Back to the Future: The Game - Review

I'm a huge fan of the Back to the Future series. I have all 3 movie and I mostly survived the cartoon series, mostly. So when I heard that Telltale Games, the people that brought use the new Monkey Island games, was making the series I was pumped. While it is Telltale Games' MO to go the episodic route for their games I will be reviewing all 5 of the BttF episodes as one game.

The game takes places 6 months after the events of the of the 3rd movie. The DeLorean appears out of nowhere and you are set on a series of events that lands you in 1931, trying to help a young Emmett Brown help his older self bust out of jail. At first moving around is a little odd but once you get the hang of it it's OK. Music was well done with a lot of soft background music based off of the main theme of the series.

The story manages to add new characters, settings, and elements all while retaining the original story from the movies. It even ties in the cartoon series and explains how Doc and his family comes to live in Marty's time. I will not ruin the story for you but I will say this, OH MY GOD YOU MUST PLAY THIS GAME! IT'S FUNNY, SMART, AND THE CLOSEST THING YOU WILL EVER SEE TO A 4TH MOVIE! PLAY THIS GAME! DO IT NOW! GO, GO, GO! *deep breath* So yeah, that.

A young Dr. Emmett Brown.

Now for the bad. They brought back a lot of themes from the movies. Themes such as Tannen being an moron, areas, quotes, and points to other inside jokes. All these things seems forced in the first episode and seem like they were going for cheap laughs. And they do this to help reestablish the world and refamiliarize you with themes in the series.

As far as puzzles go this game doesn't really have the high level challenge that you would see from more well known series in the genre. I did get stuck twice and it was at the end. I knew exactly what I needed to do, I just didn't know how to do it. Another hard point is the when you had to make fuel for one of Emmett's inventions at the end of the first episode. It's really confusing at first and you can fail it if you are not listening. With what little problems I did have they were mainly in the first episode and were solved as they went along. 


While this is a short review it's mainly because for the most part this is a game about the story and I didn't want to ruin it for fans out there that haven't yet had the chance to play it. All you need to know is that you screw up your future, Doc marries another woman, and becomes a badguy. It's so well done that they even got the original writers to do the story. As an adventure game it's less about puzzles and more about story, and with a game that will clock in at around 15 hours it's well worth the time. A must buy for any fan.

Buy this Game Now On Steam