It is pretty confusing that the notebook itself didn't disappear, now that Doc never actually wrote it in this new timeline. But again, Doc drew it and it made time travel possible, by which he ended up changing his own history and became the Citizen Brown, creating a paradox, but I guess being in a paradox doesn't effect its existence as harshly as "dying early or not being born in a new timeline".
Then again, the only thing left in the notebook is the diagram of the Flux Capaciter. Because FCB had the accident too.
Guess I'm going to be the first one to give a negative review.
To me this wasnt BTTF at all. Started out okay with marty making cracks about Mr. Fusion being under warranty and referencing 2015. We do get to see all our characters who would be alive in 1986 under different cirumstances (other than Needles whom they had copyright issues with and Marty whom is normal) but NO time travel? It was basically the anti-biffhoric timeline; instead of a dangerous hill valley, it seemed far too similar to the future in demolition man; credit fines for everything and emmet brown and edna basically as raymond cocteaus character split (emmet the good site, edna the evil side). It was basically just an exploration of the town and very little references to the previous films/episodes aside from some 1931 references and the 2015 reference mentioned above.
Now the ending was good, pretty much from the part marty lands in the decycling underground lair and having to battle edna and biff and emmet finding out the truth so at least I have hope for the next episode although I'm already sick of the FCB 1986 and hope that most of that we get whisked back to 1931 fairly quickly.
But I remember after playing episode 2, i was excited to see walkthroughs on youtube to see what i missed. I've watched both the first 2 episodes after playing but have little interest seeing this one again.
So yeah honestly the only parts i liked were the meeting with doc in his office and the underground part. The town square parts and mcfly garage parts were awfully boring and I didn't care for them. It was mildly ammusing seeing a wussified biff but overall this was easily the worst episode of the 3 so far for me.
I am SO SO sad to say this but I agree with you Michael...I am by far the biggest Back to the Future fan you will ever find...I mean who else can HONESTLY say they saw Back to the Future 1 in theaters exactly 97 times? LOL Yes I know it's a lot and specific but I was young and obsessed. And even more obsessed when I found out 4 years later Back to the Future 2 and 3 were to be released!!! Let's just say I saw those plus the first one since release hundreds upon hundreds of times and will never ever get bored or tired of them. Okay..for this review...first off I want to say that I was SPOT ON with my guess about EDNA in the speculations thread which I'm not sure is even there anymore but I'm almost positive you remember what I said Michael because you even commented on it and agreed - it was about me guessing that Doc and Edna got together and it was Edna that banned all dogs *gives himself a pat on the back* well...they had SO MUCH POTENTIAL with this episode...where do I start...you barely EVER use any of the items from your inventory / pick up new ones / use them - VERY VERY VERY few puzzles ( if you want to even call them that this time....and by FAR the shortest of all the games - it is SO obvious that they were so consumed with making Jurassic Park that they began this Episode and then went back to it while not working on it for awhile or adding much depth whatsoever - I'm not saying it was THAT bad because I did enjoy a couple of things in it and thought the story was decent but let's be honest here - give us some REAL interaction with DOC being able to convince him talking to him normally about Time Travel, the adventures - ugh, it was just a mess we weren't able to really truly do that - the only thing in that book they focus on is the flux capacitor and doc realizes that it's what he mistakenly put as a guy with his arms outstretched...LOL - just goofy...it's pretty obvious what they will do now in episode 4 I can only hope and cross my fingers that they put a LOT of time into it , make the game LONGER, and please please just make it more immersive - I didn't complain about the puzzles in the last two or items/use of them or even story - so please Telltale....make this a winner - you have my *baby* in your hands!! I will get Jurassic Park, yes, because I was a fan of the movies.....but these games honestly were my dream come true please there are only 2 episodes left, make them everything all of the fans ever imagined!! Because this was the worst of the 3 by far!! You know you could have done soooooo much better!!!
i love this episode but im getting worried about the paradoxs and a few thing's dont follow the films logic, other than that im loving the game a lot more. shame we have to go back to 1931. i dont like 1931 much its quite boring.
Why does Jennifer look exactly like young Edna? Why are ALL the character models exactly the same? Lazy.
I personally thought she looked more like Trixie. Edna has a different head shape. Jennifer and Trixie have a somewhat elongated face, while Edna's is more round. While playing the game, I thought Jennifer's character model looked like a pretty good caricature of Claudia Wells, but now I'm wondering if Claudia's voice wasn't just tricking my brain into projecting her facial features onto the generic Trixie model.
In any case, this isn't nearly as bad as Tales. If they are reusing the same models, they're tweaking them enough that I can't tell if they're being reused or not.
Citizen Brown was an amazing episode. I've never been that big of an adventure game fan, so the puzzles don't annoy me. What I like about BTTF is that it is like watching BTTF Part 4, and interacting with it is just a bonus.
This was one awesome episode and for once, I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would end MUCH differently. Also, I've been pretty optimistic about Edna up to this point, but now I want her to DIE! SHE IS THE MOST EVIL VILLAIN EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Sorry about that. This was definately the best episode of the three, because of the surprising twists, not too hard and not too easy puzzles, and Jennifer is executed perfectly. I have two problems though:
1. Lorraine's model is a bit weird
2. It says "Double Visions" is 'Coming Soon'? Not in April?
I personally thought she looked more like Trixie. Edna has a different head shape. Jennifer and Trixie have a somewhat elongated face, while Edna's is more round. While playing the game, I thought Jennifer's character model looked like a pretty good caricature of Claudia Wells, but now I'm wondering if Claudia's voice wasn't just tricking my brain into projecting her facial features onto the generic Trixie model.
