Back to the Future: It’s About Time Review
It’s been 25 years since the delorean first landed on our screens in Back to the Future. Marty Mcfly and Doc Brown became instant household names and the trilogy has become somewhat of a cult following. Now Telltale Games is working with Universal Studios to bring us Back to the Future: The Game, a five part epic saga similar to Tales of Monkey Island or Sam and Max: The Devil’s Playhouse. So without further ado, let’s review this bad-boy.
The game is set 6 months after the third film, and Marty is feeling very sad now that Doc is gone, and George isn’t helping by selling off all his possessions. It’s not long though before the delorean miraculously reappears with an old shoe and a taped recording by Doc telling Marty he needs his help to rescue him in the past, or was it the future? After a puzzle involving a member of a familiar family name, Marty discovers he needs to go to 1931 to spring doc out of jail with the help of a young version of the scientist, which involves a certain rocket-powered drill. The story really felt like it would fit into a part 4, and everything that you could possibly want to be explained is explained (including the sudden appearance of the delorean after being destroyed by a train at the end of part 3) and all makes logical sense. The end of course has a cliffhanger that keeps you in suspense for the next episode coming out in February, and there’s even a short trailer for the next episode during the credits.
Telltale have proven themselves to get better in the visual department with each new game they dish out, and “It’s About Time” doesn’t disappoint. There are also a lot more customizable options such as the ability to enable/disable Anti-Aliasing and turning shadows on and off. Playing with the settings to the max was a pure thrill and believe me, the game looked gorgeous. I have to admit I was worried about my computer only scraping by the system requirements (the recommended RAM being 3 gigs!), but it played just fine, so I’d say if you can play Tales or Sam and Max you should be fine here. The only thing I can really complain about the graphics is that sometimes there would be a clearly drawn square around Marty whenever he walked in certain areas, but it wasn’t a massive annoyance, similarly to some problems with Guybrush’s poxed hand in Tales of Monkey Island.
The sound was the best I’ve ever heard in a Telltale game, especially since it seemed to be a lot clearer to the ear than their other games. The theme is there and it is just as awesome as it was in the movies. Voice-wise, I was shocked, and in a good way. AJ Locascio hit a home run as the voice of Marty; in fact I forgot it wasn’t Michael J Fox. Christopher Lloyd is of course spot on as Doc, and James Arnold Taylor was a brilliant surprise as young Doc. At the beginning of the game there are a few cameos like Biff (played excellently by Telltale regular Andrew “Kid Beyond” Chaikin), George and even a voice cameo by Marty’s mother, Lorraine.
Now comes the letdown of the episode; the puzzles. The concepts were good, but the hint system smelt way too much like the Monkey Island special editions where it was just holding your hand every time you pressed it, and it was too tempting to go back and keep using it; just you try and not go back to it after using it once. I completed the episode in under 3 hours, which is a big disappointment considering it took me about 6-8 hours to complete the Sam and Max episodes as well as Tales. Despite all this, the solutions were all logical and one of my favourite puzzles was near the end where you had to help young Doc complete a scientific experiment by turning handles and switches depending on words he emphasized in a heated discussion with his father, and it made a lot of sense once you figured it out, which didn’t take long.
In the end, Back to the Future: It’s About Time was a fun game while it lasted with a solid story, gorgeous visuals and brilliant music and sound that was a bit of a letdown on puzzle difficulty, but if I know Telltale, they’ll keep upping the anti as the series goes along, so hopefully “Get Tannen” will take up more time than this episode so the wait won’t be so painful. I give it a 7.5/10
Go to page 2 for Jack’s thoughts on the game!
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