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Review: Flashback 2 (PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Switch & Steam) – Defunct Games

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Defunct Games reviews Flashback 2 by Microids, available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Switch and PC.

Three decades after the original burst onto the scene, Flashback 2 attempts to rewrite the story with mixed results. It’s a follow-up that is sure to divide fans by taking a lot of liberties with the narrative and making some controversial changes. However, there is one thing we can all agree on – this game is broken. From the busted frame-rate to the rampant technical bugs to the fact that the ending didn’t even play for me, Flashback 2 feels like it needed more a lot more time in the oven. Those who overlook the game’s many issues will find a rewarding story that leaves the franchise in a genuinely compelling place, but I would argue that the payoff is not worth the frustration. Flashback 2 is the most disappointed I’ve been in a game in a long time.

NOTE: Defunct Games received a digital code from the developer/publisher of this game for review purposes. For more information about the Defunct Games review policy visit www.defunctgames.com

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22 comments

@pedrovanius2025 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
FLASHBACK ORIGINAL PARA MIN UM DOS MELHORES GAMES DE TODOS OS TEMPOS !!
SEM ESQUECER TAMBÉM ANOTHER WORLD (OUT OF THIS WORLD) !! 😎🇧🇷
@Mazafaka77 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Flashback 2 - сплошное разочарование
@B-Rad412 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
I don't pray for things like this very often but I was praying that this game was going to be great...guess what God said yeah right😢😢😂😂
@Mintcar923 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
You know I never played the original Flashback back in the day but it was one of my very first Switch games.. I did have the oft compared Out of this World on Amiga.. Now I got it on ps3 I think.. There were a couple of 2d Cinematic action adventures I came across in recent years Liberated, Deadlight and most recently Little Orpheus so there’s definitely a market for them.. If they’re done right of course..

Most disappointing sequel was Wings 2 on SNES.. The original was quite possibly my favorite Amiga title that didn’t have a Sid Meier stamp
@ConraDargo October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Ni no Kuni II here for me. Revenant Kingdom lacked all the charm, love and heart that the original was so full of. Never mind that the first game wasn't perfect, that it had a few problems with the Pokémon-style gameplay. It was still more than enough to make for a really good and enjoyably game, but most of all it had charming characters and a cute, hearty story. With the sequel, however, they really only focused on the gameplay - trying to "fix" what was "wrong" with Wrath of the White Witch that people were unhappy with. And what did that get us instead? Poorly written characters, a much worse story, and way too much new "cool" gameplay :'C
@Zirus_Blackheart October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Disappointing sequel?
Ultima 9
Fu<k you EA!
@tarn8675309 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Dead Space 3 for me. Way too different from the first two. I hated the changes they made to it and I couldn't bring myself to finish it. And shame about Flashback 2. It looked so good! Maybe they'll patch it several times to make it playable?
@cyberpunknut1099 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Dang that's a shame about the bugginess of it. It does look really good, at least better than the 2013 remake. Always a shame when the story beats of a game get sunk by the gameplay. Makes this prime for watching on YouTube rather than playing it. Was looking forward to this too.

QOTD, Most disappointing sequel, Duke Nukes Forever.
@OtakuMan114 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
My most disappointing sequel was State Of Emergency 2, I really enjoyed the first game and was looking forward to the follow up.

However, it was full with frustration dying at the prison level and trying to stop the guards from attacking the other prisoners.

What made it worse for me is that the prison level was the tutorial level.
@barry-allenthe-flash8396 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Never gonna be bothered by "bad" voice acting personally. Just mute it, I say - heck, I'm pretty most gamers are multitasking anyway. Sound design takes a hit when you also want to listen to podcasts, youtube videos, TV or pay attention to Twitch streamers/viewers. Adding it in can't ever hurt a game, but muting it is always a solution for people who do pay attention to it. At any rate, the rest sounds like Eurojank to me, and after the LAST time someone (Ubi Soft) tried to bring back Flashback with that awful 360/PS3 one, this still sounds pretty good... in time. I'm sure patches will smooth out the experience quite a bit soon enough. Just pushing it off into "Check in or Buy later in 2024" for now, because it does look pretty interesting. Glad to see them at least ATTEMPT to push it into 3D via those fixed camera "diorama-style" levels, honestly.

