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REVIEW: FLASHBACK - 25th ANNIVERSARY (Switch)

27/6/2018

16 Comments

 
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Prince of Persia... Another World... Flashback.... What do all these games have in common? That's right: all of them made me want to stab skewers into my brain.

Also: they formed the backbone of a weird sort of sub-genre in the late-80s/early-90s. To wit: flip-screen platformers with rotoscoped characters and really annoying controls 'em ups. Few of us who played these games got through them without polluting the air with the sort of language that would make a sailor blush. 

They were insanely demanding, the challenge coming from the weird weighting of the main character, who would plummet to his death if you didn't press the jump button at precisely the right moment. Each screen was a puzzle in itself, success stemming - essentially - from training yourself to remember when the correct time was to press which control. 

​1991's Another World from Delphine's software took Prince of Persia's basic idea, gave it a sci-fi make-over, and stirred into the mix what were - for the time - some truly cinematic, albeit heavily stylised, cut-scenes. A year later, Delphine released the not-a-sequel-but-could've-been Flashback, developed by one Paul "The Ball" Cuisset, who had previously frustrated players with his point-and-click adventure Future Wars. 

Understandably, Cuisset brought aspects of his point-and-click puzzle experience to the genre, along wth his baffling inclination to make important objects literally the size of a single pixel - thus driving players to distraction, as they scoured the levels looking for things they'd missed. But who cares about whether or not a game is actually functional, right? 

I mean, why don't we just hide the controls on our microwave ovens? Make them the size of a pinhead, so customers have to search for them, and then have to insert a needle into a hole in order to to program it. That'd be fun, right?

Anyway. Look now: Flashback is back - 25 years on from its debut - with a special anniversary edition.
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ALIENS? I HATE THOSE GUYS!
Set in The Future, Flashback stars one Colin Stagg (Conrad Hart), an amnesiac scientist on the run after discovering an alien conspiracy. Armed with a laser pistol, and assorted items he collects on his journey - which takes him from the jungle to a Blade Runner-esque Washington - he runs, he jumps, he does roly-polys, and shoots down enemies.

Flashback was a stunning game back in the day. It was also a nightmare of profound proportions. The controls - as per the nature of the genre - were fiddly beyond rational explanation. You almost had to train yourself to remember them, as nothing about them was logical.

Jumping, dropping from ledges, rolling... all were achieved through a combination of button press and pushing the controls in a certain direction. More often than not, death came through momentarily forgetting these controls in the heat of the moment, than from the way the levels and puzzles have been structured. None of that has changed here.

What made the original even more maddening was the scarcity of save points. You were forever retracting your steps, and hoping not to make the same mistakes a second, third, or twentieth time. Fortunately, this new anniversary edition, which also includes the original game in all its unrelenting glory, gives you the option to play with a rewind feature, that allows you to roll back the gameplay pre-death. It doesn't fix those fiddly controls, but it makes all the difference to overall accessibility.

You can also, should you wish to do so for some pointless reason, play with visuals that simulate a fuzzy CRT screen. Ohterwisel - even in the non-CRT version - have been left unaltered. Indeed, the screens are in their original aspect ratio; no modern, widescreen, nonsense here. In that respect, it adheres to the original version's uncompromising philosophy.
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BACK TO THE FUTURE?
It's hard to ascertain whether anything about Flashback would appeal to a modern player (though given Dark Souls, it seems that plenty of players love doing the same unrewarding guff over and over again). Obviously, this is being aimed at those who enjoyed - or suffered through - Flashback in its original form. I can only really talk about it subjectively, and even from a subjective perspective... I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

Most of my memories of the original have been tainted by what are - and this is not open to debate - flawed controls, the pixel-sized important objects, and the scarcity of save points (not to mention its unrewarding, 3D, third-person successor, Fade to Black).

Curiously, taking it as a museum piece, I enjoyed reacquainting myself with Flashback. Certainly, being able to rewind the action - and there was no way I was playing it without that option - has a huge impact on its friendliness, but that also allowed me to appreciate what the game does (and always did, it seems) get right.

To wit: its atmosphere, its beautiful visuals, and just how ground-breaking the animated cut-scenes were at the time. Also, I could play without worrying about having to retrace my steps every three minutes. It left me able to appreciate more how well structured it is.

It remains a flawed experience, but one that is now, at least, slightly less inflexible than it was. It is therefore rewarded more of an opportunity to overcome its inherent flaws, and reveal the game that was always there beneath the frustration-fuelled profanity.

​I may not have had the best relationship with the original version - indeed, it was like being stuck in a co-dependent relationship, with just enough flashes of potential to ensure I endured the abuse - but with the benefit of a bit of distance, I'm glad its back.

SCORE: 17 years out of 25 years.
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16 Comments
Col. Asdasd
27/6/2018 09:37:52 am

One thing all these retro-updates seem to miss about emulating a CRT - it's not just the look you need to copy (which they never seem to get right anyway), it's the sound. The thing I remember most vividly about playing the NES on old Cathy was the quiet underscore of scrambled electronic signalia, the low fuzzy buzz and the hisses and pops you could only hear in moments of silence, say after a death or during a level transition.

