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Hello and welcome to JRT!
I’m your host, Johnny, and tonight, we review 'Back to the Future: The Game: Episode 1'!
Some people say 'The Lord of the Rings', others say 'Star Wars',
I say 'Back to the Future' is the greatest film trilogy of all time.
That’s right, never mind your 'Godfathers' and your 'Fistful of Dollars',
'Back to the Future' is where it’s at. All three parts work well enough alone,
but they play off each other amazingly and blend together to create a truly memorable trilogy.
I don’t think anyone denies that the way they retraced their steps in Part II was ingenious,
but some people are upset that Part III features Cowboys and Indians.
As if more Wild West action is ever a bad thing!
Anyway, the thing is, that the tight writing and
clever production of the movies left you satisfied with the arc but clamoring for even more.
Developers Telltale, who seem to have franchise-reviving powers that border on magical, are stepping up
once again to give the people what they want, by providing a fresh Back to the Future story
told in their trademark, "episodic adventure game", format.
Now, while Telltale’s intentions are always praised, the results are more divisive.
Their first big break was with the Sam & Max franchise and a lot of critics complained that
'Save the World' just wasn’t up to snuff. Personally, I enjoyed it; I think anyone who didn’t
was comparing it with the excellent 'Sam & Max Hit the Road' adventure game by Lucasarts,
which makes sense, since they both are adventure games after all, but is also kind of unfair.
I think Telltale’s take was actually meant to be compared more with the TV series.
So, going in 'Sam & Max: Season 1', I wasn’t looking for complex puzzles that required
items from a thousand locations to solve; I just wanted some choice Sam & Max banter,
weird situations that escalate uncontrollably and loads of cartoon lunacy, and those things
Telltale delivered expertly. Sure, I could go through the puzzles half-asleep,
but the dialogue had me smiling throughout and that was more than enough to consider
Telltale’s episodic experiment a success. Of course, when Telltale started elevating
the puzzle quality and the production values for the following seasons, I liked it even more,
to the point I consider Season 3, 'The Devil’s Playhouse', one of the best releases of 2010.
But, the point is that, although I didn’t mind the puzzles in Season 1 Sam & Max,
I do mind them in 'Back to the Future: The Game'.
And the bar was set even lower, since there doesn’t exist an excellent
'Back to the Future: Hit the Road' adventure game, probably because where
Doc and Marty are going there are no roads.
Unfortunately, the puzzles haven’t simply regressed back to 2006 standards,
they’ve reached new levels of simplicity and, worst of all, laziness.
Twice you have to recycle the solution from a previous puzzle to a new one
and that’s just painfully obvious filler;
I’d rather if the developers didn’t put "puzzles" there at all,
if they couldn’t be bothered to come up with something new.
And when I say "new" I mean it strictly in terms of this single episode, because, if we broaden the scope,
there’s nothing here you haven’t seen a million times before in other adventure games.
There’s only one instance where you don’t have an overused mechanic in play
and Telltale couldn’t even be bothered to code it correctly!
While Doc is arguing with his father, he is simultaneously trying to tell you
what you’re supposed to do to finish up a vital concoction.
He uses wordplay to put one hint in each of his sentences, but his father’s retorts happen to
contain similar keywords that could, in theory, confuse you and make you mess up the sequence.
It is a neat concept, but it just doesn’t work as intended:
All the lines are pretty clear, the father doesn’t interject enough,
and you get the hints easily; you are more likely to make a mistake because the usable items
aren’t properly highlighted. And, since this is the only relatively unique puzzle in the episode,
is it too much to ask that it works correctly?!
This could have been a centerpiece of a puzzle, similar to the Doctor’s Table in
'Tales of Monkey Island', but they just blew it. Speaking of 'Monkey Island', one thing I was worried
about when Telltale announced they’d be creating a new one, was that the TV Sitcom
approach of their previous adventure games couldn’t really work with that franchise.
A small, recurring cast and few heavily recycled locations come in direct contrast with the
plethora of colorful characters and fantastic locales Guybrush encounters in his adventures.
My fears were realised in the opening, which was embarrassingly dull and empty, but they
were alleviated over the course of the season; Tellale did eventually manage to rework their
engine and formula enough to deliver a more varied and adventurous experience,
and 'Tales of Monkey Island' ended up being a pretty good game overall.
