Back to the Future: The Game

The Good

• Charming art style
• Enjoyable characters, old and new
• Does a wonderful job capturing the feel of the films
• Whilst also telling a great story of its own
• A.J. LoCascio is crazy good as Marty and Christopher Lloyd is back as Doc Brown
• Great cameo from Michael J. Fox at the end
• Has a "pick up and play" attitude
• "Back in Time" is heard, and it is still awesome!

The Bad

• Some tasks are uninteresting/dull
• Numerous bugs in the episodes
• Poor recording quality disservices great VO's
• Too easy, especially for veterans of the genre
• Weird performance bugs
• Animation can be stiff, repetitive & awkward

The Bottom Line
Who doesn't love Back to the Future? It's a firmly established piece of pop culture history and one of the best films of the 80s, and I fondly remember how much I enjoyed myself when I saw it on the big screen in 1985. The charming characters, imaginative storyline, great humour, and sense of adventure were all key in making it the beloved classic it is now and while there have been other attempts to turn it into a game, Telltale has finally gone a step in a right direction; and what better way to make a BttF game than as a graphic adventure?

The game is set 6 months after the end of Part 3. The DeLorean is presumed destroyed and the Doc is living in the past with Clara and their children. Marty is a bit down and misses the doc, and the game begins as Doc's home and belongings are being sold off to the state. After rescuing the Doc's plans for the time machine and more from Biff, the DeLorean somehow appears (Yes they do explain later how it came back after looking pretty trashed at the end of #3) with Einstein the dog inside.

Doc (Under the guise of Carl Sagan. Heh.) is apparently trapped in a 1931 jail, accused of committing arson and burning down a speakeasy - a speakeasy that just so happens to be owned by yet another malevolent Tannen, "Kid." As Marty departs, he learns yet more troubling news - Doc will be killed by Kid's mafia on the court house steps! Marty heads back to save Doc, and as one would expect - things get more and more complicated and bizarre; one memorable twist is the episode "Citizen Brown" - where Marty accidentally creates a weird, totalitarian state run by the eponymous "Citizen Brown" (Doc of course; except he never discovered science.) and arguably the most insane moral crusader since Jack Thompson, Edna Strickland.

The story is well written (Even if the time-travel logic can be hard to swallow at times.) and captures the feel of the movies. There's plenty of adventure, humor, and all the heart and character that made the movies so memorable. There are even some genuine and effective dramatic moments in the game and you really do get to care for the characters. One of my favourite characters (Introduced in the game, anyways) has to be the young, teenaged Doc Brown who is just as eccentric as his adult counterpart but in varying ways; plus they manage to make him interesting enough that it improves on Doc's character and his past.

With the exception of Biff, the voice acting is superb as well. Doc is played as always by Christopher Lloyd, and it is clear he is having just as much fun here as he did in the films. Newcomer A.J. LoCascio plays Marty, and does a damn good job. In fact I had an argument with my wife over the fact Micheal J. Fox wasn't reprising his role as Marty, and it took a trip to the IMDb to prove it. Yet LoCascio isn't merely imitating Fox's voice, he is a talented actor on his own and plays the role more as a tribute to Fox rather than trying to ape or outdo him. Fox does have a cameo in the series finale, and if the cliffhanger ending says anything about next season - Fox may have a slightly larger role, and if he is stable enough and wishes to do it then that makes me all the more excited for a Season 2. The only real complaint about the voice acting is that the voice recording quality is iffy. Past Telltale games have had crystal clear recording quality, yet here it can be scratchy and awkward; sometimes even making characters sound like they just barely got over laryngitis.

And that is my segue into the negatives of the game. Unfortunately, there are a few to point out. Despite the charming art design, the visuals suffer from some extremely awkward and poor animations. Sometimes an animation will loop or repeat as a character is still talking mid-sentence, and the already awkward animation can actually be scary in instances like this since it looks like they have no control over their body, which is being controlled by balloons on strings while their voice ekes out of their only controllable joint, the mouth - and even that looks awkward and jarring.

The game also repeats environments quite a bit, in fact most of the game takes place in either 1931 Hill Valley town square, or some variation of Town Square. There are a couple more locales later on, but it can wear on you. It also doesn't help that the game is buggy, and can trap you forever in a single locale. This became especially annoying in Episode 5; there is a game breaking bug that allows you to enter a scene you aren't supposed to enter unless you have solved a certain puzzle, and I found myself getting the bug a million times until a Telltale representative told me and everyone else what puzzle I had to do first.

Yet the greatest flaw is the difficulty. Have you played - and beaten - a graphic adventure before? Then this game will pose little challenge; and by little, I mean microscopic. Even newcomers might find it a bit easy at times, but to be fair the game is designed in such a way that it can be picked up and played by anyone and Telltale has always made the first season and early episodes simple before getting a bit more challenging in the second season; and hopefully that is what they will do. The hint system can also be a bit annoying, and you have to turn it off each time you start an episode if you don't want Marty or other characters belching patronizing hints. Even on the lowest hint setting, a hint would be spoken if I took more than 30 seconds on a puzzle. I imagine on the highest hint setting, the dialogue is replaced with nothing but hints.

But you know what? As much as I or any critic can pan the game for its difficulty, I'm not going to. Because I still had a barrel of fun, in fact no - make that 3 barrels of fun. It captures the essence of the films and the characters so well that it is almost sad so many critics have leaned on the gameplay issues while almost completely ignoring what makes the game so much fun to play.

I really recommend this game to anyone who loves Back to the Future (And really, who doesn't?? Even my 86 year old Aunt played this game out of a love for BttF =D) all I ask is that you forgive the simplistic design and just have fun. The game is 24 bucks on Steam, which isn't a bad price for the entire season (The purchase is also donated to Micheal J. Fox's research foundation for Parkinson's research) and the game as a whole has a good length. I beat each episode around 2 and a half hours and about 3 for the finale; and in total you have a 12 or so hour game. Seriously, check it out! And to Telltale, bring us Season 2 sooner than later!