In any case, this isn't nearly as bad as Tales. If they are reusing the same models, they're tweaking them enough that I can't tell if they're being reused or not.
Trixie! Yeah, that was the one. You're right. She's a carbon copy though, just with makeup and different hair. Walking around alternate 1986 Hill Valley, every male character is one of the 1931 gangsters, and every female character is Edna. As far as I can tell every model in the game is the same. This isn't like Tales of Monkey Island. It's FAR more blatant here, in my opinion. It's like they aren't even trying.
Trixie! Yeah, that was the one. You're right. She's a carbon copy though, just with makeup and different hair. Walking around alternate 1986 Hill Valley, every male character is one of the 1931 gangsters, and every female character is Edna. As far as I can tell every model in the game is the same. This isn't like Tales of Monkey Island. It's FAR more blatant here, in my opinion. It's like they aren't even trying.
There's a generic man model and a generic woman model that they've used for background characters in every episode so far, but all of the main characters (with the possible exception of Jennifer and Trixie) have had their own unique models as far as I can tell. The '30s version of the generic woman model has the same or a similar clothing and hair style as Edna, but her face was different. The gangster models might have been reused for background characters in this episode, but if they were, I didn't notice.
Anyway, Tales was much worse. Almost the entire supporting cast used the same two character models. Characters with large speaking parts like Winslow, D'Oro, and Nipperkin all had the same character model. In BttF all obvious model reuse has been reserved for background characters without speaking parts.
I feel the need to point out that the DeLorean in these games is a temporal duplicate of the original, and likely subject to a whole new set of time-travel rules, one of them apparently being immunity to time-paradoxes. :P
My take on the notebook is that Doc. Brown still had it, and still wrote down the idea of the flux capacitor before he was completely sidetracked by Edna's meddling; after which he suppressed the memory of it and all things scientific not pertaining to social engineering.
Two things I still don't get though: 1) Doc's disappearance from the DeLorean upon arrival in 1986, and 2) If the DeLorean was temporally duplicated, shouldn't there be a temporal clone of Doc. Brown running around in 2015 as well? Holy crap, maybe there is!!
My verdict on this episode: It was okay. There wasn't any real sense of threat until the very end though. Nobody was in danger of getting killed or erased from history, and at worst everyone just seemed to be kinda frustrated. You had to try pretty hard to get in any real trouble, and Biff... yeah, my heart bleeds for the would-be rapist & murderer. Still, we're not done with FCB's '86, and I expect it to wrap up nicely in ep. 4 in a way that will make this romp worth it, before we move on to the time-travel hijinks again.
an awesome episode like the others just a bit strange you are in only 1 timeline this time instead of 2 but i still didnt understand a few things:
1:how come doc fused with first citizen brown and marty didnt fuse with "martin".
2:doc never created the time machine so how could the notebook still exist with the plans for the flux capacitor ye sure he may of hit his head even after all of the changes but instead i think he got the idea for the logo of a man standing instead of a flux capacitor
oh and yes did anyone try other codes on the watch and know what they do cuz i just went to X:11 at the start and didnt check
how come doc fused with first citizen brown and marty didnt fuse with "martin".
Doc's lived a long time, thanks to the body enhancements he got from the future. Take away the time machine that made all that possible, and you take away Doc's ability to live as long as he has, just like Old Biff prevented his own existence by altering Biff's life when he gave him the Almanac--and presumably caused Biff's subsequent excessively hedonistic lifestyle to cause him to die younger as a result. In other words, Doc removed his own links to 2015 technology--which should mean the Mr. Fusion on the crashed car may vanish sooner or later.
Meanwhile, even if Marty does risk fading out at some point, his situation was nowhere as drastic as Doc's and so could take longer to process.
how could the notebook still exist
FCB mentioned most of the pages were blank when he flicked through it, so I'd imagine the contents of the notebook are steadily being erased as time catches up to itself.
yall look into stuff too much...just enjoy the game like i did and dont worry about models being the same and what not...episode 3 was amazing, now take us to the future once
Usually, Telltale adventure games start off as easy, and become more challenging once they gain in momentum.
With "Episode Brown", this is rather not the case. The story is somehow interesting, however, the quality of the puzzles is rather linear and simple. Where the first two episodes have at least a climactic ending, this episode lacks even this (come on, you don't count the Biff episode, right?) Franchise-wise, I liked some of the allusions ("My dad is a peeping-tom!") and other references, but they were rather seldom. Plus, there is far too little Chris Lloyd in this episode.
I was pleased to read after the fact that Claudia Wells was in it - however, I have to admit, I didn't recognize her voice at all. And the model didn't look like Jennifer at all (even sans the punk/goth makeup). Although she did look kinda hot...
I however kept wondering why Marty wouldn't knock Edna the f##k out, while she's alone with him. After all, she's no gun-wielding Biff in 1985A. Would have spared Marty a lot of trouble this way... But I guess the story has got me emotionally involved, so that might be a good thing.
[*] Needles not being named Needles. That hurt a little, because I really like the character. NEEDLES kissing Jennifer... that must kill Marty. "Leech"... hmph. But I do see the rights management problem, Sinaz, I really do.
