Frederic: Resurrection of Music - 9/52

     About ten years ago I joined the forum side of one GameTrailers.com, a site that unfortunately(or possibly fortunately depending on who you ask), no longer exists in all of its former glory.  I didn't stick around for more than a couple years, mostly just asking obnoxious question forums and taking cheap shots at the recently announced Kinect, then Project Natal, because I was a edgelord teenager who thought he was better than those Xbox normies, rather than being a introverted adult who thinks he's better than those Xbox scrubs.  But, the few good times I remember having on the forums were discussing the topic of exceptionally weird, wacky and wonderful video games.  I was introduced to a lot of really cool games from this experience, including what is now one of my favorite games, Plants vs. Zombies.  I have sense moved on from always wanting my video games to be super out there, now favoring giant, time sink role-playing games that have meaningful stories, characters and themes.  But that part of me never truly died and it was that part of me that I feel lead to me to picking up today's little gem(and I do mean little, it's an exceedingly short game), Frederic: Resurrection of Music.

     Frederic: Resurrection of Music puts you in the shoes of Frederic Chopin, who suddenly rises from the grave in modern day Paris.  He immediately is contact by the Muses.  Like, the actual Muses.  From Greek Mythology.  Chopin is Polish, by the way, so what he's doing with Greco-Romanic manifestations of the arts is beyond me.  If anything, he should be dealing with Veles, Slavic god of music.  But, I digress.  After encountering the Muses who briefly and very ineffectively communicate to him what has happened, as well as supplying him with a magical carriage and piano, he determines to set off on a journey to find whoever brought him back to life and discover why they did so.  Along the way he meets a cast of colorful characters with differing musical styles that he must then engage in musical combat with.  Conveniently, every musician in the world knows at least one piece of Chopin's music backwards and forwards, so Chopin doesn't need to learn how to play anything he didn't write.  Super considerate of the world to make that a universal, mandatory learning experience just in case Chopin were to rise from the grave and start going all Johnny Cage on other musical genres.

     Frederic: Resurrection of Music is, as you would expect, a rhythm game.  I'm terrible at rhythm games.  Always have been, always will be.  They're one of my favorite genres and I usually can't play them at any difficulty higher than Medium.  As far as rhythm games go, Frederic is alright.  You have a section of the piano on your screen, specifically from the F to the B, sharp/flat notes included, and you simply must hit the notes as they appear on the piano.  I'd personally recommend playing it on a touch screen if you're planning on picking it up.  You can use buttons, but I found it easier to hit the piano keys on the touch screen.  It's a very simple, recognizable setup that immediately keys you in to what you have to do and allows you to just immediately get into the songs.

     The soundtrack to this game is, well, first off Chopin.  Already a great start there.  But they're all very good arrangements of Chopin on top of that.  Some of my personal favorites include a Reggae arrangement of Chopin's Polonaises in A Major, Op 40 No.1, an old spaghetti westernized version of Piano Sonata no. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35(The Funeral March) and a Celtic folk version of Etude Op. 25, No. 9 in G-Flat Major.  Though, picking from this soundtrack is like picking which puppy is your favorite.  It's almost impossible to choose, it's all so good.

     The game's visuals are where it unfortunately takes a turn, however.  Not that the visuals are bad or anything, they're very stylized and have a sort of pop art feel to them.  The issue is that they're usually very uninspired.  There's a lot of static images and repeated frames of animation.  It's like an old Newgrounds flash game that happened to have a killer soundtrack, it's quite the paradox.  Not that it especially matters since most of the time you'll be looking at the bottom half of the screen where the piano interface is, but it does come to a head in the game's not great cutscenes. They're presented in a comic book-esque style which, normally, I love.  But Frederic's colors are too dull and character design is kind of ugly and the mostly static images in the cutscenes accentuate this fact.  Thankfully, all cutscenes are skippable whether or not you've seen them before and you won't miss a ton by doing so other than some super dumb reasons why the random characters you meet on your journey hate Chopin and some really off beat and largely unfunny humor.

      Frederic: Resurrection of Music is a very short, very simple and pretty fun rhythm game.  I might just be biased because, if you couldn't tell, kind of love Chopin, but I really enjoyed my time playing the songs in Frederic.  Unfortunately, there's not a ton of tracks to choose from, but all the ones they have are really good.  I picked this game up on sale for $3 and it was the perfect price for it.  It's the kind of game you'll randomly spend ten minutes on replaying your favorite tracks while you're waiting for something to finish downloading and have some quick fun.  I hope you enjoyed this look at a game you've more than likely never heard of.  I'll see you back here next time for the tenth game out of the 52, the Wonderful 101.

Frederic: Resurrection of Music OST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist/fredericresurrectionofmusicost/

Ethan's Backloggery: https://www.backloggery.com/edzoologist