Now, one of the things I wondered about when Telltale announced they’d be creating a new
'Back to the Future' game, was if they could somehow work in an fun action sequence.
Each 'Back to the Future' film has at least one high-action set-piece,
but the Telltale tool can’t handle something like that at all.
True enough, we do get an action cut-scene and it is pathetic.
They do try, what, with the slow-mo and all, but... come on, seriously.
There is a better one near the end though, even if it doesn’t make much sense.
Speaking of things that don’t make much sense, let’s talk about the game’s most
important part: the story. Now, I really like the hook:
It is six months after the events of the last film, which puts us around May 1986,
and the Doc hasn’t shown any signs of life since he took off with his flying, time-travelling, locomotive
Yeah, part three might have been a little weird, just go with it.
As a result, he is assumed dead and his lab & belongings are being put up for sale to
cover his ever-increasing pile of bills. Marty decides to visit the old lab and try to convince...
the LAW I guess, that the Doc is still around, or, failing that, make sure that nothing relating
to time travel makes its way into the wrong hands.
Suddenly, the DeLorean shows up, without a driver, and Marty eventually figures out that
the Doc is around indeed: He is held prisoner inside the local prison... in 1931.
So Marty drives the DeLorean back in time once more, reunites with the good Doctor and they try
to come up with a plan to get him out before he is executed for a crime he didn’t commit.
So, I like the story so far, it’s a good,
simple, 'Back to the Future'-esque plot, but here is where they mess up unforgivably.
And I’m not trying to nitpick: I mean, I don’t mind that Marty is wearing
the same clothes he wore six months ago; maybe he got nostalgic. I don’t even mind that
he goes back in time just one day before the Doc’s reported death, even though, by now,
he really should know better. "Why do we have to cut these things so damn close?"
But I do mind that the Doc’s solution to
his predicament is guaranteeing the disruption of the timeline by working with his younger self.
What??? Are you insane?
Now, the Doc is adamantly against changing the natural course of history... in theory, but
how careful he actually is when hopping through time periods fluctuates during the films and
especially in the Animated Series; but he always shows utmost caution when dealing with
direct ancestors and especially with past versions of the time-traveller. He avoids
them like teen wolves avoid shirts. Even in this very episode, a few seconds ago,
the Doc was speechless at the mere thought that Marty talked with his grandfather.
And now he’s all for enlisting his 1930s counterpart, who hasn’t even decided to become an inventor yet!
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?
This is unbelievably out of character, the only reason for the Doc to say that is
to set up a series of episodic adventures and that’s just lazy writing. If you absolutely must have
a plotline where the heroes clean up their own mess, then at least have Marty be the catalyst;
the Doc can't possibly make a judgement call this monumentally wrong!
How could I have been so careless?
And it’s a real shame too because, when they aren’t behaving like idiots to serve
the paper-thin plot, they really are the characters we remember from the films and you can’t
help but want to spent more time with them. This is the game’s only saving grace, the
one thing Telltale got absolutely right and they are playing it for all it’s worth.
Back to the Future: The Game, is one of the sliest uses of license-power. Christopher Lloyd
reprises his role as the older Doc Brown, and he is, as always, a delight to listen to;
I only wish he had more lines. James Arnold Taylor, who is an excellent voice actor in general,
does a decent impression for young Doc, but it just isn’t as memorable as the real deal.
This isn’t the case for A. J. Locascio, who does a great job filling in for Michael J. Fox.
His real voice doesn’t sound anything like Marty’s but his impression is spot-on;
he truly has great talent and there is honestly no difference when delivering the more high-pitched lines.
With the two most important characters covered, Telltale did slack off casting the rest.
Amusingly, we do get James Tolkan, but the rest of the original supporting cast are nowhere to be found.
It’d sure be nice to have the original George and especially Lorraine, who did play a big
part in all three films after all, but the biggest blow definitely is not having the original Tannens
With Tom Wilson often doing voice work for videogames,
I don’t quite get how they managed NOT to sign him up.
The current Biff sounds very different
and he also acts quite differently too. I was always under the impression that,
with George growing a pair and becoming the Alpha Male in this relationship,
Biff stopped being a bully and ended up as a mostly harmless man-servant.
But again, I don’t really mind that he’s being an obnoxious oaf again for unexplained reasons; I guess
you need to have an *** Tannen as the antagonist in every timeline, even if it doesn’t make much sense.
