A blind playthrough of the first level of Flashback, on the hardest difficulty. Conrad has crash landed in an alien jungle, if only he could remember who he was.
This cinematic platformer classic originally came out in 1993, it was available on most of the big systems of the day. This PS4 version was released in 2018 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the game. It includes enhanced sound and visuals, plus tutorials and a rewind function. You can switch off the new stuff and just play the 1993 original, or mix and match between them. I'll be playing with all the default enhancements on, except for the "simulated CRT" effect and the rewind option, which will be disabled.
You play agent Conrad, as he moves and fights through a series of tricky sci-fi themed levels, on a quest to thwart an alien invasion. Gameplay includes platforming, shooting and adventure style puzzles. It has an unorthodox control scheme that can be unintuitive if you're used to regular controls, for example both "up" and "X" make the character jump, but in different ways. There are a lot of contextual movement and action combos you have to learn and get used to. That said the controls are precise and the game is rarely frustrating, despite the high difficulty, because if you mess up it's usually your own fault, though there is still a big trial and error aspect.
I'll be playing through the whole game blind, with deaths and fails left in, to give the authentic Flashback gameplay experience. I've been meaning to play this for a while in some form, so big thanks to YouTuber Zed Gee for telling me about the PS4 version.
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