Are you sure that was supposed to be Needles? I've got the dim memory of Needles being mentioned in one of the dialogues, so there doesn't seem to be any copyright issues... or was that mentioned somewhere else? Why would there be copyright problems in the first place?
Edit:
Ah, just saw the "Needles"-thread... very weird.
For me, episode 3 seemed like it had the most content out of any of the other episodes. There were more optional dialog trees than usual, and it featured at least 2 puzzles that made me have to stop and think. I still didn't need to use any hints but it was enough to be satisfying anyway. Most of the other puzzles and such were pretty easy or the answer was basically given to you. That's ok with me though, since the story is awesome and I'm really into this game so far because of it.
I was sorta hoping for some stuff that didn't happen, or it seems like it will be something in later episodes. The whole feel of the episode though was pretty good, and still had some unexpected parts to it. Here's my biggest complaint though, my initial reaction to the new Jennifer character was positive, the voicework was fine, but after awhile her character kinda turned out to be more shallow than what I would've hoped for.... and through that it also made Marty's character a little more shallow. It's hard for me to put me finger on it exactly...I can't really say where the story will take her character but at this point I have mixed feelings.
Anyway aside from that, I think that this episode is probably the best so far. It's the furthest away from what we've seen before and the amount of content and dialogue seems to have increased a little. Which is nice because I'll probably replay it at some point and check out all the other stuff I missed.
Are you sure that was supposed to be Needles? I've got the dim memory of Needles being mentioned in one of the dialogues, so there doesn't seem to be any copyright issues... or was that mentioned somewhere else? Why would there be copyright problems in the first place?
Edit:
Ah, just saw the "Needles"-thread... very weird.
Your right Loraine does mention Needles mum when she's cleaning the statue.
I think this eps is a character development for Marty. The way he talks to FCB. He knows what to say, it's like he can answer what FCB can say before he can say it.
I agree with everyone else in that this is the best BttF: The Game episode yet. I felt sucked into every situation, the whole game was so...immersive. Actors/actresses all did a splendid job. Jennifer got away with having the same base model as Trixie. The character development was spot on. I feel sorry for Biff now. The puzzles were made hard by the fact that there were so few hotspots that 3D pixel-hunting was required for every situation (this is a different approach, which I think is the best compromise TT could make, with the interactive movie approach. The recycle bins red herring had me try any inventory I could gain on it. Marty was true to his form in the movies in every way and First Citizen Brown really steals the show near the end, as well he should. I must admit, I saw most of the ending scenes coming but am still as engrossed by that brutal cliffhanger as everyone else. The cinematics were brilliant.
One thing I feel is worth mentioning separately is I was worried about the demerits being TT getting back to their 3/5 arbitrary things to do to solve a puzzle. It may well have been but I didn't count and we were never told how many we needed.
- Various characters, from the MOVIES (see what's totally wrong about 31 now ?).
- Lots of dialogs (even some that weren't obligatory !!).
- More choices !
- It was way funnier and smarter.
- A lot of content, the actions were smartly paced.
- The overall rythm was much much better.
It was pretty easy, but very enjoyable since the story and the dialogs were great.
Unlike the first episode, and much better than the second.
I also want to note that the puzzles were much more interesting (even if easy) than before. It wasn't far fetched, it felt real. That was my main concern with previous episodes.
Too bad they wasted two episodes to get to that point. With next episode probably being lame (let's be fair, the "goal" of next episode is kinda ridiculous, "get them to hate each other" u_u ) .
Let's see if the final episode can make the whole game worth it.
So far it's
3 - 2 - 1 . It probably will be 5 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 1 . But I guess, depending on the conclusion, 3 could take the 5's place.
What I don't get is why regular Doc disappeared. In BTTF 2 when they traveled back to Biff ran 1985 regular Doc was still around while alternate Doc was in the insane asylum. Another thing I've never figured out is what happens to alternate Marty when regular Marty shows up. Is there two Martys or does alternate Marty get erased? And if alternate Marty gets erased wouldn't the same apply to Doc? For example in the First BTTF movie Regular Marty travels back to his perfect 1985 and continues to live his life. I am assuming he erased the alternate Marty....but then this creates a paradox in the game.
In terms of why Doc disappeared, it could be due to the fact that, in the Citizen Brown timeline, Doc never goes through the anti-aging procedure which results in an earlier death. He disappeared because he died earlier on than he did in the original timeline.
An example of the same concept is seen in Back to the Future Part II. After Biff changes the past in his favor, he returns to 2015 only to die moments after he arrives. This simply means that Biff wasn't alive in 2015 of the new timeline he created.
Technically speaking, the alternate versions should still be present with the originals, as seen in Part II when they have to travel to 1955 again.
I never really thought about the alternate version within the reformed 1985 at the end of Part I (where George and Lorraine are both happy and successful). You've brought up an interesting point.
