Fade to Black
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PSP
| Fade to Black

When the PlayStation arrived back in 1995, it finally brought 3D gaming kicking and screaming onto consoles.

Some of the titles were great, some of them were bad. But because everyone was so spellbound by this interstellar leap in graphical fidelity, nobody seemed to have a problem with games as badly designed and impossible to play as Fade to Black. At least not amongst consumers, who bought enough copies of Fade to Black to justify a Platinum release.

Perhaps it isn't fair to say that Fade to Black was badly designed. Rather, it was a crude sketch of what was to come, taking some brave but clumsy steps into a realm that paved the way for some much better titles.

The game is a sequel to the incredibly successful Flashback and begins immediately after the events of its predecessor. You play Conrad B Hart who has been found floating through the cosmos in hypersleep by his old enemies, the Morphs, who quickly imprison him in the Lunar prison of New Alcatraz. There he meets John Connor, a mysterious man who helps him escape.

What follows is a cinematic and genuinely atmospheric third-person action sci-fi romp where you have to kill the bad guys, uncover the nefarious plot and save the human race from certain doom. Sadly that doesn't ease the frustration of Fade to Back's flaws, which are many in number and, to today's gamer, unforgivable in nature.

First, the camera almost never affords the best view of the action and the sticky controls make aiming at your just-out-of-frame target feel like playing darts blindfolded. And with your feet.

Then there's the presence of enemies that can't be killed but that look exactly the same as enemies that can. You'll often walk into a room and engage in battle only to discover after a protracted five-minute session of shoot, duck, shoot, duck that the reason you can't kill any of the filthy green reptiles is because you're not supposed to be messing about in there quite yet; at least not before you've investigated unremarkable room number 155 or wherever it is you happen to be in the game.

It's a shoddy way of enforcing a linear progression and leaves you wondering why you're even allowed to enter areas that only lead to never-ending gun slinging matches.

Third, are the controls. The jeans-and-jacket Conrad copes with running, jumping and ducking about as well as a dolphin does with climbing trees and riding a unicycle, and an exceptionally ungainly and slow witted dolphin at that. This makes the game's more platforming and puzzle focussed sections (of which there are mercifully few) all the more irksome to grapple with.

Add to that a dreadful save and restart system and Fade to Black's various crimes combine for an experience that is infuriating, tiresome and unenjoyable to play.

There are, however, a few saving graces in some of the more superficial aspects of the game. Actually, to be precise they don't really save Fade to Black from abject awfulness but they are positive elements so we'll obviously mention them.

So, the cinematic feel of the game is great: the sound effects, the incidental music and the cut-scenes genuinely create a thick atmosphere. The animation is also impressive, even by today's standards, with Conrad moving fluidly between different manoeuvres (though, sadly, completely out of synch with what you instruct him to do).

All in all, Fade to Black isn't a worthy look back at an early PSone title but rather a phenomenally dreary – though necessary – stepping stone that's best forgotten. If it's history lessons you want, here's hoping Sony hurries up and releases some of the third-person action genre's subsequent triumphs on the PSP Store (Tomb Raider and Metal Gear Solid spring to mind).

Fade to Black

Fade to Black may have been thought of as cutting edge once, but if you're too young to remember that then consider yourself very lucky
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