Once I got used to how the controls work, I had a blast with this. Some of the puzzles were a bit frustrating, and the baddies hit bullshit levels of difficult by the end of the game, which was also somewhat annoying.

But even today, this game looks incredible. The rotoscoped characters and sprites dressed as polygons has a really futuristic feel to it, but maybe that's just 8 year old me talking.

The gameplay is compulsive. Just one more go. I really enjoyed thinking about how to navigate each screen and figure out the best way to deal with enemies and various other hazards etc.

Other than a clunky control system, this has really stood the test of time. A real gem. I played this via the Delphine Evercade Collection. It's the Megadrive version on there for some reason. Can't complain though, because its still great.

Kinda silly it's taken me this long to beat flashback, considering I actually have the Megadrive cart, and the version they released on Switch. Still, a great time.

At this point in the world of video games, platformers generally follow a very similar pattern. Most of these games typically some kind of character moving from left to right, or in whatever direction is laid out for the player, you take out a selection of enemies, primarily by jumping on top of them, or using other methods like with guns or swords, you collect some kind of regular item that only serves to give you points and make you feel a little better inside, and you fight a handful of bosses to ultimately conquer them and win the day. This formula has typically worked for many games, and it still works even all the way to this day, but… what if platformers can be… MORE than that? What if these games could be bigger, more stylistic, more personal, and most importantly, more story-driven? Well, that’s where cinematic platformers come in, with one of the most iconic examples of this sub-genre being with Flashback: The Quest for Identity.

I myself have dabbled in and out of cinematic platformers over the years, giving games like Limbo, Inside, and Heart of Darkness a shot, and I do remember loving those games (except for Heart of Darkness, that one is… complicated), making me want to check out what other kinds of cinematic platformers are out there, such as with Another World and the Oddworld series. In terms of Flashback, I had wanted to play that because, from what I had heard, it was THE cinematic platformer, one that defined the sub-genre, and one that had the most success and legacy behind it, with plenty of sequels and a remake being made afterwards. So, one day in 2020, I decided that I would go ahead and check it out, and yeah, I gotta admit, I really liked it. Yeah, it may be pretty dated by today’s standards, and it wasn’t the first cinematic platformer out there, but the presentation was something not many other games at the time could achieve, and it had a lot of creative and interesting elements… along with several hindrances to go alongside them.

The story is your typical “aliens try to destroy Earth” plot, but the way that it is presented and shown is much more unique, cinematic, and interesting when compared to many other games at the time, making it so that you care about what is going on (to an extent), the graphics are pretty good for the most part, with plenty of very well done hand-drawn backgrounds for the main gameplay sections, and as for the cutscenes, the animation is fantastic, despite most of the characters looking like clearer versions of characters from Alone in the Dark, which is made up with them being rotoscoped, making them feel more alive, the music is pretty good, even if, most of the time, there is no music, and instead just atmospheric sounds, but when there are tunes to hear, they do give weight to whatever is going on, and they can be good to listen to, the control is… rough, to say the least, but this is usually how most cinematic platformers around this time did control, so it is the norm, and you can get used to it when you know what to do (to an extent), and the gameplay, in terms of key elements, is stuff that has been seen before in other games, but these elements are combined together here in a way that make it stand out and much more interesting to play as a whole.

The gameplay is typical of a 2D cinematic platformer, where you take control of our hero, Conrad, travel through many different futuristic areas with plenty of variety, including cities, forests, and alien fortresses, take out plenty of enemies that you will run into with the help of your pistol and your various shields, gather plenty of items that you will need in order to complete your journey, and complete quests for people in order to proceed forward, watch more cinematics, and find out what the fate of the Earth entails. Yeah, on the surface level, it is pretty much what you would expect from a lot of 2D platformers, but one thing that makes it stand out is about how the game plays. It is very different from that of a regular platformer, feeling a lot more heavy and restrictive, which is definitely gonna turn some people away, but it does make the game feel somewhat more realistic, and in turn, more cinematic.

The other key element that makes the game stand out amongst others is, obviously, the presentation. There are plenty of very detailed and well animated cutscenes to be seen that detail key events of the story, which help the player get more involved in with what is going on, rather then the story element being just being relegated to part of the background afterwards. Not to mention, again, the more realistic animations for the characters mixed in with all of this make the game feel more cinematic as a result, which may not be as impressive nowadays, considering how far technology has come, but again, for the time it came out, it was revolutionary, to say the least. It was if you were playing out a moving, which not too many other games at the time could pull off easily. Those dumbass interactive CD games at the time couldn’t pull something like this off, with that crunchy-ass live-action footage that completely took you out of the experience.

With that being said though, the game isn’t perfect, and this all comes down to one key factor: the game is pretty fucking hard. This is something that a lot of cinematic platformers typically fall into, with difficulty ramping up quite a bit as you go along, and most of the time, I can get behind it, but for a game like this, it almost feels like too much at times. There will be plenty of moments where you are bombarded by enemies on both sides of you, and it feels like you need to be a god in order to counter and defeat some of these threats that you face, and this can result in many… many… MANY deaths. What doesn’t help this so much is how often these enemies show up, and how a lot of the time, you can die in pretty BS ways, such as running onto a screen where an enemy is, and they will kill you without you even noticing them right away, and even times where the enemy can kill you from the other screen you aren’t on. Now, this is nothing new when it comes to cinematic platformers, I get that, but it feels like this game in particular has the worst of those elements in it, with it happening so many times that it made the game less enjoyable at times, and more like a slog as a result.

Overall, despite the bullshit nature of the game at points, and the clunky-at-first-controls, I still consider Flashback to be a very good game, with great visuals for the time, very memorable presentation, challenges that feel satisfying to conquer, and a story that, while cliche, you get sucked into with how you view it. I would recommend it for those who are a fan of this sub-genre, and for those who love other games in said genre, because while I can’t say for certain that you will love this one, there is certainly something in it you can find that you will either love or appreciate for what it does. Just, you know, do yourself a favor and DON’T play the 2013 remake of this game. It isn’t worth it, trust me…

Game #342