Wish it had a bit more in the way of side content though. Like, even Ubi Soft's Flashback HD Anniversary thing had the original game hidden in there. Considering this is a full-blown sequel, it would've been nice to see at least SOME content from Fade to Black or Flashback Legends in there. At least via a documentary style, like with Atari 50 compilation, if not remastered and made playable on modern platforms. I feel like every time someone brings back this IP, they kinda fail to communicate why modern audiences should care, lol.

QOTD: Crash "4" It's About Time. Honestly, this one was maddening to me. If there are people who like it, I can guarantee that they only played the first 4 worlds or so, and didn't concern themselves with actually finishing it or finding hidden crystals to unlock extra outfits or anything. But anyone who actually pushed to finish that bloated disaster almost certainly lost their minds long before the credits roll. Literally, 40% of that game should've been cut - there's so much that's busted and unfair crammed in there in the entire back half (MULTIPLE times does it pull nonsense like not loading Checkpoint boxes after completing difficult sections only to load them arbitrarily after you've died and had to redo said section two or three times. Areas that demand precise platforming usually load incorrectly so that sequences of bouncing nitro crates are out of sync with each other. There's the one part where you have to do some REALLY fast platforming on a bunch of luggage being tossed out of a space bus where it starts you OUT OF FRAME so you can't see where you're jumping to, etc. It's so bad). The fact that it feels like it comes to a natural end three times and Toys for Bob kept being all, "BUT WAIT! That's not the real end!" and forcing more of it down your throat, the awful Tawna and Dingodile "levels" that are half-hearted in their design and aren't fun to play, and STILL require you to complete the rest of the stages as Crash and/or Coco anyway (which is INFURIATING when you're doing for those Crystals to unlock costumes, as you get some by finishing levels without dying more than 3 times).... I could go on and on. There's so much that isn't good in that whole package. And I do mean the whole package; I cannot stress ENOUGH how bloated it feels. Why they felt the need to justify a $60 price tag with so much bad content when the N-Sane Trilogy sold well at a $40 price before is beyond me, but it was the wrong call. By the end of it, I hated Crash Bandicoot and didn't really want any further entries (so good that that's not happening at the moment. Like the rest of the World, I am ignoring Crash Team Rumble in this instance).

