Back to the Future: It's About Time (PC review)

I'm a HUGE fan of Back to the Future. I've seen the first movie at least 20 or 30 times, and parts II and III half as many times. When Telltale Games, the team that revived Sam and Max with episodic content a few years ago, was developing a Back to the Future game, I was excited. When I found a promo code to download Episode 1 of the game for free, I was thrilled. When I realized that I wouldn't be able to download it until February, I said fuck it and shelled out the $25 for the game anyway.

Like Sam and Max, the game will be released one episode at a time. The first episode begins after the conclusion of the film trilogy, in 1986. Doc has been gone for months and one day, the Delorean appears - literally - in front of Doc's garage but without a driver. You play Marty McFly as you investigate Doc's disappearance through multiple time periods.

If you remember the original Back to the Future game for Nintendo Entertainment System, your memories likely aren't fond. More specifically, you remember that game as the plastic equivilant of a steaming elephant dump. Depite the bad elephant dump taste in my mouth from over 20 years ago, I was still intrigued to play this - mostly because of the contributions of Bob Gale (writer/producer of the original film) and Christopher Lloyd AKA Emmet "Doc" Brown in the film trilogy. Michael J. Fox approved the use of his likeness but did not provide his voice; Marty McFly is voiced by a newcomer who does a pretty spectacular job filling Fox's shoes.

The game feels like a natural continuation of the films. Bob Gale's contributions are very evident, and the developers clearly did a lot of research to make the characters (including the DeLorean and the town of Hill Valley) feel authentic and not just some new iteration created for new media. As the game progresses and you travel back in time and meet the same characters you would expect to meet if you've seen the movies, it truly feels like you are playing the sequel that never was.

So far I'm giving the game 4 out of 5, docking one point because of the simplicity of the puzzles. It feels like the game is going to be a breeze, and I just do not feel challenged.

And then I encounter the game killing bug.

At one part of the game, Marty is supposed to get his hands on a barrel. The simplicity of the game makes it extremely clear that you need the barrel, and the game clearly lays out the groundwork to put the puzzle together. However, if you don't trigger a certain event, the puzzle is literally impossible. I spent an hour trying to solve the puzzle, only to save the game and exit and read a walkthrough. I realized what I had missed in the game and tried to go back and replicate it for another hour. No luck. And my game save(s) are past the point where I can go back and fix it. If I want to progress in this game at all, I need to delete my saved games and restart from the beginning.

Fuck that. You just lost two more points.

Reading a bit more about the problem, it seems a lot of people on the interwebz are just as pissed as I am about it. I'm not sure if I would call it a bug as much as a really fucking bad oversight. Regardless, I'm going to start from the beginning anyway just because I am such a huge fan of the series, and I'm hoping the other episodes are at least playable.

2/5