Game On: Back to the Future: The Game

Today's game in my continuing quest to review all the games i beat is Back to the Future: The Game, by the folks at Telltale games, available for PC, PS3, Wii and iOS.

In a Nutshell

It's 1986, Doc has been missing for a few months when the Delorean shows up with a message for Marty. It's up to him to find Doc and possibly rescue him by giving random items to people or by rubbing everything with whatever he can fit down his pants.

Story

This is an episodic adventure game by Telltale, set after the events of the Back to the Future Trilogy, and as such, it's pretty nice. The characters are written just as I remember them from the movies, the main overarching plot hits a lot of the same notes as the first two movies, which, depending on your stance, is either a good thing or a lazy thing. Without spoiling anything, it starts as being a rescue mission, as you attempt to find Doc and bring him back to 86, but it quickly becomes more about manipulating the timeline to ensure Marty's Timeline stays as he remembers. 

As a whole, it's very consistent with the movies, but it does tread on very familiar ground. The new characters introduced to the story are interesting and there are a few very compelling moments, but it certainly doesn't take the franchise on a new direction. Since it's an adventure game, i'd say story is pretty important and it's not as good as it could have been, choosing safety over originality. Of course, it's not bad either, just not as good as it could have been had the writers decided to take it in a different direction than the films.

Gameplay

This is a Telltale point and click adventure game, and it really shows. It only very rarely deviates from the tried and true structure of "Opening puzzle or two, solve 3 objectives, closing puzzle or two" and it's kind of a shame. They really shine when they go off that beaten path, as in the 3rd season of Sam and Max.

As for the challenge factor, I found the puzzles a lot easier than in previous telltale games I've played. it seemed like the puzzles were a lot more straightforward, the hints given by the characters were a lot more straightforward or maybe the amount of item interaction wasn't as high, but it seemed like the puzzles were a lot simpler and more trivial that in other games. Of course, this might be deliberate, seeing how they're taking a famous movie franchise, they might want to attract a new audience and decided to adapt the difficulty to them.

The hint system is also quite good, giving you varying degrees of help for the puzzle at hand. it's handy when you're not on the same wavelength as the game regarding your objective, but it could have added some incentive to not use it constantly, like points for puzzles solved or something. As it is, however, I'd say it's pretty good to introduce people to the genre.

This might be a good introductory point and click adventure game, but it lacks some of the challenge of other Telltale titles which might turn veterans off.

Presentation

Graphically, the game does a good job or recreating the overall style of the movies. Hill Valley's main landmark, the courthouse, is feature prominently, the character design is very well-done and each era's style is distinctive and well-established. Of course, the graphics themselves are a little drab at times, but this is a game meant to be enjoyed on lower-end machines, so some sacrifices had to be made. This does not look bad, by any stretch, it certainly takes style over raw graphical power which is nice.

Sadly, there is a downside and that's the numerous graphical bugs I encountered. Fiarly often, you'll notice things passing through other things or, even worse, characters getting things stuck to them and still performing with objects stuck to their hands, with objects passing through them

The music includes familiar themes from the movie, including "Back in Time" by Huey Lewis and the News, the main theme and some musical cues. The rest of the music is well composed and feels like an extension of the movie soundtrack. The voicework is pretty good, too. Christopher Lloyd returns to portray Emmett "Doc" Brown and, though he sounds older these days, he manages to give a very good performance. Newcomer A.J. LoCascio manages to do a very convincing Marty McFly without feeling like an impersonation. A special mention has to be made of Michael J. Fox voicing a few McFly's in the last episode and doing a very good job of it. If anything, it certainly makes a good case as to why he couldn't perform as Marty anymore.

As a whole, the presentation is very good, owing to a faithful representation of the movies both visually and musically.

Verdict

This is not the best Telltale adventure game, but it's an interesting game due to it's status as sequel to a great movie franchise around. Still, I would suggest this game mostly to fans of the movies and people new to point and click adventure games, but not really to hardcore gamers or those who played older, better adventure games. I give it an "Entertaining" score and a "Good for newbies" mention. It's not bad, but it's not great either. It certainly could have been better.