Anyway. The internet's relationship with these games is strange. Some deify them for their iconic style, some crucify them for being frankly AWFUL to play. Some equivocate, because while they're undoubtedly beautiful, their ritual act of slaughtering gameplay at the altar of cinema represents the opening of a pandora's box that would infect entire generations of games,

What happened to this genre? The fiddly controls and die a lot puzzle platformer? Blizzard's take on it added the usual thick layer of make-up in the stylish, playable but over-long Blackthorne. The Oddworld games added some fun gimmicks and an eye-catching aesthetic, but played to genre type and thus were too punitive and frustrating. Did anyone else make a game like this? Is anyone still making them?

Are you watching Summer Games Done Quick Mr. B? I love, love, love it. Not even for the speed-running, although that's great, but because I love being exposed briefly (matron) to a marathon of dozens and dozens of classic and unknown games and getting fleeting glimpses of why people love them.

But one trend I've noticed is that the runs of old games largely feature gameplay from start to finish, and despite all the skips and zips feel like complete experiences where every frame is unmistakably of the game, the whole way through, like slices of a stick of rock. Whereas as you move into the more modern era, especially around the time of the PS2 onwards, runs become chaotic, a jumble of loading screens, skipped cutscenes and digging about in menus. Characters move so fast through tiny rooms that the chunks of gameplay last a few seconds each.

The better runners guide you through this confusion via their commentary, but the impression it gave me is one of the part of games you actually play having had to be squashed right back to make space for everything else that got added as the industry matured.

Maybe it's because they dominated both the sales charts and the popular zeitgeist of the time, but the trend of noughties console games having tiny levels and constant loading screen/cutscene interruptions is one I feel got way too easy a ride from gamerdom at large.

But there I go banging the old drum again. I know a lot of people adored that era, cutscenes, loading screens and all.

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PointRegarder
27/6/2018 09:47:09 am

Yeah, but...the idea of SGDQ is that the runners know how to fly through the gameplay parts as quickly as possible...

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Play the game already gramps, then you can whinge about it
27/6/2018 09:43:02 am

Dark Souls is hugely rewarding and punishes carelessness, this is trial and error

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SweetMrGibs
27/6/2018 10:40:01 am

Well said. Dark Souls might not be for you Biffo, but it's certainly not unrewarding. I mean, I'm rubbish at it, but when I die, it's because of impatience or a mistake on my part.

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Solaire
27/6/2018 10:40:47 am

It's actually impressive just how wrong digi gets dark souls everytime they bring it up.

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Rufio1980
27/6/2018 11:14:54 am

It’s just as impressive how Dark Souls players miss that they’re being trolled...

Spiney O’Sullivan
27/6/2018 04:21:43 pm

I’m beginning to think that Dark Souls is becoming to Digi2000 what the Amiga was to Teletext Digi.

LOL epic trolling you cucks!!! H4rdc0r3tro77--4CHANARMYxXx420bl4zzzeitxXx
27/6/2018 06:19:37 pm

Get ready for endlessly wearisome and entirely avoidable counter-trolling then

Nikki
27/6/2018 11:41:57 am

I loved Flashback when it first came out, mostly because I'd never seen animation like that on a mega drive before. I wouldn't play it through again though.

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Robobob
27/6/2018 02:28:43 pm

I'll grant that Flashback was fidgety and footery.

Not sure I remember the controls being THAT bad though. Sure there were a few different button combos needed, but compared to today's pads and their 6,045 buttons and games that make use of them all in a million combinations, I still think Flashback's controls were more intuitive.

It was brick hard but it was also very slightly more forgiving than Another World, which was amazing but demanded absolute pixel perfection.

I seem to remember really liking the Death Tower level (which was pretty much just run jump and shoot stuff) with some of the other levels being a bit less interesting.

Also, it had a teleporter in it and it was COOL, and I still randomly hum the music from the cinematic opening sequence all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClBaKXB2KqE

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Moctavia
27/6/2018 06:12:50 pm

Mr. Biffo is the Dark Souls of games journalists. Do you see?

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Marro
28/6/2018 04:07:26 am

I loved Delphine's games in the 90s.
Best of all was their Poirot-simulator Cruise For A Corpse. It was an insanely ambitious game with beautiful graphics and cinematics. Impossible without a walkthrough, however...

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Almighty Casual
28/6/2018 09:28:23 am

Dark Souls is the most rewarding experience available in gaming, it is peerless.

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Chris
28/6/2018 12:03:32 pm

You know you're getting old when games set in the far future are re-released and now set in the past.

Thankfully Flashback has a couple of years before we catch up with it.

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Bim
28/6/2018 03:06:49 pm

Was “Colin Stagg” a name you randomly pulled from your brain-lobes? Because if so it might be worth giving it a Google

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Ganapan
29/6/2018 12:43:38 pm

The Dark Souls of rotoscope platformers.

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