[quote name='cletus']I saw Frequency for $10 and picked it up on a whim. Even though I've never played a music based game I found myself really enjoying this one. Too bad it stopped working on my PS2 after a while (it's a blue bottom disc).
Anyways, I'm keeping a eye out for Amplitude and Rez and I was wondering if there were any other music based games you guys would recommend? I saw PaRappa 2 and Space Channel 5, are they any good? Anything that isn't ridiculously expensive?[/quote]
If you've got a Gamecube, Donkey Konga is pretty fun. The only problem is that it's really pretty easy (especially compared to Freq/Amp), the production values are pretty low, and the song list is pretty hit-or-miss. That said, it's still a fun game, and even though I beat all the songs on the hardest difficulty after a few days, I still go back to it and play a few of the better songs. The drums are VERY well built, and it's just fun to play through the more complicated songs.
Mad Maestro is also ok, but it heavily relies on pressing the face buttons on the PS2 controller with varying levels of force, which I never got the hang of. I've also heard good things about Gitaroo Man (which I still can't find anywhere), too.
As others have said, I honestly don't get why people are comparing Freq/Amp to Rez. The only similarity between them is that their graphical style leans towards the side of "trippy".
As far as Freq/Amp go, they each have their own good and bad qualities. I found the song selection in Frequency to be a bit better than Amplitude's, and I did prefer the octagon layout to Amplitude's "freeway" layout. Even if you could make it over to the other side of the track quick enough to continue your streak in Amp, the track itself is off the side of the screen so you can't actually see what notes you need to play. The stupid arrows in Amp that block your view of the track until the last second don't help, either.
Amplitude did have a nice difficulty bump, though, although it did depend a bit too much on fast taps of one note in places.