This episode was...better, mostly, than the others, but they set the bar about as low as anyone can set it without the thing being actually technically broken. Uninspired, insulting design decisions has left Back to the Future feeling like an incomplete, unsatisfying, and overall disgraceful experience. While this makes minor steps in the right direction, that's not nearly enough when your predecessors have failed on the level the first two installments did. If one looks at the gameplay, they notice that many options simply don't exist or don't have interesting responses, that doing the wrong thing leads to the game behaving strangely as it expects you to walk along the line of the narrative like a good boy, many puzzles are simply straightforward to the point that player involvement is a sad joke, and overall the experience simply lacks anything that draws the player in aside from superficial elements such as the plot. This episode had throughout much of its run a problem in which player actions mattered less than things that simply HAPPENED due to arbitrary triggers, leaving the player dragged along. Having spent the past few days tearing this game apart to understand its working pieces, I simply can't find anything of real value behind the surface elements. I could honestly recommend that friends and family watch playthroughs of this game on YouTube, as they would miss so little of the experience that the missing bits are inconsequential. Player involvement simply doesn't matter, and is pushed along a clean path. The inventory seems as though it's being phased out, with only a few instances in which the inventory is used in a puzzle at all. The player is pushed along by exposition and dialog, with almost none of the actual game time being spent feeling like actually playing. Even as an interactive story, it fails, as exploration and interactivity are cut off, and the events follow such a strict schedule that one might as well be watching a film themselves.
But hey, I suppose there's always the next episode, though.
But hey, I suppose there's always the next episode, though.
You know it won't satisfy you either, and I can't really blame you for what you expect from the game to be.
Many people just lowered their expectations, including myself. Normally that also wouldn't be my preferred view on the subject but trying to enjoy is more profitable than getting disappointed over and over.
This episode was...better, mostly, than the others, but they set the bar about as low as anyone can set it without the thing being actually technically broken. Uninspired, insulting design decisions has left Back to the Future feeling like an incomplete, unsatisfying, and overall disgraceful experience.
...
But hey, I suppose there's always the next episode, though.
I totally quote you.
Now we're halfway through, but this game feels... flat. Only the ending of ep.3 is reaching the point of "great machinima".
The story is very good overall, so the audio compartment, but everything else in gameplay is broken or flawed.
The environments look dead, the cutscenes features akward animations, bad pacing, bad camera working, and everything seems fake.
There are some good moments, yes, but the game lacks emotions, and the player doesn't care too much about restoring the correct timeline, and there's not real empathy with characters (maybe because the episodes are too short to build it).
And this episode has too much dialogue - a bad and boring way to make the episode longer.
But the final sequences of ep.3 are cool, though.
I own every Telltale game, and I can say for sure that this game it's not their best.
And I think that, instead of gathering new people, it will put episode gaming in bad light to the newcomers.
I just ask why reviews keep giving this game high numbers.
Many people just lowered their expectations, including myself. Normally that also wouldn't be my preferred view on the subject but trying to enjoy is more profitable than getting disappointed over and over.
I can try to like sour fruit, but it still tastes like sour fruit.
Those who like it either don't like adventure games or are so hard-up for new BttF story material that they'll eat up whatever Telltale craps out.
That said, the story is the best thing this game has going for it. It's clever, well-written, well-acted, and very engaging, and makes me want to keep playing just to see what happens next. High marks on that one.
The graphics are pretty (for Telltale) and the engine has been nicely optimized this time around. This game runs far better than S&M Episode 3 did on my machine, which is nice.
But everything else about this game is awful. The worst thing Telltale has ever done BY FAR.
First of all, the game is BUGGY AS HELL. Animations cut off awkwardly, sound effects don't play, at least once the game locked up at the end of a conversation and wouldn't resume normal gameplay, etc.
Telltale, listen closely: THE VAST MAJORITY OF PLAYERS WOULD RATHER WAIT A LITTLE LONGER FOR A STABLE GAME THEN PLAY A BUGGY ONE SOONER.
Please adjust your testing timetable accordingly for future games. Your production schedule is already lightyears faster than most other game companies, so it wouldn't hurt you at all to devote just a LITTLE more time to testing.
Secondly, this game is laughably short, even for an episodic game. All these BttF episodes have been the shortest games Telltale has released by far. Any Tales or S&M episode took AT LEAST twice as long to play through, and was FAR more entertaining, because at least those games actually had puzzles that required you to flip on the light switch in your brain for a few seconds.
Third, the reused character models and environments. Hill Valley Square was nicely disguised and revamped here, so the environment wasn't as big of issue, but I found the CLEARLY recycled character models to be hugely distracting. Amazingly, it wasn't limited to background characters, as Jennifer looks nearly identical to Trixie in the face (and nothing like either Jennifer from the films.) You'd think that with Claudia Wells as Jennifer they might actually have tried to make a model that at least loosely RESEMBLES like her version of the character! Also, in the actual cutscenes, the characters walking around are CLEARLY reused versions of the gangster and Edna models from the 1930s, and every cop is clearly the same Officer Parker model. It's so bad it's laughable, especially if you've recently played the previous episode.
Which brings me to point four, the absolute disconnect between the life of environments in the cutscenes vs. the actual gameplay. When we first enter Hill Valley Square, it's full of hustle and bustle. Characters walk around, golf carts drive by, etc. When control resumes, all of a sudden it's a ghost town, with the only characters around the ones you need to interact with to advance the story. The environments are also nearly devoid of interactive hotspots--worse in this episode than in any other Telltale game to date. Not only does this make the environments feel completely dead, but it makes puzzle solving (hahahaha) a complete JOKE.
And last but not least, the puzzles.
Sigh...
Wait, WHAT puzzles?!
There was nothing in this game where the solution wasn't patently obvious from the get-go, or that took just a few seconds of thought or experimentation to figure out. The nearly complete lack of environmental hotspots besides the ones needed to solve "puzzles" makes these things little more than three second click fests. And of course, that's assuming you actually have to stop and think about the solution, which is a rarity, to be sure. And again, this makes the game's overly blatant hint system even more ridiculous and unnecessary than it already was.
