Flashback™

One of my favorite games of all time.

Yes this is a great update of the classic and not a reboot. I played Flashback for countless hours when i first got it when i was about 14 or 15, loved every second of the story and anything else you could think off about a game. The graphics are very similar to the other old school gem Another World and for its time Flashback looked stunning and played so fluidly. This version works perfectly with an Xbox One gamepad as i have had zero issues with it since installing, either with playing it or starting the game. This is definitley one classic that deserves every bit of praise it got and is still getting to this day. 9/10 from me.

Ok, I won't say that Flashback is a masterpiece or old memories blah blah... well, I will: it was one of my favourite games for long, kept me awake with red eyes until I beat it, its second level is still amazing, but from the fourth onwards it gets insanely unfair. It is a 1993 platformer with some design decisions that now would be changed, but as I played this one to death (as well as Another World or Heart of Darkness just to name two) I decided to buy it. Hey Paul Cuisset, good work here. Of course I know the original as if I was dancing a choreography, so I expected a few upgrades and options in this rerelease. The remastered music and FX are here and they are very welcome (the original Flashback sounds were sampled in a awful rate probably for performance reasons) but the original had a very weird resolution, 240x128 and upscaling the graphics just does not work. They could have resample them carefully, but Microids just threw some filters. The only music options are the PC OPL3 (Sound Blaster, Adlib) and the remastered one, with no option for the Amiga or SNES one (which makes this version not better than Reminiscence). And the filters, the upscaling, make this game as ugly as porn in 4k. I still love this game: it was a take on Prince of Persia through the Total Recall kind of sci fi that has a lot of atmosphere. But I am not sure this is the better way to pay homage to it. Anyway, better than the remake of a few years ago, and still better than the holy amount of bad games Cuisset has released since the 00s.

While this is a complete recreation of the original game, fully playable in both original pixelated glory mode and also with blurry, fake-CRT, effects mode, if you like that sort of thing. The game itself is exactly the same game so for newcomers to the game it's a perfectly fine way to play it, but for those of us who played the original it's there are some annoying factors: * The game runs in widescreen modes only, with cutscenes filling the entire screen and the gameplay itself having panels either side of it. Having an option to run in 4:3 resolutions for a more nostalgic view would've been nice. * Every cutscene has a huge 'skip' button in the top right corner obscuring part of the image, making it quite intrusive and there is no option to hide it. * While there are many arguments about the CGI cutscenes that were done for the CD versions of the original back in the day, love them or hate it giving people the option of playing the game with either would've made it a more complete edition.

Note: I only played the game with the original graphics & sounds and the "unforgiving" difficulty (so I had no "Rewind") so I can't judge how much that affects the game. I remember that I was quite excited to play Flashback back in the day after finishing Another World. I'm not sure if I finished the game back then but probably not because I think the frustration from the controls and the extremely annoying enemies from the last level would get burned into my mind. While I do appreciate the greater diversity and complexity of the enemies, the arbitrary rules that make enemies immune to being damaged cause nothing but frustration (i.e. enemy is in melee range but can't be melee'd, or enemy is turning around on the same spot which apparently makes them immune to being shot at). Fights where you are forced in a closed room against multiple melee range enemies make the final boss fight look like a cake walk in comparison. Overall, the first level is good, the second level is the best, and then it slowly deteriorates. The only gameplay feature introduced in late game that I appreciate is the teleportation device. Note that you have to be careful with it because sometimes you can hard lock your game if you use it in the wrong place and the wrong time. The graphics are still nice, but Another World was and still is better. The music is decent I suppose. The story? Terrible. Cheesy, simple, implodes if you start asking "why didn't they just X?". Another World said a lot less about its story and the lack of information provided in-game made it far superior. In fact, I would even put 1213 (a freeware game inspired by Flashback, by Ben Croshaw) above Flashback. Better story, simple but effective gameplay, less frustration. Do I recommend the game? Not for the full price. On sale? Might be worth it if you liked Another World and want more. I got it at 90% off and I can say that it was definitely worth at least the dollar.