Back to the Future

It's Michael J. Fox!

Finally played the last episode of Telltale's Back to the Future. Overall I liked it, though there were some rough patches in the middle. Just like how the visuals in Tron weren't quite good enough to carry two hours of movie, the nostalgia factor didn't quite make up for some gameplay issues.


The plot kicks off with Marty somehow learning that Doc got arrested in 1931 (the first episode came out in December so I've forgotten a lot of it) and heading off in the DeLorean to save him. After that, most episodes end with them discovering that something they did to fix the current problem has caused a new one. The problem with this is that it means you end up in the same place multiple times, talking to the same people again. Yes, this is how the movies were (Part 2 especially), but it's not so great for a five-part game to only have two main areas to explore. Hill Valley 1931 loses a lot of its charm after it's third appearance in only four episodes.

Talking to Emmett, then talking to his dad, then repeating
five more times is not a puzzle when the only clickable
objects are the two of them

The main problem is that the game is just way too easy. This was apparently intentional on Telltale's part, as they wanted to make it accessible to a wider audience. And I'm sometimes ok with sacrificing gameplay as long as the story and writing are good - I love both Dreamfall and Time Hollow even if I don't quite consider them to be "games." It was still disappointing that so much of the game was simply "run through all the conversation options with everyone you see." There were at least a couple of good sequences - trying to use scenery and items to help a woman remember bits of the past was an interesting idea.

Hoverboard!

One thing that I think they did very well were the "action sequences."  About once an episode is a sequence where Marty's hanging onto a moving vehicle or hiding from mobsters or dodging gunfire. Being a modern adventure game, you clearly won't have the option to mess it up and die (though that's changing with Jurassic Park) but somehow just the way it's done makes the sequences seem exciting. More exciting then LeChuck repeatedly knocking you into the rafters every time you try to get Guybrush to pick up an item, anyway.

The voice acting and writing are also done well. The guy doing Marty's voice does a good job, and they got Christopher Lloyd to do Doc, so no complaints there. Overall it's certainly a good game, it's just too bad they couldn't have included a few more locations and made the puzzles a bit more interesting.

These would normally just be boring credits, but there's
some Huey Lewis playing so they're awesome