I ended up playing Beenox's fantastic remake of Crash Team Racing + Nitro Kart later though and that brought me back on board, but ffs, that's too close a call. Toys for Bob's a developer I absolutely don't want to see handle the series' main entries going forward; outside of the artists and animators there, too many people involved in that went out of their way to make something hatefully designed that feels like a slog that just doesn't end. Never ever want to play it again. I hope that whenever Microsoft wants to greenlight a Crash "5" they hand it to Vicarious Visions/Blizzard East or Beenox instead... and I also would rather see MS put out new Spyro, Banjo and Psychonauts' entries first anyway (it's weird how Microsoft is suddenly now a huge 3D platformer powerhouse, huh?). It's About Time made me happy that Crash is going away for a long time....
@JenMistress October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Yeah, hearing that voice, and that dialogue, I'm expecting to be given an offer I can't refuse. 😉😂🤣 And hey, with the payoff being a black screen, yeah, can agree that it isn't worth it. As for the question, think I'll go with Zelda 2. Yeah, I know, awhile back I said that there might be a good game in there somewhere, and I still stand by that, but the game we have now, I remember being a little girl, playing the first Zelda on dad's old NES, and loving it so much that when I beat it, rushed to switch to Zelda 2, and being very disappointed by it. Luckily, dad also had Link to the Past, so my disappointment didn't last long, but could imagine what it was like back when they were the only 2 Zelda games out there.
@HybridAngelZero October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
The most disappointing sequel for me, though it may be iffy if you can call it sequel due to sort of being a reboot(?) is Castlevania Lords of Shadow.
It carries none of the fun, charm or style of any previous Castlevania game, instead being a dour, dreary and joyless Great Value God of War that occasionally also wants to be Shadow of the Colossus and a few other popular games. The gameplay certainly isn't bad at its core, but it weighed down with constant QTEs interrupting the action.
Follow it up with it ending with an eye-rolling "plot twist" and a need to be edgy for edgy's sake and you just get a game that wastes the amazing artistry of a clearly very talented team and even the vocal performance of Patrick Stewart!
It's pretty much the poster child for everything wrong with the market-driven edgy reboots of the PS360 era
@roguerifter9724 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
State of Emergency 2. Second and third would be Deus Ex: Invisible War and Red Faction II
@santiagoiniguez9712 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Most disappointing sequel for me is Manhunt 2. The split personality twist is silly and the whole smut snuff film feel is GONE
@jwrfb26 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
My most disappointing sequels were the Zero Escape series. I loved the first game, and while the second and third did make some changes to rectify the clunkier parts of it, I found the stories I thought I would love to be full of needless convolutions. They also imposed themselves more and more into the puzzle rooms so that it became harder to enjoy the puzzle solving aspects, which far outshined the ridiculous plots.
@noneofyourbusiness4616 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Disappointing sequel response: I haven't actually played it despite having a free copy from Epic, but seems like Shenmue 3 has to place high on the list due to squandering the opportunity to wrap up the story after decades due to a misplaced overconfidence that many more sequels were on the way.
@jayme69 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
My most disappointing sequel was from way back in 1986. I was a massive fan of the C64 classic one on one fighter "The Way of the Exploding Fist" back in the day and when I heard about the sequel "Fist II: The Legend Continues" I didn't hesitate in picking it up. Unfortunately on loading it up I discovered that gone was the originals focus on that trademark one on one fighting experience and was replaced by a pseudo fighting/exploration game that lacked any polish and frankly looked as though it had been thrown together and rushed out the door. It just wasn't fun. Really disappointed to this day and I can't even look at it on Antstream Arcade. Keep up the awesome work!
@221b October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
My most disappointing sequel is probably Dreamfall. The Longest Journey was one of the best adventure games of all time, but Dreamfall turned it into a sub-par action/adventure hybrid with a completely generic take on the cyberpunk and fantasy genres, and what they did to April Ryan was nothing short of character assassination.
@juststatedtheobvious9633 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
That I've actually played? Damn, that's a hard one. Usually the defensive reviews of underage edge lords warn me away from games like God of War III, GTA V, and FF XVI that desperately cling to a monotone misanthropy for a dozen hours or so instead of hiring a real writer.

And Shenmue III's efforts to open up the busy boredom simulator genre to casual gamers who hate plot progression and depth of gameplay just wasn't for me.

Oh, wait! I just remembered 3rd Birthday exists! Man, anyone who thinks Other M did a number on Samus, should check out the only game that exists just so the developer can kill the series protagonist in the most pretentious way possible and trap a terrified little kid in her body instead. Did I mention the clothing damage system?

Everyone responsible should probably be on a watch list.
@scas97 October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
QotD: definitely salt and sacrifice. Salt and sanctuary was amazing, the sequel was just so bad.
@LordelX October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
My most disappointing sequel? Castlevania Legends for Gameboy. Symphony of the Night had come out a year earlier, and I thought the Gameboy game would at least follow the Metriodvania style of Symphony of the Night. It was just a linear Castlevania game...not terrible. You can now play it on NSO. Little did I know the year after that I'd be kicked in the balls by Castlevania 64...
@PenguinDT October 11, 2024 - 11:39 pm
Ouch! Oh well, still going to play it I guess, been waiting for a follow-up since the 90s. I usually can stomach ungodly amounts of jank if the story and atmosphere are good, so here's hoping it'll carry me through. Thankfully I'll know to tamper my expectations going in.

QOTD; From released ones... Assassin's Creed III. I really loved the story until that point - and I mean the double narrative of historical tales juxtaposed with the future, with seemingly huge stakes. AC3 fumbled both narratives so bad it's tragic beyond belief. Especially the future story; the big decade long build-up to the lamest dud resolution I've ever seen in my years consuming audiovisual media.

I did go through Black Flag and Unity, and though they were decent, there was no story pull any more. What used to be a great motivational framework to explore history turned into... an excuse bordering on parody? FFS, in the infamously broken AC: Unity, your character is a guy beta-testing scenarios for a game-version of Animus, to be published by Ubisoft. You are literary a nerd playing a beta-quality Ubisoft product, playing AS a nerd beta-testing an Ubisoft product.

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