Back to the Future: The Game is... surprisingly good

About a month or so ago, I was in GameStop getting my fix of mocking Call of Duty fantards, when an advertisement on their TV caught my eye:

That’s right, a Back to the Future video game.

I immediately knocked some Call of Duty-playing loser out of the way and asked the cashier about the game’s location. He irately pointed to a shelf right next to me. I thanked him by throwing a crumpled-up $20 bill at him and flipping him the bird, then I left the store to rejoin my friends and the one asshole who we let tag along with us because we feel sorry for him.

A month or so later, I finally got around to playing the game. I hadn’t touched my Wii in several months, and had forgotten about how much of a hassle using the motion sensor in my small bedroom was. After about five minutes of fidgeting around, I found a nice comfortable space curled up against a wall and began playing.

The first thing I noticed was the horrendous lag. The poor little Wii just couldn’t handle the frame rate of this game, especially during the cutscenes. This issue is apparently console-exclusive, as later investigation confirmed that the PC version doesn’t have this problem.

Putting aside this very overt and very annoying flaw, I pressed on.

As the game started, I took control of Marty in Doc’s lab. The controls were a fucking bitch. Even using the D-Pad was painstaking, and at times completely off-putting. It took me a little while, but I got used to it, even though it was still pretty frustrating at times.

I had already encountered two terrible flaws. Frame lag (which is a sign of very poor optimization, and should NEVER happen on a console, EVER), and annoying controls. By now most gamers would have thrown aside this game and went back to their generic annually-released FPS’s and RPG’s. But I’ve never actually considered myself a gamer, so I pressed on. After all, it’s motherfucking Back to the Future. I love Back to the Future. I even have a poster of that shit on my wall:

Fuck yeah.

I’m very glad I didn’t put the game down, because once the story began to unfold I was totally absorbed. I almost called out of work once or twice just so I could stay home and keep playing.

I don’t want to ruin the game for others, so I won’t give away too much of the plot. The gist is, you go back to 1931 and work with a young version of Doc to lock up Biff’s father. Then you have to stop Doc from marrying Vice Principal Strickland’s sister and turning Hill Valley into a morally uptight police state. There’s more to it than that, but if you want a full summary, lrn2Googlefagit.

As far as the gameplay itself goes, it’s your typical Telltale game. A very simplistic point-and-click deal, with no real way to lose. The puzzles are pretty simple, and even if you can’t figure them out, there’s a help system that pretty much holds your hand. This help system is what got the game mostly negative reviews, despite the awesome story. Which, to me, is kind of strange, since usually video game critics practically trip over themselves to give a game rave reviews based solely on its story. That’s why Grand Theft Auto 4 is considered a “Masterpiece” by the dipshits over at IGN, despite being complete trash. People fellated GTA 4 for its “realism”. I don’t need realism because I already live in the real world, you fucking numbskulls. I suggest you put down the Mountain Dew and Doritos and join me there. On second thought, don’t. I deal with enough assholes on a daily basis.

The voice acting is pretty good, and even the game’s haters concede this.

Christopher Lloyd reprises his role as Doc Brown. Michael J. Fox doesn’t return as Marty (though he does show up later to voice Marty’s great-grandfather), and instead Marty’s voice is done by AJ LoCascio. Never heard of AJ LoCascio? Me either. But damn, this guy does a great job of impersonating Michael J. Fox’s voice. Seriously, the differences are pretty much nonexistent. I’d expect nothing less from a fellow AJ. There’s no Thomas F. Wilson, Crispin Glover, or Lea Thompson, but the rest of the voice actors do their jobs adequately enough that there’s no issue.

All in all, this isn’t a bad game, and basically serves as an interactive fourth movie. In fact, I think it would have been pretty cool if Robert Zemeckis had made this as a movie back in the 80’s when Michael J. Fox was still young. The game may have its flaws, but I’d still pick it over any of these stupid mass-produced “realistic” linear FPS’s, like Call of Dookie or Battlefail. This is one of the very rare instances where you should actually buy a game not for its gameplay but for its story.

My verdict? I give this game the AngryJerk.net Seal of Approval:

…

It just occurred to me that I never bothered to make my own Seal of Approval. I’ll have to get on that after I put this article up. In the meantime, just pretend it’s something cool and edgy, like a baby seal getting bashed in the head with a club or something.

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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