Much like you need to have Doc and Marty working
together to get Back to the Future; Why was the Doc travelling alone in the first place?
Where are his wife and kids? It doesn’t really matter.
Most of all, you need to have the DeLorean to have 'Back to the Future'.
When was the last time we saw it again?
Oh, right. And now it’s no longer in a thousand pieces? Cool!
They actually try to explain this one, but I’d rather they didn’t, and let us assume
that Doc built a new one out of nostalgia, or whatever.
You see, what they say is that the lightning in Part II send one DeLorean back to 1885,
which was the one we saw getting destroyed in the end, and another one forward in time
that the Doc eventually encountered in his travels. This doesn’t make much sense, but
I’d let it slide if it wasn’t for the fact that the Doc was also inside the DeLorean
when it malfunctioned. So, logically, shouldn’t we have a duplicate Doc running around as well?
Granted, this is only the first episode, so
the duplicate Doc could come into play later on, but, honestly, that would be a pretty dumb twist.
Anyway, these are the dangers of reviewing a 5-part series early, and as it stands now,
'Back to the Future: The Game' is a bad game that can, however, be enjoyable based on nostalgia alone.
Adventure games run on the quality of their puzzles and their writing. The puzzles here
are terrible and the writing is lazy. The characters are mostly fine, they are written
by original creators Zemeckis and Gale after all, and they are really boosted by some clever casting,
but they often act unrealistically just to drive the plot forward;
and the plot has many holes nevertheless.
But it still is great to hang around with the "real" Doc and Marty again,
even if it’s only for a couple of minutes of this four hour episode.
If you like 'Back to the Future', you’ll enjoy 'Episode 1' just for these exchanges,
even if the rest of it disappoints.
An educated guess for the rest of the series, is that the puzzles will still suck:
For better or for worse, history shows that, when it comes to Telltale games,
puzzle quality remains consistent over the course of a single season.
They don’t have to improve *that* much to satisfy me though. And, of course, 'Back to
the Future' does have some great puzzle potential. I do get behind the idea that “time-travel
is always the problem and not the solution”, but we can still have some neat fourth-dimensional
puzzles without abusing the DeLorean. Episode 2 will try, but my guess is that it will fail.
You see, Telltale seems content to just throw nostalgia at us and expect us to buy it.
“The solution to this puzzle involves the giant amplifier, COOL!”
And they just try to force it too often and too hard.
Come on, you don’t have to throw every reference in the first episode!
The thing is, even the first film had decent puzzles, despite not being an adventure game at all.
The main plot, you might recall, was getting Marty back to the future.
So the Doc attaches a hook to the DeLorean’s
Flux Capacitor and a Cable to the Clock Tower. Marty uses the newspaper to schedule their “weather
experiment”, and floors it to reach 88 Miles per Hour. Lightning + Clock Tower with Cable
equals 1.21 Gigawatts, 1.21 Gigawatts plus Modified DeLorean at Full Throttle equals
I guess it’s too much to ask for something like that but, at the very least,
STOP RECYCLING PUZZLES Telltale, you're killing me here!
I do hold out some hope for the action pieces though.
They can give some extra “Back to the Future” flavour if done correctly,
and the final sequence in 'Tales of Monkey Island' shows that Telltale can pull off some sort of action;
they might figure out how to do it 'Back to Future'-style before the season ends.
As far as the story goes, it might get better.
Now that everything is messed up, maybe our heroes will stop acting like morons just
for the sake of the plot. So, to recap, Episode 1 is an objectively bad adventure game,
but it’s a tricky *** and pushes some of the right buttons.
It runs solely on nostalgia, so if you haven’t seen or don’t like 'Back to the Future', there
is no way you should bother with this. It’s simply unbearable without the nostalgia to
distract you: I mean, the navigation is kinda weird, the interface is slow, I can’t believe
you cannot combine inventory items again... but - wow! The mouse cursor is a flux capacitor
COOL!
The season as a whole has the potential to be... mediocre,
but I guess we can only find that out in the future.
No, I actually mean the future. So, if you are a 'Back to the Future' fan
and are able to turn off your brain for a while, you might enjoy the game.
It is kind of sad though, because the films, while fun, also made you think.
Anyway, thanks for watching the show, have a great night,
this is Johnny, signing out.