Reviewed: August 12, 2011
Reviewed by: Charles Boucher

Publisher
Telltale Games

Developer
Telltale Games

Released: July 20, 2011
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1

9
9
9
9
9.0

System Requirements:

  • Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7
  • 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent
  • 3 GB RAM
  • ATI or NVidia card w/ 512 MB RAM
  • Direct X 9.0c
  • Audio card required

    		•  At this point, the final episode of the Back to the Future adventure game has been out for a while. Unless you've been waiting to see if the whole run is good or not, this is basically a formality, but rest assured: The series is still incredibly solid. Back to the Future - Episode 5: OUTATIME picks up where Double Visions left off, on the morning of the Hill Valley expo with several forces within Hill Valley opposing him. Really, at this point in the series, it's neigh-impossible not to spoil something if I'm not incredibly vague, but rest assured that it begins where the last episode ended, and finishes off with an incredible tribute to the original Back to the Future film.

    While most of the episode takes place inside the Hill Valley expo, and is fairly puzzle-dense, the few moments of characterization we get between Emmet and his father, as well as an interesting puzzle that reveals previously unmentioned mechanics of time travel, the series' denouement brings players back to the old west of Hill Valley, along with a Rube Goldberg-esque penultimate puzzle. While the very last puzzle in the game is sort of a letdown, with incredibly awkward mouse controls forcing players to resort to the keyboard, it still ties the series together well, even if crawling around the outside of a speeding car is starting to lose its shine.

    The game’s dialogue is pitch-perfect, with Christopher Lloyd reprising his role as Doc Brown, and AJ LoCascio stepping into Marty’s role with an uncanny interpretation of the character that I could barely distinguish from Michael J. Fox. Telltale’s writing is spot on, hitting many of the movie series’ running jokes, while being more than clever in its own right. While there aren’t as many outright jokes as there were in the previous episodes, the dystopian absurdity of the audio tour stands out as one of the episode’s highlights, including the reminder that citizens must remember which identical blue recycling bin to put trash in.

    The game’s graphics are charming; with a cartoonish bent that pervades the game. The character designs fit their roles in the game, and while the differences in the level of caricature can be momentarily alarming, as the comparison between Marty and Doc Brown’s proportions took me aback when I first noticed them, the interpretation works better, and the characters have more life and expression to them than a more realistic approach would have. Meanwhile, the music draws its cues from the films, with numerous familiar themes coming back around, and fans of the movies’ scores will find a lot to recognize and enjoy.

    The gameplay itself is a relatively simple adventure game. The puzzles are all either dialogue-based or involve using items straight from the inventory with little combination or other elaborate inventory tricks to be found. A robust help system will ease players who can’t boggle through the solutions through the game, though the puzzles are straightforward enough that veteran players might not find much to challenge them. The puzzles seem to be back up to par with the first episode, ending up in me resorting to hints rather often. It’s bound to be less of an issue for more proficient adventure players, but the short ride is back to being fairly fulfilling for players across the spectrum.

    For fans of the films, you can hardly go wrong with the Back to the Future adventure games. If you’ve already bought the first, then you know the kind of quality you’re in for. If you've waited to see if the entire series holds together, well, it does. Either way, it still holds up, and if you want to play through it all in one go, now's the time.