This game was full of missed opportunities on the puzzle front, too. A great example is Biff's watch. You figure out that it has a special code that puts him under mind control, but all you have to do is say "Hey Biff, let me see your watch," he shows it to you, and then you just type it in and voila? Really? You'd think there could have at least been SOME trick to it. And the code is something that is just blatantly SHOWN to you in a major cutscene. A simple way to add depth to this "puzzle" would have been to make Marty have to FIND the code by eavesdropping or following Edna/Biff, or having some trick to the entry of the code onto the watch itself. Perhaps Edna had a remote device that activates the watch that Marty would have to first figure out how to get and use, rather than just walking up to Biff and fucking PUNCHING IN THE CODE WHILE THE WATCH IS ON HIS FUCKING ARM. I mean, I know Biff is supposed to be a moron, but does Telltale really have to treat us players like we are, too?? Ugh.
Anyway, the bottom line? This game is awful. The series is the worst "game" Telltale has ever done. Calling it an adventure game is almost an insult to the genre, and the only reason to even watch/"play" this thing is to see BttF 4.
Just finished episode 3 without any hint or goal guide. So far i'm pretty sure this episode is the longest. It's certainly the episode with the most dialogue. Without spoiling anything, it's just getting bigger and bigger. Perhaps a little far fetched with the way the characters are going, but it's still fun. In parts, the plot was predictable, such as the Hill Valley Citizen Logo, I worked out the true meaning of that before the big reveal.
Other than that, it's looking great. I can easily anticipate the plot for Part 4 but I have no idea what will happen in 5.
All I can really say is that I agree with pretty much everything that Lambonius said, except that I'm not all that impressed or engaged by the story. It's... alright. Decent but not great. It was definitely less boring to me than the first two episodes, but then again I found the 1931 setting to be especially dull after a while. I'm curious but not riveted to see what happens in the last two episodes.
It was probably the easiest episode so far. I can't even think of anything that took me more than a few seconds to figure out. Want to know what probably took me the longest? Figuring out that I had to fiddle with the statue in the park not once but twice to get it to block the camera. A real brain teaser, there.
Anyway, I feel like there's a lot of missed potential in Back to the Future: The Game, and people are being way too kind in their evaluations.
I know that Telltale is capable of a lot better than this, they've already proven that they are with their other games.
I suppose my biggest complaint so far with the series is that we still don't have any moments where we get to actually drive the Delorian. The game would have been better had they included a free-roam driving mode. This would be especially brilliant when having to get up to 88mph.
Mine is not a review not a cooment, it's A PRAY TO TELLTALE
Stop making short and easy episodes, I know you're trying to get a wider audience, but this is too much. This is not a game but a cartoon-game, trying to find the way to make the story flowing further.
Play Monkey Island 2 puzzles throght the islands and you'll get what I expect from an adventure game.
You get the licence for a major holywood title and you think it's enough to sell ?
Telltale....in this way you risk to ruin your wonderful reputation. Dont follow the path took by LucasArts... or soon a new Telltale will replace your success.
I suppose my biggest complaint so far with the series is that we still don't have any moments where we get to actually drive the Delorian. The game would have been better had they included a free-roam driving mode. This would be especially brilliant when having to get up to 88mph.
I'm not impressed with the game, but it isn't supposed to be an action game. It's a story game. What would be the point in driving around anyway? I know everyone wants to drive the Delorean but would it really be that fun just for the sake of it? No.
Back To The Future: The Game – Episode 3: Citizen Brown Review - AMO
"Episode 3: Citizen Brown is not only the best episode of Back To The Future: The Game yet, but also one of Telltale’s finest episodes full stop. I can’t reveal too much, but trust me: the final half hour of Episode 3 is sheer brilliance, showcasing the writers, programmers, art designers and voice actors at their very best..."
Another AJ LoCascio mini-interview for this month incoming! Please stay tuned...
I completely agree. I feel Telltale have really outdone themselves with the Back to the Future games, especially this episode. The feel of the 'new' 1986 really gave you a kind of chill.
Excellent review - I completely agree. The game was a bit too easy, but I think if it was made it too hard, you would alienate newcomers to these types of games.
Only thing that actually bothers me about the BTTF series is that it's much less of a game and more of an interactive movie. A game would imply gameplay, which there is very little of. Talking to people and walking back and forth between a small selection of tiny areas is not what I call gameplay. The little gameplay there is doesn't warrant calling it a game, to be honest.
Comments
Then again, the only thing left in the notebook is the diagram of the Flux Capaciter. Because FCB had the accident too.
I thought of the Mac terminal X11. I couldn't stop cracking up.
I am SO SO sad to say this but I agree with you Michael...I am by far the biggest Back to the Future fan you will ever find...I mean who else can HONESTLY say they saw Back to the Future 1 in theaters exactly 97 times? LOL Yes I know it's a lot and specific but I was young and obsessed. And even more obsessed when I found out 4 years later Back to the Future 2 and 3 were to be released!!! Let's just say I saw those plus the first one since release hundreds upon hundreds of times and will never ever get bored or tired of them. Okay..for this review...first off I want to say that I was SPOT ON with my guess about EDNA in the speculations thread which I'm not sure is even there anymore but I'm almost positive you remember what I said Michael because you even commented on it and agreed - it was about me guessing that Doc and Edna got together and it was Edna that banned all dogs
I personally thought she looked more like Trixie. Edna has a different head shape. Jennifer and Trixie have a somewhat elongated face, while Edna's is more round. While playing the game, I thought Jennifer's character model looked like a pretty good caricature of Claudia Wells, but now I'm wondering if Claudia's voice wasn't just tricking my brain into projecting her facial features onto the generic Trixie model.
