#vectorcell

SCI-FI CLASSIC GAME FLASHBACK COMING BACK

Ubisoft and VectorCell (the guys behind last year's Amy) have teamed up to bring back the stylish platformer Flashback to a newer generation of gamers. This re-imagining for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network is also being helmed by the game's creator Paul Cuisset and some of the original development team.

There's a new remake of Flashback coming out. Here's the trailer.

That looks like shit. I'm going to tear into it, because I love Flashback.

As I mentioned just the other day in my Tomb Raider review, Flashback was a rigid game. It was the shining beauty in the rigid action game genre. You walked into a new screen and could plan every movement you were going to have to make to get through it, before executing it all perfectly. It was reliable and satisfying.

The new Flashback has abandoned the original's game design. Flashback is nothing without it. It's a threadbare story about a guy with amnesia who discovers aliens are being bad and decides to shoot them. That's all this remake seems to have taken from that fantastic old game.

Am I being close-minded? I mean, it's a new game, and I haven't played it yet. Why do I think it's shite? Well, for a start, it's being developed by VectorCell. They're the team that made that terrible XBLA survival horror game, Amy. They're a bad developer that could have still made a good game, had the design been simple and easy to program, like Flashback was, but this is too loose and too physics-based for this developer to pull it off.

The dialogue and voice acting sound horrible. I can deal with that. I played the Sega CD version of Flashback, after all. In fact, that reminds me, I captured some footage of that hologram bit from that version of the game a couple of weeks ago. You can do a direct comparison! (The hologram scene starts at 0:44 in this video, and 0:35 in the remake trailer)

Notice the changes they're made. Now it'll be a bit much for me to praise the writing in the original game, but they at least gave you the idea that Conrad had a cool head on his shoulders, and the gameplay matched his personality. Now they've got a loose, panicky, clumsy action game, and Conrad's personality matches it. I don't like that. Maybe you do. Fucking whatever.

Also notice the flying motorcycle gameplay sequence. Like the flying motorcycle chase from the original game's intro. It looks like this is going to do a Zero Mission on us and let us play a bit before the game actually starts. So you'll play as Conrad before he loses his memory, after he loses his memory, and after he gets his memory back? That seems kind of pointless, doesn't it? I mean, I don't know for sure yet. Don't condemn me if this game comes out and it's brilliant, but right now, it seems kind of shit. It's XBLA, so at least you'll be able to trial it.

http://www.17bits.cl/2013/04/ubisoft-reimagina-el-clasico-flashback-y-lo-presenta-en-este-trailer/