Fade to Black

The Good
The original game in the franchise, Flashback, was a wonderful action, adventure game with a some incredible graphics, animation, music and sound effects. The ending for the first game begs a proper sequel, and I had high hopes with Fade to Black.

The Bad
Fade to Black is attempting to capitalize on the success of games such as Alone In the Dark and Tomb Raider with mixed results.
The game's interface and camera angels are too complicated and cumbersome, making it difficult to perform what should be simple movements. Poor control design is deadly in a game such as this, where quick, precise movements can make all the difference between life and death. Some gamers, myself included, are simply turned off by the over-the-shoulder viewpoint, which makes the game's problems with control and camera angles even more painful.

The Bottom Line
Fade To Black attempts to ride the coattails of successful games such as Alone In The Dark and Tomb Raider by abandoning the platformer format in favor of pre-rendered, polygons based graphics and an over-the-shoulder-perspective. What could have been a worthy sequel is dragged down by poor and unreasonably difficult interface, camera angles and character controls.

The Good
F2B (note that the initials are same as of its prequel plus the number 2, indicating a sequel!) is a great game worthy of its original, Flash Back!! The story takes place right after our hero Conrad wakes from his cryo sleep and we help him to continue the war against the Morph aliens...

The sequel introduces other characters that are on your side, interact with you and can communicate with you during playing, giving you hints... this adds a whole 'meanwhile' feeling to the gameplay

F2B was very impressive for its time, because we weren't used to fully 3d polygon graphics... the graphics and details were fairly rich and impressive, forming a realistic environment... note the toilet seat in Conrad's cell, the PCs on the desks and other details! Anyway, Conrad might seem now rather like a squared dummy than a 3d human model... In any case the animations are smooth and lifelike...

The cutscenes are another astonishing part of the package... prerendered 3d graphics movies with incredible spaceship models, sceneries and animations! Something impressive I noticed: the cutscenes were very faithful to the in-game scenery... note the ship you embark at the end of the 1st level, although composed by polygons due to the game's engine, in the cutscene showing you escaping the prison (which is differently rendered by another engine), your ship is exactly similar to the in-game one... most games didn't pay attention to those details.

The Bad
The only think I didn't like in this very good sequel was maybe the unimpressive music, and maybe the slow movement of the hero... his slow (and sometimes not faithful) reactions to your keypressing will make the gameplay a bit more difficult than it should be.

In comparison to TR, both the graphics and the gameplay seem a bit poor: although FB was full of run, jump, crouch and climb, those elements are absent here (although TR prominently adopted them!)... The levels are quite flat, and the only reason you have to jump, is to avoid some elecrified squares. As for the rooms they are perfectly squared... the F2B world is almost totally lacking curves... but then again all these should be forgiven due to the game's oldness?

The Bottom Line
This great game can be defined as a predecessor to Tomb Raider because it was the first 3d polygon game that introduced the over-the-shoulder point of view and... However I never managed to learn if Tomb Raider actually was inspired form it, or if the similarities are not related at all...

Anyway, I was very sorry that this game never became as famous as its prequel, or TR, and it was not followed by a sequel!