In any case, this isn't nearly as bad as Tales. If they are reusing the same models, they're tweaking them enough that I can't tell if they're being reused or not.
This was one awesome episode and for once, I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would end MUCH differently. Also, I've been pretty optimistic about Edna up to this point, but now I want her to DIE! SHE IS THE MOST EVIL VILLAIN EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Sorry about that. This was definately the best episode of the three, because of the surprising twists, not too hard and not too easy puzzles, and Jennifer is executed perfectly. I have two problems though:
1. Lorraine's model is a bit weird
2. It says "Double Visions" is 'Coming Soon'? Not in April?
Trixie! Yeah, that was the one. You're right. She's a carbon copy though, just with makeup and different hair. Walking around alternate 1986 Hill Valley, every male character is one of the 1931 gangsters, and every female character is Edna. As far as I can tell every model in the game is the same. This isn't like Tales of Monkey Island. It's FAR more blatant here, in my opinion. It's like they aren't even trying.
I thought of the X11 Linux Window Manager system.
There's a generic man model and a generic woman model that they've used for background characters in every episode so far, but all of the main characters (with the possible exception of Jennifer and Trixie) have had their own unique models as far as I can tell. The '30s version of the generic woman model has the same or a similar clothing and hair style as Edna, but her face was different. The gangster models might have been reused for background characters in this episode, but if they were, I didn't notice.
Anyway, Tales was much worse. Almost the entire supporting cast used the same two character models. Characters with large speaking parts like Winslow, D'Oro, and Nipperkin all had the same character model. In BttF all obvious model reuse has been reserved for background characters without speaking parts.
My take on the notebook is that Doc. Brown still had it, and still wrote down the idea of the flux capacitor before he was completely sidetracked by Edna's meddling; after which he suppressed the memory of it and all things scientific not pertaining to social engineering.
Two things I still don't get though: 1) Doc's disappearance from the DeLorean upon arrival in 1986, and 2) If the DeLorean was temporally duplicated, shouldn't there be a temporal clone of Doc. Brown running around in 2015 as well? Holy crap, maybe there is!!
My verdict on this episode: It was okay. There wasn't any real sense of threat until the very end though. Nobody was in danger of getting killed or erased from history, and at worst everyone just seemed to be kinda frustrated. You had to try pretty hard to get in any real trouble, and Biff... yeah, my heart bleeds for the would-be rapist & murderer. Still, we're not done with FCB's '86, and I expect it to wrap up nicely in ep. 4 in a way that will make this romp worth it, before we move on to the time-travel hijinks again.
1:how come doc fused with first citizen brown and marty didnt fuse with "martin".
2:doc never created the time machine so how could the notebook still exist with the plans for the flux capacitor ye sure he may of hit his head even after all of the changes but instead i think he got the idea for the logo of a man standing instead of a flux capacitor
oh and yes did anyone try other codes on the watch and know what they do cuz i just went to X:11 at the start and didnt check
Doc's lived a long time, thanks to the body enhancements he got from the future. Take away the time machine that made all that possible, and you take away Doc's ability to live as long as he has, just like Old Biff prevented his own existence by altering Biff's life when he gave him the Almanac--and presumably caused Biff's subsequent excessively hedonistic lifestyle to cause him to die younger as a result. In other words, Doc removed his own links to 2015 technology--which should mean the Mr. Fusion on the crashed car may vanish sooner or later.
Meanwhile, even if Marty does risk fading out at some point, his situation was nowhere as drastic as Doc's and so could take longer to process.
FCB mentioned most of the pages were blank when he flicked through it, so I'd imagine the contents of the notebook are steadily being erased as time catches up to itself.
This. The movie was also flexible with the rules. So let the game be a little too. =P
Owh...and Trixie model =/= Jennifer model!
And I loved the alternate Jennifer. What a great additition to the cast.
With "Episode Brown", this is rather not the case. The story is somehow interesting, however, the quality of the puzzles is rather linear and simple. Where the first two episodes have at least a climactic ending, this episode lacks even this (come on, you don't count the Biff episode, right?) Franchise-wise, I liked some of the allusions ("My dad is a peeping-tom!") and other references, but they were rather seldom. Plus, there is far too little Chris Lloyd in this episode.
I was pleased to read after the fact that Claudia Wells was in it - however, I have to admit, I didn't recognize her voice at all. And the model didn't look like Jennifer at all (even sans the punk/goth makeup). Although she did look kinda hot...
I however kept wondering why Marty wouldn't knock Edna the f##k out, while she's alone with him. After all, she's no gun-wielding Biff in 1985A. Would have spared Marty a lot of trouble this way... But I guess the story has got me emotionally involved, so that might be a good thing.
Anyhow - 3,5/5 gigawatts.
Edit:
Ah, just saw the "Needles"-thread... very weird.
