Back To The Future The Game(s).... Final Verdict...
Image credit... fan art thread at telltale's BTTF forum
Last night I completed episode five of Telltale's episodic Back To The Future games and I feel compelled to talk about what I thought about that season of that game in general. I first watched back to the future back in 1985 when I was seven years old. I then watched the next two movies back to back when my family and I went to the drive-in and they had them as a double feature in 1989. It's one of those series that holds quite a bit of nostalgia for me just like Ghostbusters, Gremlins and Star Wars.
So partially while I was playing Telltale's series I did have some nostalgia goggles on. This helped me enjoy it since I care for the characters and such. However I can't escape the fact that overall I felt their take on BTTF was fairly mediocre. It starts with how the way everything is presented. Someone at Telltale's forum said this game was more like an interactive movie than a game. In a way I kind of agree with that assertion because mostly all you do is just pick between some predefined lines and things don't progress forward until you pick the correct one. Either that or no matter what you pick your character is just going to go through the same motions anyway so it doesn't really matter what you picked.
I think it's being generous to say that it's like an interactive movie because it lacks the je ne sais quoi the films had or the production values. At best it was like a low budget animated series version which isn't too far from the truth. This is especially apparent with characters like Trixie and Officer Danny Parker in my opinion and the stuff they contributed to the game. Most of the characters are just caricatures of the ones in the film. Marty's new voice actor was by someone who was known for doing a good Michael J. Fox impression but as with most impressionists he gets fairly close but at the end of the day you can tell it's not him. The real Michael J. Fox did end up joining them in the last episode as a couple of characters though which was pretty interesting.
With Doc Emmet Brown they brought in Christopher Lloyd to do the voice however he's aged quite a bit since he came out in the films and that coupled with the look of his character in the game made him not quite the same as well. In my opinion part of what sold his performance in the movies wasn't just his voice but also the facial expressions he made and his mannerisms which got lost in the game with his animated counterpart and him just voicing it.
The game is very limited in scope and you can't do much exploring... or at the very least the sandbox is VERY small. The camera angles where static and the way he moved around was a little awkward to control. Much of the time where he can walk is very strictly defined as to be practically stifling. Much of the plot felt forced but I did enjoy some of the plot twists they jammed at the end of each episode. They end with a to be continued thing at the end of this season and while I was fairly disappointed with it I do still want to see how they will resolve what happens at the end of this season in the next.
So while they had a few things that kept me wanting to play it with the story and such I felt overall the whole thing could have been better. From a graphical stand point, from a plot pacing standpoint, from gameplay mechanics. But I realize they where probably working as best as they could with what they had and where trying to make a game that would run on a wide range of hardware.
It's also a game where I don't feel compelled to replay it as there isn't much replay value because of how the game-play works and how limited in scope it is. Each episode is pretty much an install it, play through once and then delete it kind of deal. The game-play involves no skill and there's only one choice to move forward. Once you drilled down to that one choice there's no surprises left or any other avenues to explore so there's nothing to bring me back to a particular episode once I've finished it. I've replayed an episode and all I did was fly through it faster than I did on the first play-through. The whole crux of the game is to find the correct way and once it's found that's it. I'm the kind of person who likes to replay games and re-watch my favorite movies over and over so that's pretty much a strike in my eyes.
That being said I'm still interested in their Jurassic Park game that they are working on although I already know it's going to have even less freedom than BTTF when it comes to exploring. The player wont even have direct control of their character in it and will only be able to press buttons to go to predefined places. They seem to be doing some interesting stuff with the story there though like exploring the loose ends that the Jurassic Park film had like the barbasol can with the dino embryos in it.