Back to the Future: The Game Review
It has been over twenty five years since the first Back to the Future movie premiered, but that’s a paltry length of time when you have a time traveling DeLorean. To celebrate twenty five years, Telltale Games released a series of episodic games based on the beloved franchise, though Wii owners only recently got a chance to play them. Back to the Future: The Game has the same comical charm and variety of puzzles as previous Telltale titles, though this one could have used a lot more polish for running on the Wii.
The plot of the game follows after the story of the movie trilogy, picking up months after Marty and Doc Brown’s original adventures through time. There are tons of nods to the franchise, from mimicked lines to familiar objects, landmarks, and people, some of which are seen in a new light. As a sequel to the storyline of the movies, BttF: The Game does a pretty good job. For better or for worse, the story is fairly true to the movies’ concept of time travel and its sometimes heinous consequences. Sure there are a few odd plotholes and a couple of leaps of logic that, when scrutinized, may look a little fuzzy, but like the movies these issues don’t really matter. The adventure moves along nicely with plenty of problems that Marty needs to patch up, while the dialogue maintains a sense of comedy to keep your time jumping quest light-hearted.
Whether it's just comical or needed to find clues, you always have plenty of conversation options.
Point and click adventure games are Telltale Games’ bread and butter, and BttF: The Game shows off the kind of amusing conversation trees and intriguing puzzles that you would expect from this developer. There are plenty of objects to interact with and a wide variety of puzzles to solve, some of which can be quite easy while others require a bizarre approach that can sometimes be just plain weird or nonsensical. Moving from one puzzle to another can be a little dry at times, especially when some answers seem illogical. However, even the truly absurd puzzle solutions are redeemed by the built in hint system. If you’re ever in need of a helping hand, you can check the hint screen for some guidance. Some hints will outright tell you what to do while others remain rather cryptic, so the actual usefulness of these hints can vary. Overall it’s a useful system though; players who are easily frustrated by the sometimes nonsensical solutions don’t need to be stuck for long, while players who prefer to figure things out solo can just as easily ignore the hints.
Despite the natural fit between point-and-click adventure games and the Wii remote, the developers have managed to make the controls a hassle. The main problem here is moving. Using the D-pad to move in 3D environments is a foolish endeavor, especially when those environments use fixed camera angles that often provide a weird perspective. If you play this game, you basically have to use the nunchuk, where movement is at least manageable. BttF: The Game also suffers from somewhat unresponsive controls. Half the time clicking on an icon doesn’t give you an immediate reaction; this is made all the worse by some unnecessarily small icons. It might not have been an issue with a mouse and a computer, but the Wii remote requires a little more wiggle room when clicking on items. The resulting controls are not as seamless as they should be, and only make the game more annoying to control.
Another era of Tannen bullying awaits you in 1931.
Visually, BttF: The Game opts for a stylized look that gives characters a cartoonish appearance that matches the playful, sometimes goofy sense of humor that the story has. However the developers missed a huge opportunity for variety. In a game literally about time travel, they could have used a lot more interesting environments and character designs. Instead the majority of the game takes place in 1931, which looks good but lacks the kind of sharp, unique visuals that is suited to a cartoonish art style. The audio, meanwhile, sounds great. The soundtrack seems a little lazy since it mainly draws from iconic sound of the movies, but the movie score is fantastic and hearing it again is a welcome touch. BttF: The Game boasts some excellent voice work including a couple of actors from the movies. The actors have done a surprisingly good job of imitating the speech of characters in the movies, particularly Marty McFly, so the transition from film to game comes off smooth.
Unfortunately there is one glaring issue in BttF: The Game. The frame rate is absolutely atrocious at times, as are the drawn out loading times that pop up often. The game isn’t unplayable, but it makes it a real slog to progress and kind of ruins some of the more action-oriented cutscenes. This game simply shouldn’t be this taxing on the Wii given the relatively low amount of action and movement in each area. It may only be a technical issue, but these problems drag down the pace of the game and can make the already slow movements of Marty even more tiresome. It is truly regrettable that the developers have done such a poor job of optimizing this game for the Wii to the extent that just trying to play the game is a chore.
Marty's guitar skills is just one of many references to the movies.
As with Telltale Games’ other episodic offerings, this game comes in five episodes each a few hours in length. All told there’s around fourteen or fifteen hours of content, and though you can replay any episode at your leisure, there isn’t much else to see besides completing the game again. The best you can do is replay levels to test out different conversation choices, but there’s not a lot of incentive to go through an entire episode again after completing it once. However, the game is budget priced at $20, so the fifteen hour game length isn’t half bad.
Point and click adventure games are a niche genre these days, so it’s already hard to generate wide appeal for the genre. Back to the Future: The Game has the added disadvantage of being a rather terrible port on Wii. Despite having a fun story and some good puzzles tempered with some bad puzzles, this game fails to put its best foot forward and ends up stumbling through five episodes. The hint system is a convenient touch, but not quite enough to push Back to the Future: The Game far above average.
Rating: 
