Review - Flashback: The Quest for Identity
Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 2:58 am
Ah, youth. I remember renting this game on my Super Nintendo multiple times when I was a child. I've always enjoyed cinematic platformers (on a side note, can someone help me come up with a less pretentious name for the genre?) and the opening green first level has always just stuck out in my mind. Talk about having a living environment. Beautiful, beautiful stuff.
As I mentioned earlier, the game is in the cinematic platformer (GOD I HAD THAT TERM) genre, which means it plays like Prince of Persia (the original game, not the modern acrobat sim) or Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. It uses "step mechanics," so a tap of the D-Pad will move you one "step" in the direction you push. It's like a giant grid system, more or less. Running is different from your standard game as well. It's a fluid motion and stopping isn't instant. This can cause you to fall into pits. Oh yeah, falling from too far of a distance makes you die. The controls are a little tricky if you've never played anything like them before but once you get the hang of it all, it becomes pretty natural for the most part.
The graphics are gorgeous, as I mentioned earlier. I believe the characters have been rotoscoped, so they have a really neat look to them. It adds a nice touch of realism to the characters and it just looks COOL. The backgrounds are gorgeous and look like they may be hand-painted. Anyone know if that's right? The first level's beautiful green jungle mixed with a Flash Gordon-esque sci fi element that doesn't look too far into the future to be absurd.
The green level stuck with me from childhood and I soon found out why. I never passed the first level until last week, heh. Still, the rest of the levels don't look quite as pretty but they all have their own nice touches and have their own unique feel. No level is the same, at first glace.
The core of the game is climbing up platforms, toggling switches, and shooting goons. The switches are usually involved in a minor puzzle, which usually involved something like placing a stone of them or simply jumping over a canceling switch. If you've played a video game in the last 30 years, you've seen these puzzled before. Occasionally, they'll throw in a puzzle element that you've never seen before and it just doesn't make sense. For example, there's a part of the game when there's a locked door and a high platform that's difficult to get to that just doesn't seem to lead anywhere. It turns out there is some glass you have to shoot to get into the next area. Completely counter-intuitive and the mechanic hadn't been used prior in any part.
The shooting is pretty standard stuff. Pull out a gun, aim at a bad guy, press the A button to fire, and if the bad guy is still alive, avoid his shot and repeat. I played on the hardest difficulty, so I don't know how much that changes this part of the game, but this became tedious at times. Crouch, shoot, either use your energy shield or roll out of the way, start over. It just became "Oh god, this again?" It seems okay at first, but by the end of the game, it gets frustrating.
That makes it sound like I didn't enjoy the game as a whole though, which is untrue. I enjoyed the heck out of it. It was frustrating at times, but it's gorgeous to look at and when you DO get to a puzzle that is challenging and makes sense, solving it just feels good. It's also fairly lengthy, especially compared to Out of this World, and can keep you going for a little bit. The password system is fantastic as well. THEY ARE REAL WORDS. How great is that?
The story, though, oh the story. It doesn't really make sense. It's some convoluted story about the main character blanking his memory to avoid aliens he detected with glasses that can see the density of molecules or something. Yeah, it's a standard excuse plot. There is one part of the story that is a little infamous among my group of friends though. The main character's name is Conrad. His goal for the first level is to find his friend Ian. My name is Ian and I used to live with my friend Conrad. Not often those names come up together, heh.
Overall though, if you have any interest in playing this game or enjoy cinematic platformers (seriously, we have to change that name) at all, you can't go wrong with it. It seems to go for a little bit of cash nowadays but it'd probably be worth slapping down the cash for it. It's definitely enjoyable and not something that appears on modern consoles too often. In summary: Go for it! You'll probably like it!
As I mentioned earlier, the game is in the cinematic platformer (GOD I HAD THAT TERM) genre, which means it plays like Prince of Persia (the original game, not the modern acrobat sim) or Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. It uses "step mechanics," so a tap of the D-Pad will move you one "step" in the direction you push. It's like a giant grid system, more or less. Running is different from your standard game as well. It's a fluid motion and stopping isn't instant. This can cause you to fall into pits. Oh yeah, falling from too far of a distance makes you die. The controls are a little tricky if you've never played anything like them before but once you get the hang of it all, it becomes pretty natural for the most part.
The graphics are gorgeous, as I mentioned earlier. I believe the characters have been rotoscoped, so they have a really neat look to them. It adds a nice touch of realism to the characters and it just looks COOL. The backgrounds are gorgeous and look like they may be hand-painted. Anyone know if that's right? The first level's beautiful green jungle mixed with a Flash Gordon-esque sci fi element that doesn't look too far into the future to be absurd.
The green level stuck with me from childhood and I soon found out why. I never passed the first level until last week, heh. Still, the rest of the levels don't look quite as pretty but they all have their own nice touches and have their own unique feel. No level is the same, at first glace.
The core of the game is climbing up platforms, toggling switches, and shooting goons. The switches are usually involved in a minor puzzle, which usually involved something like placing a stone of them or simply jumping over a canceling switch. If you've played a video game in the last 30 years, you've seen these puzzled before. Occasionally, they'll throw in a puzzle element that you've never seen before and it just doesn't make sense. For example, there's a part of the game when there's a locked door and a high platform that's difficult to get to that just doesn't seem to lead anywhere. It turns out there is some glass you have to shoot to get into the next area. Completely counter-intuitive and the mechanic hadn't been used prior in any part.
The shooting is pretty standard stuff. Pull out a gun, aim at a bad guy, press the A button to fire, and if the bad guy is still alive, avoid his shot and repeat. I played on the hardest difficulty, so I don't know how much that changes this part of the game, but this became tedious at times. Crouch, shoot, either use your energy shield or roll out of the way, start over. It just became "Oh god, this again?" It seems okay at first, but by the end of the game, it gets frustrating.
That makes it sound like I didn't enjoy the game as a whole though, which is untrue. I enjoyed the heck out of it. It was frustrating at times, but it's gorgeous to look at and when you DO get to a puzzle that is challenging and makes sense, solving it just feels good. It's also fairly lengthy, especially compared to Out of this World, and can keep you going for a little bit. The password system is fantastic as well. THEY ARE REAL WORDS. How great is that?
The story, though, oh the story. It doesn't really make sense. It's some convoluted story about the main character blanking his memory to avoid aliens he detected with glasses that can see the density of molecules or something. Yeah, it's a standard excuse plot. There is one part of the story that is a little infamous among my group of friends though. The main character's name is Conrad. His goal for the first level is to find his friend Ian. My name is Ian and I used to live with my friend Conrad. Not often those names come up together, heh.
Overall though, if you have any interest in playing this game or enjoy cinematic platformers (seriously, we have to change that name) at all, you can't go wrong with it. It seems to go for a little bit of cash nowadays but it'd probably be worth slapping down the cash for it. It's definitely enjoyable and not something that appears on modern consoles too often. In summary: Go for it! You'll probably like it!