Flashback 2 Demo Review

Flashback 2^[1] might be the worst twin stick shooter I've ever played^[2]

Copy-pasted, ~~capitalization-less~~ notes glued together from the debris of a Discord chatlog after playing the 2023 Next Fest demo:

So, you know how in Flashback 1 and other Prince-alikes, you can change direction while running and your character will skid and shift their weight to change direction quickly and realistically? Flashback 2 does not have that. Conrad has to do a little circle to change direction when running.
This includes when you have your gun out, where the animation does not reflect the little circle despite it still happening. It feels terrible.
It's bizarrely hard to aim, as if your aim is being moved left or right first-person style instead of following the mouse cursor (also: it only shows keyboard prompts even when using a gamepad)
There is a dodge move. In Flashback 1 and other Prince-alikes, this would be like a cool barrel roll or something. In Flashback 2, it's a character-action-game style "blink" a couple feet in a direction, with no accompanying character animation. Just kinda tweened forward over like 8 frames. For a sequel to a game that built its reputation on amazing animation, that's kinda mind-boggling!
The game gives two different pronunciations for the name "Ian" in the same cutscene (Eye-an? What the fuck?)
There were threats of a mech combat section, but i quit before that bit

Just another baffling piece of software from the publishers of the XIII remake.

i have not played fade to black and you can't make me ↩︎
there have probably been worse, but they were probably hacked together for $-16 by like two people in a crumbling east-german apartment. this has the illusion of an actual budget applied to it. ↩︎