Flashback is remade for Xbox 360 from the original Flashback which some of you may remember from 1992. For me, I wasn’t even born so that one is beyond me! A good thing worth noting is that the dev team on the original has had certain members recalled to work on the remake. That’s it for today’s history lesson then, lets delve into the game.
In a futuristic city you play as a young man who has come across some unfriendly characters after thinking you shaken them via escaping on a hovering scooter (Think Star Wars Episode 6 with the ewoks) these robotical men chase after you in a hover car eventually shooting you down in the nearby jungle, you awake in a jungle completely lost of why you are there or how you got there.
As you go through the missions it becomes more and more apparent that you’re more involved in something than you could ever imagine, finding a gentlemen in the wreckage he explains that you really are in a mess. Eventually the game allows some context to come to life after you spend a good half an hour wandering around for a teleporter to get this wounded man to a hospital.
Once this is completed the game thrusts you to an space station in which you are told to complete tasks in order to gain enough credits to get back to Earth and hopefully solve the mess you have created for yourself, this is done by eventually entering a competition at the “Death Tower” which pays for your fare to Earth. At this point this game goes into spoiler city and I don’t want to be that guy that ruins it for you!
Being a platformer means that the game won’t boast amazing graphics you’d see in some of the top Arcade games available on the XBLA market but Flashback provides a charming setting and offers a beautiful and vibrant setting in the majority of its levels, the highlight of which is the competition at the “Death Tower”.
Controls are easy to understand and the story and plot, which is identical to the original, is detailed and interesting. That being said though can be a negative, at times the game feels awfully cheesy and some of the voice overs are sub-standard in areas.
Thankfully the game poses a nice balance of challenging and easy in stages. Which leads me onto the shoot outs which occur in the game, something that baffled me was particularly evident in a bar scene where your character tackles a small group of armed guards. As many of you have played platformers before you’ll know that there are usually things going on in the background that tend to react with events on the main front drop. Flashback makes no use of this at all. Shoot outs occur and nobody in the background seems to be bothered. A little more effort in the backdrop may provide better cinematic effect for the game which, as a theme, does lack throughout.
Inbetween levels and certain points within a fast paced game overall, the cut aways are well designed thought out and well animated. In black and white, they depict the emotion better than the rest of the game which shows little in the characters.
Overall this remake of a classic tends to swing the same way as many remakes of a classic, you can’t improve on it. While there are better games on the market you could really do a lot worse with your money.
Flashback is available for instant download on XBLA Market for just under a tenner.
