A few days ago I reviewed Flashback: The Quest Of Identity, an excellent title from an ancient era of video games, which takes inspiration from the world of cinema and whose artistic style and graphic level makes it shine even today. Years after the release of Flashback, a sequel was made, but it discarded its old but excellent 2D art and graphics, to adapt to the new generation of 3D, completely changing what made its predecessor unique.
Today's Retro Review is about: Fade to Black.
After the events of the first game, the ship of our main protagonist, Conrad, is floating in outer space and 50 years have passed since then, but by "luck", Conrad was in a dream of hibernation, so nothing has aged and remains the same despite all the years that have passed. In the previous game Conrad was set the mission to save the human race from the extinction plan they wanted to execute an extraterrestrial race that are capable of changing shape. In Flashback, our main protagonist was almost able to fulfill that mission completely, but some aliens were still alive and it was those remaining aliens who found the ship where Conrad was still sleeping, woke him up and wanted revenge for what they had done to him. Locked in a cell (once more) Conrad manages to escape (once more) and now he has again the mission to end this alien race. In the purest style of the science fiction genre, we are once again in the shoes of the lucky scientist, Conrad.
Fade to Black left behind the characteristic 2D and artistic style that so much characterized Flashback and instead, the developers of this sequel opted to make it totally in 3D, having a not so good result, since being a quite old 3D, very polygonal and not perfect at all, it didn't make it visually presentable, in fact, compared to its sequel, Fade to Black is quite mediocre.
The movement of the character, despite the fact that they tried to recreate the "naturalness" with which Conrad moved in Flashback, the result in this video game is not completely fluid. In terms of graphics, this sequel represents a delay, both in graphic level and artistic style, this sequel loses all the charisma that represented the first delivery. Although the good thing that Fade to Black does, is the feeling of discomfort and loneliness when we find ourselves in a ship from which we must escape, at least in that aspect it does a good job, but even so, it loses many points just in the way they left aside the good minimalist style of their prequel.
Unlike the graphic aspect, which as I mentioned was a failure to change to a 3D environment, the sound aspect of Fade to Black is really good, with very cyberpunk and science fiction style melodies, make a really good union with the whole argument and environment in which we are immersed. The music is quite varied and with a very good quality, when we listen to some of its melodies immediately makes us remember franchises like those of Star Trek, that is to say, that listening to the melodies of Fade to Black, we automatically relate it to the whole theme of outer space. Likewise, the sound effects play a good role in this video game, especially the sound effects of laser guns, which sound great.
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Fade to Black retains some of the characteristics of its sole, as it is still a game of adventure, action and puzzle solving, but the platform factor is not so present and the exploration is lost.
As I mentioned before, this sequel is totally in 3D, as well as its environment, due to this generational change, the developers had to change the perspective of our character, and now the camera is placed in the 3rd person, being able to see our main character from his back, so Fade to Black becomes also a 3rd person shooting game.
The truth is that Fade to Black is quite far away from what its prequel used to be, it loses a lot of the exploration and platforming factor, which characterized Flashback so much, this sequel far from being a good second part of what used to be an excellent game, is far behind Flashback. As an independent game it is a normal title, it entertains, but as a sequel to a game that even today is still really good, due to, among many other factors, its artistic, graphic, cinematic and plot style, it is quite mediocre. I think if it hadn't been called a sequel to Flashback and was a totally independent game, it might have been better, but it's a shame about the sequel.
As final words I don't have much to say about this game, it's a lousy sequel to a real gem of a video game, which despite not being an extremely mediocre game in itself, as a sequel to a game whose elements made it a real gem, is a total disappointment. At least its soundtrack is pretty good, but it's really the little I can save from this game.