I was sorta hoping for some stuff that didn't happen, or it seems like it will be something in later episodes. The whole feel of the episode though was pretty good, and still had some unexpected parts to it. Here's my biggest complaint though, my initial reaction to the new Jennifer character was positive, the voicework was fine, but after awhile her character kinda turned out to be more shallow than what I would've hoped for.... and through that it also made Marty's character a little more shallow. It's hard for me to put me finger on it exactly...I can't really say where the story will take her character but at this point I have mixed feelings.
Anyway aside from that, I think that this episode is probably the best so far. It's the furthest away from what we've seen before and the amount of content and dialogue seems to have increased a little. Which is nice because I'll probably replay it at some point and check out all the other stuff I missed.
Your right Loraine does mention Needles mum when she's cleaning the statue.
One thing I feel is worth mentioning separately is I was worried about the demerits being TT getting back to their 3/5 arbitrary things to do to solve a puzzle. It may well have been but I didn't count and we were never told how many we needed.
Though, next episode looks REALLY lame.
Going back to 31 AGAIN is really... so boring.
As for episode 3, it had :
- Various characters, from the MOVIES (see what's totally wrong about 31 now ?).
- Lots of dialogs (even some that weren't obligatory !!).
- More choices !
- It was way funnier and smarter.
- A lot of content, the actions were smartly paced.
- The overall rythm was much much better.
It was pretty easy, but very enjoyable since the story and the dialogs were great.
Unlike the first episode, and much better than the second.
I also want to note that the puzzles were much more interesting (even if easy) than before. It wasn't far fetched, it felt real. That was my main concern with previous episodes.
Too bad they wasted two episodes to get to that point. With next episode probably being lame (let's be fair, the "goal" of next episode is kinda ridiculous, "get them to hate each other" u_u ) .
Let's see if the final episode can make the whole game worth it.
So far it's
3 - 2 - 1 . It probably will be 5 - 3 - 4 - 2 - 1 . But I guess, depending on the conclusion, 3 could take the 5's place.
An example of the same concept is seen in Back to the Future Part II. After Biff changes the past in his favor, he returns to 2015 only to die moments after he arrives. This simply means that Biff wasn't alive in 2015 of the new timeline he created.
Technically speaking, the alternate versions should still be present with the originals, as seen in Part II when they have to travel to 1955 again.
I never really thought about the alternate version within the reformed 1985 at the end of Part I (where George and Lorraine are both happy and successful). You've brought up an interesting point.
This episode was...better, mostly, than the others, but they set the bar about as low as anyone can set it without the thing being actually technically broken. Uninspired, insulting design decisions has left Back to the Future feeling like an incomplete, unsatisfying, and overall disgraceful experience. While this makes minor steps in the right direction, that's not nearly enough when your predecessors have failed on the level the first two installments did. If one looks at the gameplay, they notice that many options simply don't exist or don't have interesting responses, that doing the wrong thing leads to the game behaving strangely as it expects you to walk along the line of the narrative like a good boy, many puzzles are simply straightforward to the point that player involvement is a sad joke, and overall the experience simply lacks anything that draws the player in aside from superficial elements such as the plot. This episode had throughout much of its run a problem in which player actions mattered less than things that simply HAPPENED due to arbitrary triggers, leaving the player dragged along. Having spent the past few days tearing this game apart to understand its working pieces, I simply can't find anything of real value behind the surface elements. I could honestly recommend that friends and family watch playthroughs of this game on YouTube, as they would miss so little of the experience that the missing bits are inconsequential. Player involvement simply doesn't matter, and is pushed along a clean path. The inventory seems as though it's being phased out, with only a few instances in which the inventory is used in a puzzle at all. The player is pushed along by exposition and dialog, with almost none of the actual game time being spent feeling like actually playing. Even as an interactive story, it fails, as exploration and interactivity are cut off, and the events follow such a strict schedule that one might as well be watching a film themselves.
But hey, I suppose there's always the next episode, though.
You know it won't satisfy you either, and I can't really blame you for what you expect from the game to be.
Many people just lowered their expectations, including myself. Normally that also wouldn't be my preferred view on the subject but trying to enjoy is more profitable than getting disappointed over and over.
I totally quote you.
Now we're halfway through, but this game feels... flat. Only the ending of ep.3 is reaching the point of "great machinima".
The story is very good overall, so the audio compartment, but everything else in gameplay is broken or flawed.
The environments look dead, the cutscenes features akward animations, bad pacing, bad camera working, and everything seems fake.
There are some good moments, yes, but the game lacks emotions, and the player doesn't care too much about restoring the correct timeline, and there's not real empathy with characters (maybe because the episodes are too short to build it).
And this episode has too much dialogue - a bad and boring way to make the episode longer.
But the final sequences of ep.3 are cool, though.
I own every Telltale game, and I can say for sure that this game it's not their best.
And I think that, instead of gathering new people, it will put episode gaming in bad light to the newcomers.
I just ask why reviews keep giving this game high numbers.
I can try to like sour fruit, but it still tastes like sour fruit.
Those who like it either don't like adventure games or are so hard-up for new BttF story material that they'll eat up whatever Telltale craps out.
That said, the story is the best thing this game has going for it. It's clever, well-written, well-acted, and very engaging, and makes me want to keep playing just to see what happens next. High marks on that one.
The graphics are pretty (for Telltale) and the engine has been nicely optimized this time around. This game runs far better than S&M Episode 3 did on my machine, which is nice.
But everything else about this game is awful. The worst thing Telltale has ever done BY FAR.
