Yeah, the adventure genre is one of those genres that, at first blush, people either love them or simply accept its existence. To that end, non-fans may not necessarily be won over by this game, although the license likely will help, as will the fact Tell-Tale developed it. I can certainly see someone watching another person play it and think: “Eh, it’s okay. The story’s good but it still isn’t my favorite genre.”

Still, as far as this genre goes, this is one of the better options for anyone hoping to start now. Getting them to play, say, King’s Quest or Space Quest (any of Sierra’s early games, really) won’t be as effective as if they played them when they debuted.

Oddly, this made me think of a point I could’ve added to the review, more as a means of showing why playing the game versus watching the movie can be a different experience:

Watching the story play out with all the gameplay periods edited out as necessary makes you realize how disjointed it can feel if they adapted it as a movie without making adjustments. This is especially true when you play all the dialogue options one after the other during character interactions outside of cut-scenes. Hearing the conversations flow using the choices from top to bottom lacks a natural feel to it during these scenes if you watched it as such.

All in all though, the series is fine and compared to other games in the genres, this feels more like it goes out of its way to appeal to non-fans. Although it doesn’t exactly help if you aren’t a fan of Back to the Future fan either. lol

You know, I’m mildly surprised they never referenced Uncle Joey in the games. This isn’t much of a spoiler, since I highly doubt he would’ve factored into the plot in any suitable fashion even if present, but they don’t even make a comparable character for him in 1931. Then again, that’s probably to its benefit. It’ll doubtless prove more fruitful for a film if they decided to produce a fourth.

As for the puzzles, I can see a few of them feeling confounding. Tell-Tale does seem to some degree make these games for those not significantly involved with the genre, to which I commend them. However, that decision can bite them for various reasons and they almost inevitably tried to keep it in line with what adventure fans expect to maintain some sense of difficulty.

As a result, it isn’t immune to the list of transgressions that plague such titles. The primary problems you’ll see are ‘solve the soup cans’ and ‘moon logic’ type of puzzle, as TV Tropes call ‘em. Those are probably what stump people the most, the former largely because they see it and think: “They just had to put a puzzle here, didn’t they? It doesn’t even make sense being here.”

Fortunately Back to the Future avoids the Soup Cans variety for the most part. I don’t really recall a puzzle that made me question why it’s there, since they managed to tie virtually everything to the plot.

“Moon Logic,” though, I can see being a problem, if thankfully one minor enough to prevent the series from sinking. Sometimes the logic just doesn’t work in its favor during the process of solving it, though moon logic puzzles are usually the ones that make you exclaim: “How was I supposed to know that?” I remember one involving to convince Emmett that Marty knows science. The solution makes sense in context but it may not be necessarily obvious and thus create a wall.

If Back to the Future seems on the easy side, incidents of ‘moon logic’ aside, I attribute that to two main factors. It’s clear the story’s part of the fun, maybe to the extent that giving it a slightly heavy focus at the expense of making the puzzles too easy, especially for genre veterans. This isn’t necessarily bad but for people who are used to going through the motions, it won’t boggle them too much.

Also, perhaps they intended this partially as a means of introducing a new audience to a decades-old genre (older than I am, maybe?). You can view Tell-Tale’s series as a means of reviving a genre that’s been on decline and the younger crowd may not be as familiar as we are with it. Choosing a license that’s fairly recognizable does work to its advantage if that’s the case, as more people probably heard of Back to the Future than, regrettably in a way, Sam and Max (which extends to LucasArts’ Hit the Road almost as much as it does to the original comics).

And I do agree on the notion that the game feels more grounded in ‘reality,’ though it does have its ludicrous moments. These moments are mostly in the kinds of situations Marty finds himself in, oddly enough, not in the puzzles themselves; the puzzles seem to flow naturally and play upon what Marty is getting involved with.

I give the example of the final puzzle in episode 1 (slight SPOILER ALERT). You could see Emmett having to face his father one way or another, and it wasn’t going to be the last, so incorporating a puzzle around it is interesting and in a way clever. You are witnessing character development while working on a puzzle, the former also preparing for an analogous scene in Episode 4, which is in line with how Zemeckis and Gale wrote the films.

I did play the demo of the 1st game, but there isnt enough that i could truly comment on it. I’m too much of a klutz to play this game. (Hell i had to google answers for modt of the puzzles presented in the ‘Uncharted’ games because I thought ‘they’ were too tough!, and don’t get me started on the original Resident Evil series lol)

From the impression i had (from the demo anyways) was that the game tries too hard in ‘Holding’ your hand a little. But what can i say? it takes me an hour to figure anything out :p
But I will re consider giving this another look from reading your review.

For what it is, its definately something for Back to the Future fans, it has all the music and charm of the movies.

Great Article Estim

These types of games, which are of the Graphic Adventure genre, are known for their “How would I even think of doing that?” Logic. It’s where the solution makes sense AFTER you figure it out and then facepalms commence. I am an alum of the old 1990’s Lucasarts Graphic Adventures so for me the controls took some getting used to. I can’t tell you how many times the screen would change from one perspective to another and the direction I was pressing the control stick would make Marty flip around.

I did, however, think the puzzles were a tad on the easy side.

There were a few times I had to wander around to figure out what I needed to do but for the most part the game was pretty direct. There was one instance where I felt the story was giving you clues on how to solve one particular puzzle only to have the solution come out of left field. Also, the majority of the puzzles were one part-ers. You have this so you do this.

Maybe it’s that my head is in the clouds so it’s a bit closer to the moon, but I thought the puzzles were MUCH more grounded in “reality” then some of the puzzles I’ve seen in other games and they kept the spirit of the films. None were too over the top crazy or silly. No “find the random gorilla (joke on manila) envelope with a banana in it to hypnotize a piano playing monkey by shoving the banana onto the metronome atop the piano to then use the hypnotized monkey on the water pump to the waterfall to turn off the water flow” here. Get it? monkey wrench.
I think Tell Tale Games is still a young company and their capability is growing with each game. I had a blast with it. Glad to hear others did too!