The Flash almost had an open-world game and it sounded like it would have been awesome. The game was going to be made for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but things didn't quite work out so well for the development studio and their open-world take on the speedy super hero.
The game was featured in Unseen64's YouTube video that featured a look into the canceled development of the game that was being published by Brash Entertainment back in 2008. The publisher hired Bottlerocket Entertainment to make a Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 version of the game. They had 30 members of the team working on the game and it would have featured Wally West in the lead role. They hadn't done any voice acting for the game before it was all shut down, but they were eying Ryan Reynolds for the role.
The game's open-world would have seen gamers running through Central City and Keystone City. Yes, two cities in one. The gameplay was kind of cool, being a mix of Assassin's Creed and the newer Sonic games, where players would be able to grind rails, perform stunts, increase Wally's speed force and pull off more complex moves that would enable him to uncover hidden places or difficult to reach areas.
The combat was based on Bottlerocket's Mark of Kri for the PlayStation 2, which was also later iterated for use in their work on Bandai Namco's reboot of Splatterhouse.
The video from Unseen64 showcases a lot of what the actual combat, running, city traversal and enemies would have looked like in action, which you can check out below.
Not only did they have plans on having a fully robust single-player component, where players could unlock new missions and side-quests -- not unlike Activision's Spider-Man video game series -- they also had plans on implementing a competitive multiplayer mode as well. The multiplayer mode would have been a competitive race mode featuring checkpoints throughout the two cities, and the playable characters would have featured heroes and villains from The Flash's universe.
One of the things that also stood out is that the mission structure would have been very similar to the way Capcom designed the earlier Dead Rising games. Players would have been on timers to complete certain missions, forcing them to really tap into In an interesting mechanic, The Flash's speed was used not only to complete the missions but to slow the timers so that all the missions could be completed.
However, things didn't quite work out so well for Bottlerocket Entertainment after Brash Entertainment bit the dust and stopped paying employees. A string of poorly produced games proved to be a death knell for the publisher, and likewise all the development studios under their wing also folded up.
Unlike a lot of other cancelled games out there with either shoddy features or poorly implemented gameplay mechanics, The Flash could have actually had a cool game because the features looked to work properly, the combat system was similar to what Rocksteady later adopted for the Batman: Arkham games, and the story seemed to be consistent with the super hero's comic book themes. Unfortunately, poor money management and quality control from Brash led to studios like Bottlerocket closing up shop, and with it, any hope of playing the game based on The Flash.