First of all, the game is BUGGY AS HELL. Animations cut off awkwardly, sound effects don't play, at least once the game locked up at the end of a conversation and wouldn't resume normal gameplay, etc.
Telltale, listen closely: THE VAST MAJORITY OF PLAYERS WOULD RATHER WAIT A LITTLE LONGER FOR A STABLE GAME THEN PLAY A BUGGY ONE SOONER.
Please adjust your testing timetable accordingly for future games. Your production schedule is already lightyears faster than most other game companies, so it wouldn't hurt you at all to devote just a LITTLE more time to testing.
Secondly, this game is laughably short, even for an episodic game. All these BttF episodes have been the shortest games Telltale has released by far. Any Tales or S&M episode took AT LEAST twice as long to play through, and was FAR more entertaining, because at least those games actually had puzzles that required you to flip on the light switch in your brain for a few seconds.
Third, the reused character models and environments. Hill Valley Square was nicely disguised and revamped here, so the environment wasn't as big of issue, but I found the CLEARLY recycled character models to be hugely distracting. Amazingly, it wasn't limited to background characters, as Jennifer looks nearly identical to Trixie in the face (and nothing like either Jennifer from the films.) You'd think that with Claudia Wells as Jennifer they might actually have tried to make a model that at least loosely RESEMBLES like her version of the character! Also, in the actual cutscenes, the characters walking around are CLEARLY reused versions of the gangster and Edna models from the 1930s, and every cop is clearly the same Officer Parker model. It's so bad it's laughable, especially if you've recently played the previous episode.
Which brings me to point four, the absolute disconnect between the life of environments in the cutscenes vs. the actual gameplay. When we first enter Hill Valley Square, it's full of hustle and bustle. Characters walk around, golf carts drive by, etc. When control resumes, all of a sudden it's a ghost town, with the only characters around the ones you need to interact with to advance the story. The environments are also nearly devoid of interactive hotspots--worse in this episode than in any other Telltale game to date. Not only does this make the environments feel completely dead, but it makes puzzle solving (hahahaha) a complete JOKE.
And last but not least, the puzzles.
Sigh...
Wait, WHAT puzzles?!
There was nothing in this game where the solution wasn't patently obvious from the get-go, or that took just a few seconds of thought or experimentation to figure out. The nearly complete lack of environmental hotspots besides the ones needed to solve "puzzles" makes these things little more than three second click fests. And of course, that's assuming you actually have to stop and think about the solution, which is a rarity, to be sure. And again, this makes the game's overly blatant hint system even more ridiculous and unnecessary than it already was.
This game was full of missed opportunities on the puzzle front, too. A great example is Biff's watch. You figure out that it has a special code that puts him under mind control, but all you have to do is say "Hey Biff, let me see your watch," he shows it to you, and then you just type it in and voila? Really? You'd think there could have at least been SOME trick to it. And the code is something that is just blatantly SHOWN to you in a major cutscene. A simple way to add depth to this "puzzle" would have been to make Marty have to FIND the code by eavesdropping or following Edna/Biff, or having some trick to the entry of the code onto the watch itself. Perhaps Edna had a remote device that activates the watch that Marty would have to first figure out how to get and use, rather than just walking up to Biff and fucking PUNCHING IN THE CODE WHILE THE WATCH IS ON HIS FUCKING ARM. I mean, I know Biff is supposed to be a moron, but does Telltale really have to treat us players like we are, too?? Ugh.
Anyway, the bottom line? This game is awful. The series is the worst "game" Telltale has ever done. Calling it an adventure game is almost an insult to the genre, and the only reason to even watch/"play" this thing is to see BttF 4.
Other than that, it's looking great. I can easily anticipate the plot for Part 4 but I have no idea what will happen in 5.
It was probably the easiest episode so far. I can't even think of anything that took me more than a few seconds to figure out. Want to know what probably took me the longest? Figuring out that I had to fiddle with the statue in the park not once but twice to get it to block the camera. A real brain teaser, there.
Anyway, I feel like there's a lot of missed potential in Back to the Future: The Game, and people are being way too kind in their evaluations.
I know that Telltale is capable of a lot better than this, they've already proven that they are with their other games.
Stop making short and easy episodes, I know you're trying to get a wider audience, but this is too much. This is not a game but a cartoon-game, trying to find the way to make the story flowing further.
Play Monkey Island 2 puzzles throght the islands and you'll get what I expect from an adventure game.
Telltale....in this way you risk to ruin your wonderful reputation. Dont follow the path took by LucasArts... or soon a new Telltale will replace your success.
Sorry for the double post, but i feel betrayed.
I'm not impressed with the game, but it isn't supposed to be an action game. It's a story game. What would be the point in driving around anyway? I know everyone wants to drive the Delorean but would it really be that fun just for the sake of it? No.
Back To The Future: The Game – Episode 3: Citizen Brown Review - AMO
"Episode 3: Citizen Brown is not only the best episode of Back To The Future: The Game yet, but also one of Telltale’s finest episodes full stop. I can’t reveal too much, but trust me: the final half hour of Episode 3 is sheer brilliance, showcasing the writers, programmers, art designers and voice actors at their very best..."
Another AJ LoCascio mini-interview for this month incoming! Please stay tuned...
Excellent review - I completely agree. The game was a bit too easy, but I think if it was made it too hard, you would alienate newcomers to these types of games.