The Let's Play Archive

Flashback

by Yahtzee

Part 4

I'm back, I'm awake and thanks for the gold rating, everyone. I was so afraid of people hating this thread that it took me ages to summon the bottle to post it. And then when the first reply arrived I had to look away and ask my girlfriend to give me the gist of it. Maybe I take posting too seriously.

Anyway, let's get back to Conrad and that bridge.

In our last episode, Conrad found a cartridge and powered it up in an energy generator. Now for the exciting conclusion to the bridge maintenance story arc.

In it goes.

Yes, that flimsy-looking line of green sparklers is a solid floor. The delinquent robot on the other side demonstrates.

He is easily dealt with. An infuriatingly large amount of bad guys leave no corpses after their death animations, so it's often hard to convey a victory in a screenshot alone. Just try to imagine broken circuit boards crunching under Conrad's feet.

I've got to admit, when I first played this game, it took me a while to figure this one out. A lot of people get stuck in Flashback simply because the most basic gameplay elements aren't explained very well (this comes to a head at the start of the next level). My point is, I didn't realise there was an elevator here.

...and that pressing A and UP activates it. In retrospect this was rather thick of me. There are elevators later on that are much harder to spot.

This should look familiar, it's where we found the holocube, only now we're in the underpassage. Conrad heads left.

Puzzle time! The teleporter we need for the dying man is on the elevator in the top-left, currently inaccessible. I don't know why, maybe this is the mutant secure storage facility.

Security's a bit lax because standing on the tripswitch on the right causes the elevator to drop, freeing the teleporter from its prison.

But aha! Foiled! The moment Conrad steps off the switch, the elevator goes right back up.

The logical conclusion is to put something on the tripswitch in place of Conrad's big fat arse. This stone will do nicely (in Flashback a large number of inventory puzzles are solved by items in the very same room).

The theory is sound, but now the tripswitch is constantly going breep breep in a manner scientifically designed to get on my tits.

This is the teleporter, it looks kind of like the offspring of a floppy disk and a garage door remote OH GOD ENOUGH WITH THE BREEP BREEPING

Show that stone who's boss!

We needed to un-trip the switch anyway to escape this section on the elevator down. Now we've got the teleporter we can make our way back to the injured guy.

Yeah, I heard you the first time, champ.

You can have this if you shut up.

No problem. Say, now you've got your teleporter would you mind giving me a lift to New Washington, only my self seemed to think I should

Okay, fuck you.

The dying man melts away into a bunch of squares. Either he teleported away or he was dying from Melty Square Disease. In either case, looks like he left something behind.

Yay! More inventory!

Heading back to the ambiguous elevator room, now that the elevator is in the up position (because we escaped the teleporter area by a different route) we can head down this rabbit hole and see what wonders await.

Next update: Slaughtering mutants and stealing all their money