NOTE: Sorry about the formatting on the paragraphs. Remind me to never use Notepad for writing ever again TwT

I picked this one up real cheap on a whim, completely forgetting that this
was a title I'd been looking for for a long time. Granted I had forgotten the
actual title of the game. So I guess that makes me pretty dumb.

Anyway, Flashback: The Quest For Identity is a sister title to Out
Of This World, both developed by Delphine Software. These games were
unique in their smooth faux-motion capture animated sprites and other-worldly backgrounds that were almost indicative of the late 80s science fiction scene.

I grew up with Out Of This World on the Sega Genesis. The game both
fascinated me and frightened me with its shocking and sudden deaths. It was a true puzzle platformer where each step and each new screen required careful thinking. I'll have to cover that one, if I ever get over my fear of it. It seriously did scare me a child.

On the other hand, Flashback (this is an SNES copy I have, by the way) is more based on the combat system that was used in its older sibling. To me, this led to this title being less memorable and a lot more frustrating. Even more so, the story is essentially a ripoff fusion of classic action-scifi films. A deformed mutant child of hits like Total Recall, Blade Runner and They Live. Because of this, I'm not going to go into any detail on the story. Really I stopped caring about it in the first thirty seconds of gameplay when a hologram tells your protagonist that he's lost his memory voluntarily, ala Total Recall.

So that leaves the gameplay, which has so much potential, but is ultimately
lost in how unbearable awkward it can become over time. It's one of those game where I had to reference the controls section of the manual (online) numerous times within the first hour of playing to fully grasp what I
could and couldn't do. Even the most simplest of platforming actions requires careful planning and understanding of subtle commands that aren't easily memorized by muscle memory. Shooting your pistol requires you to press one button to draw it, and another to shoot it. The animation to draw takes long enough to be jarring to a veteran gamer of smoother games in the genre like Metroid. The jumping is even worse. You push up to jump straight up, and hold it to pull yourself up onto a ledge. You can hold
the run button to hold onto the ledge without pulling yourself up, and let go
of up to fall. Speaking of holding run, you hold the run button while
standing still and push up to do a standing long jump. There are other
jumping methods that require the same amount of memorization that make them hard to pull off when being timed or under duress. Even interacting with items is a hit and miss, as the rules of how you use the action button seem to change with every kind of object.

The enemies, though complete stupid in the AI department, always seem to have the advantage over you, as they are sometimes very hard to actually hit. The human enemies use a force field to block your bullets. You have the exact same technology to prevent damage to your health/shield (by the way, the only way to get back shield is to recharge it are rare energy stations, or to complete a level). It only works for a second, and then activates again a second later, basically pulsating when you hold the use item button. The enemies use it slightly slower than yourself, which should give you the advantage, but it becomes a coin toss when you get in a force field battle with your foe, only to get hit because you used your shield too early or too late. It's hard to explain how this is so hard to get down, but I guess the difficulty lies in failing once makes it almost impossible to get the rhythm again to defeat them without losing too many shields. The non-human enemies, consisting of ground based tank bots with tasers and
floating orbs that shoot short distance lightning are just annoying. The orbs
are in particular because of their persistence. They like to take a lot of
hits for something as small as themselves, and like to be spawned in spots
that make the very hard to hit without taking a hit yourself.

Ultimately, this winds down to one major point. The one thing that destroys
the reason to play this title is the lackluster repetition of poorly paced
combat that is ultimately a game of chance and luck. It requires you to
repeat sections many times to know what an enemy's going to do so you don't lose too much shield. Otherwise you won't have enough shield to complete the next combat sequence. There are checkpoints that allow you to return to them upon a death, but they can seem just as far away as a level completion. This entire pattern requires a bit too much patience. I had it at first but it wore off pretty quick.

It's one redeeming factor is its graphics as I described earlier. It does
have a nice presentation and it helped to promote it a lot I suspect, as I do well remember the images in a Nintendo Power article that attracted me to it in
the first place. I did discover that the game does chug a bit on the SNES
when there are more than a few sprites on the screen at once. But I can
accept that. Doesn't hurt that it also helps with some of the precise timing
as well, so sometimes it was a saving grace. Doesn't save the title from just
being a big letdown to me, though.

It unfortunate that I lost the will to finish this game. I'll probably pick
it up again in a few days since I'm in the last little bit, but it's more out
of professionalism that I do so and not out of personal interest. I just don't
care for the experience it gave. It definitely doesn't live up to its predecessor.