).