Flashback

This a classic game from 1993, it was Prince of Persia but in the future. I used to play the game in DOS, and never managed to get past level 2.

I finally beat it after decades, let's talk about the original game first. Game has a lot of combat, but since it plays in a grid, it's more like a puzzle where each screen you need to understand and figure out how to proceed without taking too much damage. There's enough different enemies and each have their strategy. Each level is long, very long and different. Real puzzles are easy enough to not block you a lot. The main issue of the game is how unresponsive it feels when in combat. Expect to be hit by an enemy, get up and start swinging your weapon in melee and hitting nothing, only to be hit again and again.

The last level, is probably the worst in the game. It introduces an enemy that has RNG to its movement and attacks and makes it a chore when you have to kill dozens of them. Save points get really scarce in that section, and the game requires very precise inputs to not get destroyed.

Now, this updated version, and the reason why I don't really recommend it unless you are a very hardcore player or superfan: the game tends to crash when you die and need to continue. Also had issues with the save slot switching after reaching level 3 and thinking I lost my progress. It's a shame because they added achievements and some retro graphic filters which are nice.

Mind you, the expert difficulty and no rewind achievement is very hard, and makes the enjoyment drop a lot in the last levels. Proceed with caution.

I can't. I guess I don't have the nostalgia to prop this one up.

Awful controls, no music, slow game play and I'm pretty sure I soft locked myself in the first hour of play.

Also going into steam overlay or alt tab causes random keys to stop working.

Can already feel boredom / decay setting in, so I'm gonna shelf it.

Game is clunky and hard as I remember from childhood. 5/5 game.

A banger of a classic, even though in my opinion it always lived in the shadow of its better rotoscope brother Another World. This version works flawlessly in modern systems. It has the original and remaster versions. A must have.

When I played the original Prince of Persia games last year, I was enamored with how atmospheric they were, how clever and well thought-out every aspect of their mechanical and level design was, how strong an identity they possessed. There are a lot of weird nuances to their design, but the mysteries they present are all ones they give the player the tools as a player to solve, how to navigate their winding mazes and difficult combat and movement puzzles. They're very intuitive and fun games.

Flashback is not any of that. Don't get the wrong idea, the money you pay for this version is for the updated mode with rewind because much of Flashback's design is simply unfair, opaque and clumsy. As a release this version is... serviceable, though it has bizarre stability problems with frequent crashes reloading a save in the original mode, but as mentioned, you probably don't want to touch that mode anyway. Given the game's lack of any real tone or narrative identity behind its consistently poor game design, I'm really just not sure who I'd recommend Flashback to other than people who have a truly profound appreciation for its particular Amiga spritework and aesthetic, it just isn't all that fun to play or all that engaging as a cinematic narrative experience and even if you find any kind of charm in what it is, it is a game that only continues to get more frustrating and nonsensical to play the further in you get.

Back in 1992, when I first played Flashback on my PC, I was already a fan of cinematic adventure games like Another World and Future Wars. The French developers—Eric Chahi and Paul Cuisset—had a vision for games that felt more like interactive films, and Flashback perfected that formula. Its sci-fi narrative, clearly influenced by They Live, Total Recall, and even a touch of Alien, felt like something straight out of a dystopian VHS rental. As Conrad B. Hart, a man who wakes up with no memory on a hostile alien-infested Earth, I was thrown into a thrilling blend of platforming, puzzle-solving, and storytelling that was leagues ahead of its time.

What set Flashback apart wasn’t just its deep, engrossing plot, but its incredible use of rotoscoped animation. Every movement—running, rolling, drawing a gun—felt fluid and lifelike in a way no other game had managed before. The game controlled like a blend of Prince of Persia and Another World, requiring precision and patience, but rewarding the player with a truly cinematic experience. Combat was deliberate, requiring strategy rather than brute force, and the exploration-heavy level design made every environment feel like a real place. The cyberpunk cityscapes, the jungles of Titan, and the alien strongholds had an atmosphere that, even today, still holds up.

Revisiting Flashback on Steam brought back a wave of nostalgia, but also a few surprises. The original version remains mostly intact, but some strange alterations—like a new intro/menu background—stick out like a sore thumb. It’s a reminder that some things should be left untouched. And then there’s the so-called “remastered” version—an ugly, soulless mess that strips away the magic of the original with garish visuals and unnecessary changes. The beauty of Flashback was in its pixel-perfect art and fluid animation, and this "update" completely misunderstands what made the game special.

Even after all these years, the original Flashback remains a masterpiece. It’s a game that perfectly captured the spirit of 80s and early 90s sci-fi, a love letter to the kind of storytelling and atmosphere that made films like Blade Runner and Escape from New York so iconic. It’s rare to find a game that plays as well today as it did decades ago, but Flashback is one of them. If you’ve never played it before, skip the remaster and go straight for the original—it’s still one of the coolest sci-fi adventures ever made.

Loved it. I played it originally on the Amiga and it’s a classic. Never completed it though until today. Definitely a trip down memory lane! The animations still look fantastic and this wasn’t one of those “my memories of this are great and playing it now has ruined it” it was “this is just as amazing as I remember it!

controls suck!!!!!!!!!!

Flashback was one of my favorite games growing up, and it was fun to play it again, but I wouldn't recommend this version. The full price is very steep for what is essentially a port.

The reason I'm giving it a bad review is that the Morph enemies are really, really badly bugged in this version, to the point that it basically ruins the game. In the original game you can learn their moves and defeat them without taking damage if you're good enough. In this version, they can stunlock you endlessly with un-dodgeable attacks until you die, and there's nothing you can do about it but hope that they decide not to.

The hard mode is absurdly over-tuned, it just doubles the amount of enemies and makes them bullet sponges. That combined with the bug I described earlier means that if you want to beat it you're going to have to slog through long, boring fights, occasionally running back to the save point halfway through the battle because you lucked into a situation where you were able to deal damage to one of the six bad guys that attack you at the same time and could each stunlock you to death on their own.

Unfortunately one of the achievements requires you to play in hard mode, so if you care about that sort of thing prepare to be bored and frustrated.

Amazing game. One of the true 90's classics and well worth a look if you enjoy platforming/puzzle games.

yes

Nostalgic game for me. One of my first PC games

Игра состарилась не очень хорошо, больше культурный артефакт и памятник эпохе чем игра (Another world ощущается гораздо менее архаично как ни странно)

Works well playing on a keyboard and the animation has aged well. The graphics are still stylish and beautiful too.

Even as someone that played this game back then and still plays old games all the time, I can't really recommend it because it hasn't aged well at all.

The controls are simply atrocious. They singlehandedly ruin every every other aspect of the game.

The worst part is that they could have used this "anniversary" edition as an opportunity to improve on them; but no, they didn't bother. You can't even rebind them. So if you are a keyboard user, you are expected to play it using the arrow keys.

If you want to revisit this game, just watch it on youtube.

I loved this game back in the day on the Atari Jaguar. Love the remake

Classic

I classic that can be played over and over. They don't make them like this anymore!

I've played this game on the Sega Genesis / Megadrive (still have the cartridge), PC (MS-DOS), PS4 / 5, and now got the Steam version.

So, yeah, I kinda like it.

The game is fun to play, but it would be better if it was controller compatible.