EVILNess Reviews PC: BttF The Game, Does it hit 88 MPH or is it lost in time?
 

Way back in December I purchased Back to the Future: The Game for the PC. It was 10% off if you bought it that day or some such and I had been mildly interested in the whole concept when I had first heard about it a few months prior. Having recently released the final episode I now feel it is fair to articulate my final opinion on the game.

For those of you out of the loop, BttF is a point and click adventure game. It has no fancy gimmicks and probably one of the most simple interfaces I have ever seen in an adventure title. This isn't really a bad thing.

You click to interact with the environment, you have an inventory screen which only has two selections: Use and an inspect command, and your arrow keys move Marty while the Shift key makes him run or at the very least walk a bit faster. As far as controls go, they are simple. My only complaint is that Marty moves too damn slow.

The most notable thing about the interface is the Goals and Hints. Every time Marty gets a new task to complete the game lets you know. For example, in the opening sequence of the game Doc asks Marty to fetch his journal. When you gain control over Marty a banner appears over the top of the screen notifying you that should go and get the journal.

This is handy for obvious reasons, and doesn't really detract from the challenge of the game. I like how it clearly states what you have to do, even if it is easier said than done. It never takes the fun out of the game.

The game also has a tiered hint system, where you can go in and get a hint at any time by hitting a lever in the hints menu. Each hint gives you a little bigger nudge with the last one just blatantly telling you how to do what you need to do. This is a doubled edged sword, as it obviously allows you to either rough it through the game or just breeze through to see the cutscenes. However, for someone like me it was probably a bad thing because in some cases I used the hints just because they were so easy to get. I breezed through the entire second episode and probably missed a bunch of secondary dialogue. You can set the hint level, but it only hides the hints until you hit the lever. I wish there was a way to turn them off completely.

The story was overall a pretty good tale, even if it was only so-so in the first episode and kinda blegh in episode 2. Episode 3 was pretty rad, with 4 being back down to average. The finale was definitely the best, bringing all the characters and plot-lines to a satisfying completion, and overall the game was indeed worth the price of admission for me. Any choices you make in previous episodes are supposed to carry over into the next (Such as saying your name is Harry Callahan) but often this doesn't work.

The new main characters start off as very shallow, but really flesh out after chapter 3 starts. The main "villain" of the story really did impress me. Let's just say that they go through the most changes of anyone throughout the story and you really kinda both feel bad for them and hate them at the same time. My first thought at the end of the game was what happened to them.

The game is buggy though. They fix the major game breakers after about a week of release of a episode, but it still is annoying. Little things like suddenly having no sound to big things that crash the game or force you to reload do happen. I was playing Outatime today and I suddenly started floating up into a room with no exits. I was stuck and had to reload to a much earlier save. It shouldn't be much of an issue with the older episodes though. The game has terrible lip syncing as well, although it was noticeably better in Episode 5.

So buy or not?

If you want it on PC then yes I would say go and buy it now if you like Back to the Future and double yes go buy it now if you also happen to like adventure games and the sometimes sideways thinking that is required to complete them. I would wait a few more months to buy the console version, as it is like 2 episodes behind.

I give the game an overall 8/10 mainly for just being a fun story and a passably good adventure game. The fact that they do search out and fix bugs after the release is keeping me from subtracting more points, otherwise it would probably be a 5/10.

So yeah, I really enjoyed it!