Back to the Future: The Game - 30th Anniversary Edition Reviews

  • NeoRyuu777NeoRyuu777712,221
    22 May 2018
    9 1 2
    Back to the Future: The Game is a point-and-click adventure game, and takes place as a direct sequel to the Back to the Future movie trilogy. And naturally, time travel (and its unintended consequences) drives the story.

    You play as Marty, doing your best not to alter the timeline while saving Doctor Emmett Brown... and then trying desperately to fix it when things go inevitably wrong. The majority of the game takes place in 1931 or the Present (1986). Naturally, no matter what time period you end up in, the Tannen family is always there to cause problems.

    Game Play
    Besides a couple of minor annoyances regarding camera angle, the game runs reasonably smoothly. I didn't encounter any glitches/bugs when playing the game, and it does support multiple save states. Due to the presence of several missable achievements, I do suggest using them.

    Throughout the game, there are little nods and references to the original trilogy, some subtle, some hidden behind dialogue options, some very blatant. I HIGHLY recommend watching the movies first for full enjoyment of the game. Doc Brown is voiced by Christopher Lloyd (who played Doc Brown in the movies), which is a nice touch. While Marty isn't voiced by Michael J. Fox (who played Marty in the movies), Fox does voice certain others towards the end of the game.

    Unfortunately, the game suffers a bit from Marty's slow movement speed, which detracts from the excitement of any "AHA!" moments the player has. A couple of times, I got stuck on how to move the story along - turns out I'd missed a dialogue option or a hard-to-see item that I had to interact with.

    Story
    Without spoiling anything... you get to work with a young Emmett Brown as he's just starting his scientific career, meet your grandparents before they get together, and see how small changes to the past make enormous changes to the future. There are a couple of emotional moments regarding an alternate timeline, and the game ends on a similar note to the Back to the Future trilogy. In the end, the Present has been restored, and bettered in a couple of small ways. It wraps up with multiple versions of Future Marty trying to get Present Marty and Doc to help them out, but Present Marty and Doc decide to ignore them for now and live in their own timeline for a while.

    Overall
    This game was nice as a fan of Back to the Future. I'm unsure that someone who hasn't watched the movies would enjoy it very much, though. Most of my entertainment value came from the references to the movies and my familiarity with the characters. There's not much by way of character development, so the characters would probably seem flat for those who don't know their history. The gameplay itself isn't anything special, although the dialogue could get funny at times.

    So, overall, I'm going to have to give this one a 3/5.
    3.0
    Showing both comments.
    HolyHalfDeadI played this last week, after finishing Lego Dimensions: Back to the Future and watching the trilogy again for the first time in over 10 years. I really enjoyed it, and the style of gameplay is typical of the games original age. Back then games didn't hold your hand as much as they do today. The challenge was in figuring out what to do next, something they removed from their more recent releases, as some people get frustrated and within less than a minute they are using a walkthough video on YouTube.

    However it is nowhere near as hard as similar games from the 1990's. Just make you have spoken with everyone and tried using every item in your inventory. Since you don't have a mouse they have made it easy to locate everything in the scene you need to interact with by using the left stick to cycle through them.

    Thanks for the review, and thumbs up from me.
    Posted by HolyHalfDead on 26 May 18 at 09:30
    GOREZODDquite possibly the worst telltale game. it looks bad, the controls are bad, the story was apparently written for 3 yr olds.....just garbage
    Posted by GOREZODD on 08 Mar 22 at 02:32
  • Sir Noncy DorpSir Noncy Dorp280,956
    11 Dec 2020 17 Feb 2021
    5 3 0
    Back to the Future is a franchise that I am madly in love with. And it absolutely baffled me that I had gone for so long without ever hearing about the existence of a video game. Imagine my disappointment when I found out it was a Telltale game.

    Now, a little something about me. I hate Telltale games. I try to be unbias when playing them, but there is just something that riles me up about games where your choices are supposed to matter. Spoiler alert. In this game, none of your choices really matter. Like I said, I didn't get around to this game for quite some time, so maybe it wasn't marketed as a choose your path type of game. I only really thought of it as such because it had Telltale branded on it. Either way, the rest of my review will ignore the choice factor of the game.

    The story picks up interestingly after the events of the third film. Marty McFly goes back in time to save Doc Brown, who is now in prison in a crime-ridden Hill Valley. Overall, I actually really like the story. It sort of explains how Marty and Doc came to be friends, and given their age gap, that needed to be explained. There's a lot of time travel shenanigans that you get involved in so there's that too.

    Gameplay wise you'll probably want to take some Advil or some sort of pain killers before you start. This game can be painful to play through. There are some glitches here and there and most of the gameplay consists of a regular formula. Go to location D to talk to person 3 so you can get an item to take to location C and give it to person 2 who will then go speak with person 1 in location B and then you go to location A to move to the next part. It's basically that on a loop.

    Visually the game is hard to look at. Character models are not the greatest (how do you butcher Einstein the dog so badly??) and environments look a little bland and are reused over and over. I understand this is one of Telltale''s first games but it is just such an eye sore. Even after the remaster it can't be saved from some characters' blank, expressionless faces.

    Things in the achievement department aren't so bad. You can miss a thing here or there, but it isn't too hard to just go back to a certain point in the game. Granted it will feel like two eternities have just passed by since the gameplay drags you through Limbo and back. It's still and easily manageable game that shouldn't provide too much of a challenge.

    In the end, this game really does feel like it is strictly for Back to the Future fans. I do actually enjoy this game's story very much. It's in great taste and it doesn't ruin the integrity of the first two films. But speaking in an unbias manner and attempting to give my professional opinion, I'd say stay away unless you want the gamerscore. You could easily read the story on Wikipedia or watch a YouTube playthrough if you're that curious.



    Overall score: 22/100
    1.0
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